#128 Samskara Mapping: How the Past Repeats (And Slowly Shifts)
Yoga, Trauma, and the Hardwired Patterns that shape our lives until we soften them with Compassion
Last week, I got a new job at a yoga studio in central Ubud.
When they offered me the role, they told me they needed someone to sub the 9:00am class - one of the top time slots reserved only for senior teachers who really know what they’re doing.
I paused.
“I’m a senior teacher?”
I guess I am. I've been teaching yoga for 11 years around the world, leading retreats, teacher trainings, and even writing a book, Sober Yoga Girl. But for the last few years, I’ve genuinely struggled to believe I was good enough to get a teaching job in Ubud. My self-worth has been that low.
That’s why, for the last while, I’ve been commuting over two hours once a week to Uluwatu to teach - because I believed it was easier for someone like me to get a job down there.
Now, I see this entire thought pattern for what it is: a samskara - an imprint from past experiences that shaped my self-perception and future choices.
The Layers of Samskara
Today I had a call with my teacher Rolf, the first in about a month and a half. Catching up with him on the last six weeks felt like a lifetime, and reminded me how valuable it is to regularly connect with my teachers - my mirrors.
I told him about my life over the last six weeks: the teaching job, my social media relapse, the waves of self-doubt. Rolf invited me to reflect on samskaras - a Sanskrit term that describes the subtle mental impressions left behind by past thoughts, actions, and experiences.
I told him that to me, samskaras are like grooves worn into the mind. The more we repeat a thought or action, the deeper the groove becomes. These grooves create the inclination for us to do the same thing again.
This is written about in several points in Chapter 2 of the sutras, first appearing in Yoga Sutra 2.10:
“te pratiprasava-heyāḥ sūkṣmāḥ”
“The subtle impressions (samskaras) can be reduced by returning them to their source.”
Some samskaras are negative, rooted in trauma - like patterns of self-abandonment, addiction, or unsafe relationships. But others are positive: for instance, my 200+ days of twice daily, twenty minutes meditation since last September have created a samskara that now feels as automatic and essential as brushing my teeth.
Inherited Imprints
Rolf shared a photo of his father - which he had just seen for the first time - and then a photo of his son. They looked identical.
“This is a samskara,” he said. “The point I’m trying to make is that Samskaras aren’t our fault. They are far-reaching, beyond us.”
He reminded me that some samskaras are passed down generationally.
A samskara for wanting to be with a man. A samskara for control. A samskara for attracting chaos. A samskara for addiction. Gender is a samskara. Sexuality is a samskara. These patterns don’t always begin with us - but they often repeat through us.
And so the question becomes: how do we meet each samskara with compassion?
Self-Judgment, Vṛttis, and Witnessing
I brought up something that’s been bothering me for a while:
“I’ve been obsessed with the vṛttis this year,” I told him, “but recently I feel like I’m just gaslighting myself with them. I’m teaching women that their thoughts are just fluctuations of the mind. It’s almost as if I’m teaching them to say, “It’s all in my head.” But in a lot of my examples that I shared in this year’s classes - I realize now that it wasn’t all in my head. Those were real, gut feelings I had, that I talked myself out of through the vrittis. But what if their gut is right? What if something is actually wrong and they’re telling themselves it’s just their imagination, or their memory?”
Yoga Sutra 1.5 defines these vṛttis - thought waves - as either painful or not painful:
“vṛttayaḥ pañcatayyaḥ kliṣṭākliṣṭāḥ”
“The mental modifications are five-fold. They can be either painful or painless.”
Rolf said something I’ll never forget:
“The goal isn’t to obsess over the vṛttis. The goal is to see what’s looking at the vṛttis.”
We don’t examine the mind to get stuck in it - we examine the mind so we can disidentify from it.
We aren’t the waves. We are the ocean beneath them.
I remembered how Rolf said to me six years ago that he teaches the same theme for over a year to his students. He said to me today, “This is the value in studying the vrittis so in depth. Every time you revisit them, it’s not going to be the same as the time before.” That’s why we look at the same theme, over and over again. To really solidify our understanding of it.
Pain as a Doorway to Practice
To close our call, Rolf asked what practice was currently working in my life. I told him about my meditation practice.
After 200+ days, it’s effortless. It settles my mind.
We talked about how some teachers can not embody the teachings in real life. “Why is that?” I asked Rolf. “How can that be, if you study a practice with sincerity?” Rolf said:
“Most teachers come to their spiritual practice because they’re in a lot of pain. For them, the practice is like a glass of water in the desert. Think of how much pain you were in when you started practicing. That’s what got you committed to the practice. Because you know it works. A lot of teachers out there are like this. Think of how much pain they must have been in to devote their lives to teaching a practice. Some teachers are still in that pain, even now.”
He reminded me that there are very few people who truly want to cause harm. And while some people do inflict pain with intention, most are simply acting out their own samskaras.
Patterns of control. Patterns of fear. Patterns of attachment.
Toward Awakening
This is the heart of the spiritual practice:
Seeing the samskaras, without judgment.
Witnessing the waves, with compassion.
Getting a little more distance from the waves each time.
Because every time the pattern repeats, I stick to my tools. I don’t let it swallow me completely. I come back to the breath, the mat, the witness. And this time, as I move through this very familiar samskara, this very familiar experience, I’m moving through it with the greatest groundedness, the greatest compassion, the greatest peace.
As Rolf said:
“Each year, we gain an inch or two of space towards full awakening.”
Right now I think my whole journey is about building my self-worth.
My worth as a woman.
My worth as a teacher.
And learning to love myself - even when the old grooves are deep and the patterns keep repeating.
Because this is the path: not perfection, but presence.
Not transcendence, but tenderness.