When you or a student or client is struggling with a long-standing, seemingly unchanging, deeply embedded pattern, one that causes harm, neglect, or criticism (with themselves or others), how do you know which course is best: Compassion or Action? 

Through the lens of yoga, a stuck pattern is called Tamas (or tamasic). It means that which is stable, inert, inactive, dull. The word for Action is Rajas. That which is mobile or motivated. More likely to catalyze change.

Ideally, yoga recommends making wise use of Tamas and Rajas to create the opportunities for Sattva: that which is lucid, clear, graceful, and loving. Each of us needs just enough Tamas (stability and structure) and just enough Rajas (motivation and courage) to move toward Sattva. ​

How Does Yoga Create Secure Attachment (if it also teaches non-attachment)?

Somatic Secure Attachment
In the process of yoga, secure attachment networks are neurologically stimulated, and interpersonally nourished. As we teach students how to have more consistent, more nourishing, more relational attitudes and considerations of their physical body as a resource, their sense of being in relationship with their body changes. How they relate to their musculo-skeletal, physiological, and neurological expressions is a reflection of one layer of their attachment networks. As historical trauma lives in the body and brain, the somatic practices of yoga - including breathing, sensing, moving, respecting, reflecting, and inviting their body to be integrated into their life in healthier ways - stimulates new ways of being in relationship with their personal ecology.