Come to Your Senses

Sleepwalking through yoga these days? Shake up your practice and your life with the animating force of rasa.

By Shiva Rea

I first learned about rasa from Mohandas Gandhi's grandson, the philosopher Ramachandra Gandhi, while studying at the University of Delhi in India. We were watching an outdoor rehearsal of the Manipuri dance troupe while sipping chai at the Triveni Art Gallery's café. I noticed the way he inhaled the graceful circular dance as if it were a natural form of prana (vital energy). At one point, he stopped talking and took in the movement with utter reverie. Silently, we digested everything that surrounded us—the wind moving through the trees, the liquid concentration pouring through the dancers, the sound of the drum with its increasing tempo, the buzz of conversation, and the smell of the jasmine growing nearby. Ramachandra said something that has lived within me ever since: "When you taste the rasa of life, you drink from a well that is never dry."

Literally translated as "juice, essence, taste, plasma, or transformational state," rasa assumes one of several meanings, depending on its context. From an Ayurvedic perspective, it refers to the concentrated essence of something, such as the sweetness of a mango, but also to the nourishing energy that infuses us with life; it is the enlivened state of a dry plant that has just been watered, or of a person newly relaxed after a massage, or of a yogi after an inspired practice. As Ayurveda teacher Robert Svoboda says, "Existence without juice is dry and tasteless. Rasa is life's fluid reality, life's juice, in every sense of the word."

Awaken to Transformation

The concept of rasa originated in India with performing artists who wanted to create a transformational state for themselves and their audiences. Like the experience Ramachandra and I had with the dance troupe, rasa is the state of complete absorption on the part of both the artist and the audience, or the one who perceives the art form (the rasika). When rasa has been cultivated, the thinking mind quiets and pure feeling pulses through the body. Most of us have had this experience at one time or another. Maybe it happened when you were a child: the first time a piece of music really grabbed your whole being or a dance performance made you feel as though you were inside the dance. This transformational state of thoughtless awareness is a type of communion between ourselves and that which surrounds us. And it can arise during any of life's activities; we need only to feel unified with our experience—think of an amazing sunset, a rhythmic walk up a hill, or holding your beloved's hand. Rasa occurs when we feel connected to our deepest selves. The Indian philosopher Abhinavagupta describes rasa as "the self tasting the self."

Bhava: The Essential Inner Connection

In order for the rasa state to arise, we must first become aware of our bhava, or "true feeling state," which is thought of as the soil of rasa. Without being true to our feeling state, it's easy to feel as if we're going through the motions of life. A lack of connection is all too common in this fast-paced world; we sometimes find ourselves eating without tasting our food, listening without being truly present, and doing yoga without experiencing the feelings that arise in us.

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