If Your Chosen Place Of Holistic Healing Is Not Actively Incorporating These 5 Fundamental Vrittis, Enquire and Ask, Are You Really Learning Yoga or Simply Going To A Friendly Workout Gym? (Which is Also Fine, But Be Aware, It Just Ain't Authentic Yoga...)

A beginners yoga practice is the incredibly simple realisation of reunion with Self. 

Authentic Yoga is simple and easy and returns you to who you have always been. 

Your practice begins to include not only The Eight Fold Path of The Classic Patanjali's Yoga Sutras but also the even simpler lessons of Adi Shankara, Advaita Vedanta, Khasmir Shaivism or even Shaiva Siddhanta. These subtle and nuanced yoga practices are freely available for all normal everyday people. Go have a look for your self if interested in yoga. It is everywhere. For free. 

They are not some ancient mystery available only with the merch table active wear, mats, bags and swagger at your local "Holistic Day Spa Steam Box Big Mac LCD Fast Buck Ubiquitous Ronald The Big M Golden Arch Clown Mass Produced Drive Through Studio." 

Welcome To The Fast Fool Yoga Industry. There is Now One On Every Corner. Hi Yoga Alliance... 

Would You Like Fries with your downward dog? 

Would you like a vanilla shake with your savasana?

Would you like a side of MLM Zen with you Nidra? 

Nothing wrong with A One Stop Big Burger Shop, maybe don't expect nourishing food though...

Have a Nice Day... 

Ka ching ka ching, but is it even yoga if a shop caters to a ubiquitous nebulous and/or the LCD?

Where's the nutrition in the "real food/fast food" offerings? Same same with any yoga that does not even address the simple reality of atma gnanam. The core of yoga. 

More recent commentary on the damage that yoga appropriation continues to cause;

"the existence of an ‘industry’ that seeks to commodify and profit from wellness and embodied practices by the engagement in large scale monetised events such as The Embodiment Conference, are essentially damaging to our practices and our communities. They create financial success and visibility only for those few who have already succeeded in creating a popular platform whilst doing so supported by the free labour of others. This echoes the worst elements of our economic systems and is damaging and toxic. From experience, we do not accept that ‘exposure’ actually works in practice, nor is it a legitimate form of remuneration."

by Dr. Jess Glenny, Rev. Jude Mills, Dr. Theo Wildcroft

Cultural appropriation (and far worse damage and toxicity) in the name of Yoga is insidious since the West first got a taste of  what has proven to be the damages inflicted by Pattabi Jois and ashtanga, Harbhajan Singh Khalsa (Yogi Bhajan) and Kundalini Yoga, Manouso Manus and Iyengar, Satyananda Ashram and the Royal Commission into child sexual abuse, Hot Bikram (et al) Yoga Business Models where yoga has been overtly abusive and re sold to unquestioning sincere seekers. Beer Yoga? Goat Yoga? Nude Yoga? Vin Yin Fast Flow Dangerous No Counter Poses Oil Infused Unqualified Yoga? Or just the Goat Yoga? 

These may just be the superficial and hopefully relatively harmless "business" arms of a much more damaging underlying issue with any who appropriate any culture for their own selfish and mostly ignorant survivalist means. But in reality, they do cause profound damage to what "yoga" actually is. Every single one of the above yoga practices (some self appointed Gurus even) sincerely thought they were teaching yoga when in reality they were hiding behind extreme dynamics. 

Look up the evidence that many scholars have exposed on yogic cults, cultural appropriation and extreme toxic abuse within the "yoga" world. Caveat emptor even with your local friendly McDonalds Brand Yoga Shop. 

However there remains numerous foundational paths and authentic yogis and yoginis who offer the beginner one or more access points into a safe, nourishing and life long daily yoga practice. 

The Path is Pathless once started and the beauty is, The Sincere Student of Yoga always chooses Their Way. Without appropriation, entitlement, enabling or enmeshment as witnessed in the many and varied examples listed and linked to above. 

The following 5 Vrittis are a fundamental core of any beginners yoga practice. Your teacher should be able to share these basics as integrated features somewhere within their teaching pedagogy. Maybe not every class, but certainly somewhere as part of their integrated and carefully composed lessons.

The 5 Yogic Vrittis

Right cognition (Pramana)
Misconception (Viparyaya)
Imagination (Vikalpa)
Sleep (Nidra)
Memory (Smriti)

1. Right cognition (Pramana)

Right cognition or Pramana is the ‘proof’ of information to be valid according to our belief, experience & morals. Pramana vritti of mind let us believe that something is ‘firmly’ right. It’s our buddhi which continually modifying our perception to make an experience a truth. The same experience which is true for us, someone can have the exact opposite sensation for it.

2. Misconception (Viparyaya)

Misconception or Viparyaya refers to the vritti when the mind gets false knowledge based on the mistake of 5 senses. All knowledge of the external world we get through 5 senses & sometimes this knowledge is deceptive.

3. Imagination (Vikalpa)

We all know about what imagination is, Right? Imagination is just a thought pattern of past, future or about an event that does not exist in reality instead it’s just our mind created the picture. As it’s stem out of mind, it’s another kind of mind vritti. Other synonyms for vikalpa vritti are fantasy, daydreaming, doubt & indecision.

4. Sleep (Nidra)

Nidra is an altered state of consciousness where all 5 senses dissolved into the mind & mind directs inwards so that we lose control over thought patterning of mind. Nidra is also a vritti of mind because it still experiencing a thought unconsciously. One more reason to call nidra a vritti is when poor or good sleep quality affects our awakening state.

5. Memory (Smriti)

Memory is lasting impressions of past sensation or emotion which is stored consciously or unconsciously by the person’s mind. The mind then recollects these stored thought patterns according to the situation & hence it affects our experience of delivering reality.

Thank you Patanjali Vedanta, urbanOM, SVC and Marina @BCYR. 

(via SVC "A Beginners Guide To Vrittis, Samskaras and The Yoga Sutras" with Marina Posishka) 

Patanjali Yoga Sutras 

In the context of beginners yoga, vrittis refer to different tendencies, or psycho-physical propensities, which give scope for the mind to express a variety of feelings and emotions. Yogic texts (sutras) describe samskaras to be a result of past actions and experiences that have left an imprint on the mind. A goal of the beginning yogi is thus not to suppress, or annul their vrittis, rather it is to find harmonious alignment, and ultimately, to channel these tendencies graciously inward to calm and heal. To bring presence to these many fluctuations (vrittis samskaras) via self awareness, self knowledge, self healing and self love. As a word, vritti means literally vortex (of consciousness), or "circular activity with no beginning and no end". Embrace your inner universal paradox, this moment to moment daily inner vortex that moves more wisely and slowly, simply and calmly towards Atma gnanam ati sulabam, the easiest thing in existence, the whole unadulterated you. 

Patanjali's Sutras Welcome You Back To Who You Have Always Been before any false external "terms and conditions" (the vrittis) were applied. 

That is Yoga. 

The Spacious Inner Reunion, Integrated With True Nature, Your Authentic Self. 

With appropriate checks and balances. In and On The Yoga Business World. 

That is you reclaiming and remembering your freely available birth rite. 

Who You Have Always Been. Without the Bullshit. Doing The Real Work. 

The Yoga Path as one tool and one technology, simply assists you in that remembrance. 

Asana is butt a mere tip of that wonderful endless depth. Your True Self. 

Atma gnanam is freely there for all. 

Your path will be yours, as you choose, with checks and balances. 

Hari Om.