The Yoga of relationships is the most difficult yoga….

And yet for many it can be a valid route to awakening, out of sheer necessity.

If any of these thoughts below belong to you in your relationships, insight into the yoga of relationships may be relevant to you.

“I can only be happy if you are different.”

“If you were more like that person over there, things would be better for me.”

“Well, my needs need to be met.”

“I need to be cherished, loved, needed.”

These thoughts cause us suffering.
When we can see that our awareness is identifying with these thoughts and these insatiable needs, we have seen through the root cause of our suffering.
You are solely responsible for your consciousness and your thoughts. To lay these demands and thoughts on another is both blind and irresponsible. You become a victim of your own mind and your own expectations. Expectations are simply projections into the future based on memories of past experience. Complaining is the mind heavily at work. So, if you find yourself complaining about your partner, your friends, your work colleagues, or your kids, STOP. Be still, become present and notice that your mind is in the past or future. You are projecting or expecting some different outcome from exactly what is. Complaining is the mind, your ego, heavily at work. Complaining is a mental state that robs you of the present moment, a moment in which you are completely free to BE.

Acknowledging the above insights, we can enter onto the plane of consciousness where we become “compassion” or “loving awareness” and discontinue identification with these thoughts.

With an utmost focus on awakening and seeing beyond our small egoic selves, our intimate relationships can be our most valuable sadhana, our daily spiritual practice.

I now speak of Ram Dass’ teachings on the “yoga of relationships” and very truthfully from my own heart below.

There are two ways of waking up, whilst honouring our relationships and remaining karmically entwined within them.

1. The easiest and safest way – Have a good solid secure relationship on which to fall back upon and spring from there. Then, you go and do your practices, your meditations, your retreats, whatever it is you do to find that blissful state of being.

2. The perhaps “more difficult” way – Awaken within the difficulties, the heartbreaks, the losses, the grief, the rejections and the pain. The hardest way perhaps for the ego, the identity, but equally valid and true for the heart. The deepest heartbreak practised consciously eventually breaks open the heart to the insight of impermanence and the interconnectedness of all.
I would say this conscious heartbreak and grief is the hardest yoga of all.

With love and laughter, we can explore the veils or sheaths of the heart, peeling back the blocks of past pain.

The 3 veils of the heart in yoga to explore
  The physical heart – heart rate & heart rate variability, grip strength
The emotional heart – heart-brain – grief, anger, angst, melancholia, joy, compassion, love, resilience
The spiritual heart – transcendental self (Atman), ultimate reality (Brahman)

The spiritual heart opens us to the beautiful teachings on impermanence and interconnectedness. If we honour the gift of impermanence, this makes everything possible. Interconnectedness to all, reminds us that if we harm another, we ultimately harm ourselves, even in our thoughts. To remove the karmas of the past in relationships and the pain within, practise Bhakti yoga, devotion to loving all that is.
Accept everything.
Love everything and everyone.
And, tell the truth.

Celia Roberts

“In the spiritual traditions of India, as elsewhere, the ‘heart’ refers not so much to the physical organ as to a psychospiritual structure corresponding to the heart muscle on the material plane. This spiritual heart is celebrated by yogins and mystics as the seat of the transcendental Self. It is called hrid, hridaya, or hrit-padma (“heart lotus”). It is often referred to as the secret “cave” (guha) in which the yogin must restrain his mind. In some schools, notably Kashmir Shaivism, the word hridaya applies also to the ultimate Reality.”

–Georg Feuerstein