Digging Deep: Cultivating Compassion from the Roots Up
vitarka-bādhane pratipakṣa-bhāvanam
“When disturbed by negative thoughts, cultivate the opposite.”
(Reflections on PYS 2.33)
At 4NT, our teachers often invite us to look deeper - beneath the surface, beyond the noise of societal conditioning - to the rich, living soil of relationship, interdependence, and belonging.
We’re reminded that, as human beings gifted with imagination, awareness, compassion, and wisdom, we hold the power to rebuild from the ground up. To dig out the weeds and compost what no longer nourishes us. To plant new seeds of love, forgiveness, and generosity.
This practice - of getting to the root —-is radical. It’s the work of tending both body and soul, whether we’re in urdhva dhanurasana, sirsasana, or tadasana, or navigating the challenges of everyday life. The Earth shows us how: through decay and renewal, through the wisdom of roots and mycelium, through the constant exchange of giving and receiving.
Can we stand in the spirit of reciprocity - as the trees do - breathing in and out, giving and receiving in equal measure?
Can we notice how the extraordinary hides in the ordinary - how falling apart and coming back together happen every moment?
When we learn to mine gold from hardship, pain becomes empathy. We begin to see ourselves in others, and others in us.
As Sharon Gannon says, “When otherness dissolves, then there is Yoga.”
Root to Rise
Don’t just stand there.
Root.
Press into the earth through whatever’s touching it - your feet, your palms, your shoulders, your crown. Feel the seal form. From that connection, strength and stability arise - in the body, and in the mind.
This wholehearted connection is what turns a pose into a practice, a relationship into a living exchange. Instead of skimming the surface or chasing a picture-perfect shape, we can stay grounded through the wobble - becoming steady in the act of balancing, supporting ourselves and others through the fall as much as the rise.
Yoga invites us to plug into life itself - to stay present through struggle rather than escape it, to let the fire of transformation lift us from contraction into expansion, from worry to trust, from anger to forgiveness, from victimhood to sovereignty.
It begins here.
It begins with us.
Mutual Flourishing
Yoga, like nature, teaches reciprocity - to take only what we need, and to give back what we can. Life is an endless dance of becoming and unbecoming: rivers into ocean, ocean into clouds, clouds into teacups. Everything is connected, everything coexists, everything inter-is.
When opposites meet - ida and pingala, lunar and solar, matter and spirit - something potent awakens. When we bring our hands together at the heart, we remember the vastness that has always been within us. The seer and the source, becoming one.
Through practice, we strengthen our physical and spiritual core so that when life pulls us in opposite directions, we can zoom in and zoom out - balancing our humanity and divinity, resilience and creativity.
The Beauty of Polarity
Polarity is part of life’s design - contraction and expansion, ecstasy and agony. Even our first breaths as infants are woven with both need and joy.
Nature celebrates contrast: no two blackberries are the same, and it’s their uniqueness that makes them exquisite. In the same way, our individuality - our differences - is what fuels creativity, imagination, and change.
Patanjali offers a practical teaching for this: “When the mind is disturbed, contemplate on the opposite.” When we feel trapped by fear, scarcity, or despair, we can choose instead to contemplate love, abundance, and possibility.
As Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us, “One speck of dust can be the Kingdom of God, the Pure Land.”
So we return again and again - to the roots, to the breath, to the sacred pulse of becoming. To Yoga. To each other.
Read: The Art of Living - by Thich Nhat Hanh
Listen: “Ong Namo” by Snatam Kaur - A sacred chant meaning “I bow to the subtle divine wisdom, the divine teacher within.”