The Emotions

By Andy Roughton

Mr Iyengar, in his book “light on life”, says that emotions are memories of the past and spring up from feelings. When we feel something, our minds remember times that we have previously felt a similar feeling and overlays the memory of that previous feeling (emotion) onto it. The emotion clouds our current feeling and that can be for better or worse. Clearly, if we want to have a greater understanding of our self we need to understand both feelings and emotions.

Through the practice of Yoga we are able to decrease the adverse effects of the six emotional disturbances, which are; pride, obsession, lust, hatred, anger and greed. The aim is not to remove the emotions or their affects entirely, as they have a purpose. We need to ensure that our emotions are not directed outwardly towards the world but to use their energy constructively for the purposes of yoga. If we look at the world around us, we can see that it is not thought, but emotions that guide most of the worlds behaviour. It is anger, hatred and greed that lead to wars and most of the issues we see in the world.

So how do we lessen the effect of the emotions? By the honest and dedicated practice of yoga as defined by Patanjali.