My name is Apoorva. I'm the founder of In.Breath. We teach yoga in the Sri Krishnamacharya tradition. Today is International Yoga Day. And I wanted to share a little something like I do every year about this practice that has really helped me, I want to talk about 'sauca' which is a personal practice, a personal discipline called 'niyama' given in the text of Yoga Sutra, Sauca is about cleanliness on the outside as well as on the inside. And while a lot of us do focus on cleanliness on the outside, I do think we all miss out on what real cleanliness means on the inside. It means clearing the body of undigested food, of taking care of all the residues inside the body. It also means taking care of the mind, cleaning the mind of all the impressions that get accumulated. What are these impressions? Conversations, news, social media fights, conflicts, stories, fantasies. We collect all of these in our mind and it's happening more and more as we consume a lot of social media. These days, these impressions go and stay in our mind and slowly become a thick layer through which our perception gets impaired. We can't see clearly anymore. Our mind feels confused. Maybe there's too much moving around in the mind. So what's happened for me over the last 15 years is like regularly coming to a practice of yoga with his body breath and mind taking care of all three. It's helped me to clear my body and my mind again and again and again, it helps me keep my system in a clear reset space which allows me to be the best that I can be. It's also helped me develop an awareness over the years to start seeing what is it that starts getting accumulated and start avoiding those things. It's helped me look at baggage and residue from years ago, which had had probably become really hard and thick inside me and to slowly through my breath through my body, release it so that I'm free of that. So has really helped me find more space and more choices and it's really helped me improve my relationships and to work with greater clarity. So it's a very important concept of selfcare through yoga. So you may wanna ask yourself today, what are your practices for 'sauca' - external and internal? You take the time to cleanse within? This is something I would invite you to think about today. I think if we all did it more regularly, I think just by doing this practice, I think we will experience ourselves in a better way. And I think the world will be in a much better place. Thank you.
