#177 Time is Subjective
How Patanjali & Nine Months of Change Taught me that Time Isn't What We Think it Is
Trigger Warning Sexual Assault
One of the most fascinating clusters of the Yoga Sutras is the one on time. Patanjali doesn’t talk about time the way we talk about time - deadlines, calendars, schedules, anniversaries. He talks about time as a mental construction, almost a mirage. Something that feels firm but dissolves the moment you examine it closely. (By the way - registration is now open for the 2026 Yoga Sutra Study course with me, which starts Feb 5 and will be on demand classes, written worksheets homework and 10 live calls over the course of five months to meditate + discuss content. You can sign up here.)
Sutra 3.52: The Sequence of Moments
kṣaṇa-tat-kramayoḥ samyamāt viveka-jam jñānam
By samyama (total absorption) on the sequence of moments, knowledge is born from discrimination.
Patanjali invites us to sit with time itself - kṣaṇa, the smallest instant - and the sequence of those instants. He says that when we meditate on time, we develop a very particular kind of wisdom: viveka-jñana, the ability to discern what is real from what is not, the eternal from the temporary, Purusha from Prakriti.
I always think of it like a film reel. A movie looks seamless when we watch it…but when you step into the projection room, you see that it’s just a thousand tiny images flashing fast enough to trick the mind. Time is the same. Our lives feel continuous, but they’re actually just moments, snapshots, stitched together by the mind.
Patanjali says this illusion is powerful, and most of us don’t question it. We assume time is the thing that changes us. But Yoga flips the whole thing around:
It’s not time that transforms us, it’s Prakriti. It’s our nature to change.
Healing doesn’t happen because “time heals all wounds.”
Healing happens because we are the ones who heal.
And this idea became clear for me this weekend at a party for the yoga studio I teach at here in Bali.
It’s wild how subjective time is. Six months of teaching at here feels like six years and six minutes at the same time.
Two Memories, One Room
We were asked in one yoga class this weekend to “think of all the memories you’ve had inside these walls.” Instantly, two memories rose up from the last year for me.
TRIGGER WARNING: SA
The first Memory:
I was in a class at this yoga studio in February 2025 when I first realized I had been drugged and SA’d. It was a week after the incident, and 48 hours after a second incident. He had attempted strangulation, and I had run away. I was in shock and terrified. I was very confused about why he’d done what he’d done - a man had never physically assaulted me before this moment. Friends had urged me to leave Uluwatu, where I was living in a guesthouse at the time, because I was terrified of this person and he knew where I lived. So I drove to Ubud, because my villa was sitting here empty, without me living in it. The morning after (likely still in shock from the strangulation attempt), I walked into this studio, and during the chant of Om Mani Padme Hum, something in me broke open. When we transitioned into tabletop posture, I actually collapsed. It hit me all at once. This was when I strung all the memories and moments together and realized that this man had drugged and SA’d me a week before. I left the room shaking and went to a clinic. I couldn’t understand why he had done what he did. That memory still feels both distant and piercingly sharp.
The second Memory:
In June 2025, this same yoga studio was also the catalyst that helped me leave a deeply unhealthy relationship. A month after the assault, I started dating someone I thought I knew. We had been friends and worked together for a long time. The relationship moved fast - post-assault I was seeking stability and safety, which he seemed to provide. When he moved to Bali in May and moved straight into my villa, we spent 24/7 together for thirty days straight. A business, a band, a relationship all at once. But because we were together 24/7, I didn’t have space to process anything. Then - Bali provided, or the universe provided, a way to see with clarity, in the form of a job. This same yoga studio where I happened to be practicing the day I remembered my assault, offered me a job. They had a yoga class they needed to be subbed on a Tuesday morning. My partner and I were on an Uluwatu holiday that weekend (that’s another story - why on earth we went on holiday where I’d been SA’d four months before….) Because I wanted the job so badly, I left the holiday early to come back to Ubud to my villa. He stayed in Uluwatu with his friend, who was visiting.
Driving away from him for that one night alone changed everything. Six hours apart and my nervous system finally settled. I saw what I couldn’t see while living in a fog: that I was not okay with what was happening in the relationship.
This yoga studio job gave me just enough space to recognize the truth, seek support from friends who could help me make a plan, and find a way to leave this person. If I hadn’t gotten that job, I honestly don’t know how long it would’ve taken me to see clearly, and how deeply I’d have travelled down the wrong road.
Both memories surfaced when the teacher said, “Remember the memories you’ve had within these walls.”
It struck me how a single cue delivered in yoga class - meant with good intentions - can awaken something massive inside someone else. You never know what people are carrying in their bodies.
Time, Memory, and the Sutras
Patanjali’s next sutra continues this journey:
Sutra 3.53
jāti-lakṣaṇa-deśair anyatānavacchedāt tulyayor tataḥ pratipattiḥ
Discrimination of the subtlest differences between two similar objects comes from that same knowledge.
This is the sutra of timelines.
The sutra of “before and after.”
The sutra of “what really happened.”
It’s what lets us see two things that appear the same - a book replaced by an identical book, twins switching places, two cats with different markings - and understand their differences.
This sutra is why, in hindsight, my memories revealed themselves the way they did. When I looked at the timeline, the truth became obvious. Just like Patanjali says - once you understand sequential moments, you see what you couldn’t see before.
And then:
Sutras 3.54–3.55
These sutras describe the highest discernment - when you finally see the difference between Purusha (the eternal Self) and Prakriti (everything that changes). Only then does one progress toward kaivalya, the liberation Patanjali describes.
Understanding time is actually part of awakening.
Time gives us perspective.
Perspective gives us clarity.
Clarity gives us freedom.
Time Isn’t Real. But Experience Is.
What happened to me might have been months ago, but the body sometimes feels it was yesterday. And what happened recently can feel like a lifetime ago. That’s the strange, human, beautiful truth of time: it bends according to our experience.
In yoga, time is not an external force acting on us; it is something the mind strings together so we can make sense of change.
And when I look back at these past six months at this studio, this is what I see:
Time didn’t heal me.
I healed me.
Moment by moment.
Kṣaṇa by kṣaṇa.
Sutras and sangha and self-study guiding me through.
Being part of an in-person, spiritual community again has been one of the greatest gifts of my life this year - as I continue to walk away from the same samskaras, the same stories, the same karma repeating itself. As I continue to discover healthy relationships and boundaries. As I continue to develop my practice, and devote myself to my practice.
For all of this - I am so grateful.
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