Kino MacGregor

Abhyāsa: The Sacred Art of Returning, Practice, Repetition, and Inner Cultivation

Abhyāsa and Bhāvanā, The Heart of Practice

What does it mean to practice? Not just once not just when it’s convenient or inspiring but again and again across years across seasons across the full arc of a life.

The ancient yogis gave us a word for this abhyāsa. It’s a term rooted in the Yoga Sūtras often translated as practice yet in Sanskrit the word carries far more depth. Derived from the root √bhās or √abhyas meaning to repeat to dwell upon to apply oneself continuously and joined with the prefix abhi which intensifies and directs the action toward something abhyāsa means the sustained intentional effort to return again and again to a chosen focus. It’s not just what you do it’s the way you come back to it.

In Yoga Sūtra 1.13 Patañjali writes

tatra sthitau yatno ’bhyāsaḥ

“Abhyāsa is the effort to remain established in that state of yoga.”

And in the next sūtra he tells us how

sa tu dīrgha kāla nairantarya satkārādarāsevito dṛḍha bhūmiḥ

“That practice becomes firmly rooted when done for a long time without interruption and with reverence.”

In the living tradition of Ashtanga Yoga abhyāsa is not a concept but a way of life. The structure of the method daily practice six days a week over many years is itself an invitation into abhyāsa. You roll out the mat not because you always feel like it but because something deeper in you knows this is the way I return. Even when the postures are hard even when the body is sore or the mind resists the act of coming back is the essence of the path.

You see this clearly in the arc of a pose like Supta Kurmāsana. For many students it feels almost impossible at first legs behind the head arms bound beneath the body surrender sealed into form. But the beauty of this pose is not in achieving it it’s in approaching it day after day watching yourself soften toward it struggle with it learn from it. Over time the pose becomes less about flexibility and more about who you become through repetition. And this is what abhyāsa teaches us that spiritual depth is born not from novelty but from constancy.

In Buddhist practice a parallel concept exists one that adds an essential inner dimension to the idea of abhyāsa. That word is bhāvanā भावना.

Bhāvanā comes from the root √bhū to be to become and the causative suffix ana meaning to bring into being to cultivate to cause to become. So bhāvanā literally means the act of bringing something into existence or more poetically mental cultivation development or becoming.

In early Pāli and Sanskrit Buddhist texts bhāvanā refers to the intentional cultivation of inner states such as mettā loving kindness karuṇā compassion sati mindfulness and samādhi concentration. When the Buddha speaks of the Noble Eightfold Path he is not just prescribing outer conduct he is describing an inner field that must be tilled watered and tended. Practice is not just repetition it is generation. What we do again and again is what we become.

This is where abhyāsa and bhāvanā meet both name the sacred act of shaping the self not by force but by devoted repetition with intention. Abhyāsa is the discipline of coming back bhāvanā is the fruit of that return the subtle flowering of consciousness the quiet ripening of compassion steadiness and joy.

In the Ashtanga method the breath the bandhas the postures the drishti these are not merely physical tools. They are instruments of bhāvanā. With each vinyāsa you are cultivating presence. With each inhalation you are strengthening attention. With each exhale you are dissolving clinging. The repetition may seem mechanical from the outside but inside something profound is growing.

Even on the hardest days especially on the hardest days this cultivation continues. You come to the mat feeling heavy uninspired distracted. But you practice anyway. And as you breathe through resistance presence is born. As you move through the postures without drama equanimity is cultivated. That is bhāvanā. That is what turns abhyāsa into a transformational force rather than a mechanical routine.

The path of yoga like the path of Dhamma is not a ladder you climb it’s a field you tend. Each time you practice you lay down seeds. Not all will sprout immediately. Some may lie dormant for years. But with enough repetition enough stillness enough breath something takes root.

And that is what abhyāsa ultimately teaches us not that you must master anything but that you must return again and again until the path is no longer a road in front of you but a rhythm within you.

And perhaps that is what Patañjali meant all along. Abhyāsa is not about arriving. It is about aligning. It is the sacred art of returning.

Returning to breath.
Returning to body.
Returning to the seat of the soul.

Because with each return you remember
This is who I am when I stop running.
This is the place I never truly left.
And this right here is the path.

By Kino MacGregor

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