Stress, agitation, nervousness, anxiety, insomnia are the result of the clumsy habit of wanting to hide our weaknesses by flaunting the exact opposite. It is necessary to discover a delicate sense of abandonment to life, be aware of uncertainty and allow yoga research to visit that part of the heart where love, tenderness, humility, vulnerability, trust, silence are hidden.
Cultivate with dedication that ability that allows each practitioner to live the moment with an awareness that cannot be disturbed by preconceptions about the past or by the projections on the future that thought brings with it. The teaching and practice of yoga is a highly refined art that requires the knowledge and careful study of some traditional texts which should not be considered mere intellectual knowledge to show off in living rooms, but serve to identify the right way to deeply affect on one's daily practice of yoga and more specifically of hatha-yoga. The introduction of the practice in the West, and in particular in Europe, is still too recent and the yoga community cannot yet embrace the immense doctrine handed down to us by the ancient Masters: it is like a few months old baby who is about to walk.

Inevitably, his first steps will be tentative and, presumably, hurried as he has not yet acquired balance and stability. Thus, we Westerners rush to learn physical techniques, trying to exhibit perfect movements, as if it were dance or gymnastics, to be judged good by others, without having learned and applied the teaching in all its depth.

Yoga triggers a purification process that is not limited to simple internal and external cleansing of the body through physical practices, but these take on the value of a gesture, a symbolic message that incites the individual to proceed towards a much wider purification , towards a state of non-reactive awareness, to achieve true openness and a confident and total surrender to life. It is important to understand that the practice of hatha-yoga is just an excellent opportunity to learn so patiently to observe, with an elevated consciousness, and slowly understand over time, in the strict silence of the mind, as a witness, the totality of life's process. .
At the beginning of the second chapter of Patañjali's "Yoga Sutra", dedicated to sādhanā (practice), the text reveals that at the origin of the vortexes of the mind (the vrtti) there are five matrices that condition their orientation. These matrices are called kleśa and induce suffering and condition actions, life choices and the orientation of the same mental processes. Let's examine them together

Avidyā is the first of the five; is a compound Sanskrit word, meaning inner condition of not knowing, commonly translated by the word "ignorance". This term should not be attributed the meaning it has today in common language, that of lack of education, of culture, or again, of failure to acquire a perfect knowledge of the supreme and highest philosophical and religious truths. In this context, the term "ignorance" indicates the widespread habit of not knowing how to place the priority aspects, from the point of view of yoga research, with respect to the priorities deriving from a common vision that tends to mainly satisfy the ego. So much so that in Sanskrit there is the term bhoga, used by Patañjali himself, which designates exactly the action whose priority is to satisfy only one's ego, one's concrete, material, affective and psychic pleasure.
With this statement we do not want to indicate that the practitioner will no longer have to carry out any action that leads to pleasure or to his own advantage, but that he will have to learn to attribute the right value to this kind of pleasure, simultaneously cultivating the absolute priority of the one who feels a true follower of yoga. Applying this principle in hatha-yoga practically means learning to identify, with the help of one's instructor, tutor or master, in the progress of the research, all the motivations that will emerge according to the various practices supported, the personal advantage, whether it is whether physical, health or otherwise. Check the level of interest that is simultaneously cultivated according to the high purpose, so as to reduce the weight of avidyā. Avidyā is represented by Patañjali as a field where spontaneous plants are born. In this field live the other four kleśa which answer to the names of: asmitā, rāga, dvesa, abhinivesha. Sometimes they expand to the point of developing obsessions, fears, fears, uncertainties, anxieties, on the one hand, and ephemeral joys, pleasures, satisfactions and gratifications, on the other. You can learn to cultivate them in a balanced way and to contain their expansion and growth. The choice of how to feed them is usually not conscious, but in those who practice yoga correctly it becomes.

Asmitā is one of the sons of avidyā, the firstborn, he is that matrix that arises from deep confusion, from looking, with the mind conditioned by avidyā, to the conscious self as a supernatural identity. This belief leads to overestimation of oneself, self-centeredness, selfishness, a condition that precludes a balanced, serene and clear vision. The path of yoga, which is based on the development of awareness and clear vision, is greatly affected and often one enters a dark tunnel with no way out.

Rāga and dvesa are the matrices that bring out levrtti that sink their deep and ramified roots in the most hidden areas of the unconscious, from where emerges that pressing desire to want to reach pleasure, joy, fun, well-being at all costs , passion, love and at the same time to avoid with revulsion, disgust, repugnance everything that brings pain, suffering, disease. Seeking and preferring only certain aspects of life and trying to illusoryly push away the aspects that we consider painful and negative, of which we are afraid and terrified.

Abhinivesha, the last of the five kleshas, ​​literally means "one's taste for oneself". We could also define it as "preservation instinct" or even "stubborn attachment to life" as a force rooted in every living being. Usually the word abhinivesha is given the most common meaning: fear of death.

Surrender yourself to life
From here you can understand how inappropriate it is to practice yoga mechanically and with false aims or to apply techniques, even the most refined, with a wealth of particulars drawn from joint physiology and anatomy, with accurate information on the benefits and advantages, in order to be able to cultivate them over time, as if one wanted, the yogis would say, to sustain and nourish the kleshas and vrttis. This could be yet another wrong strategy developed to distract, delude or veil fear from ourselves and instead exhibit the exact opposite: the sense of omnipotence, strength, vitality, immortality. Perhaps all of this makes man capable of inhibiting fear and of living by eluding it, as if he didn't have it but, at the same time, it makes him weaker and more unprepared, no longer in relation to fear, but certainly in the face of tangible experience of life.