The seasons of spring and summer bring with them opportunity…a chance to clean out some of the cobwebs from the winter and replace them with vibrant possibility (even if you happen to live in LA like I do where the change of season is barely detectable). Longer days shine new light on the places we’ve been feeling a bit stuck in our routine or uninspired during our hibernation.

In yoga philosophy, samskara are the impressions left on the subconscious mind by experience. You might think of them as habits, or learned behaviour. My favourite visual description is that samskara are like the grooves that form in a sandy riverbed from the water flowing in the same pattern year after year. And, though some samskara can be positive, a lot of it is negative programming that looks like this: I’m not good enough at that, strong enough to do that, thin enough to wear that, patient enough to learn that…I can’t!

Sound familiar? We carry this detrimental conditioning around like a heavy backpack; often unaware of what’s in it or how weighed down we are by it until we take it off. Samskara can be sly and determined; they are the cobwebs we want to clear out so we can enjoy our time in the summer. In order to move forward, however, we have to loosen our grip on a few of the things we think we know (sorry!). READ FULL ARTICLE HERE 

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