July 2026: SVĀHĀ
YS 2.1 तपःस्वाध्यायेश्वरप्रणिधानानि क्रियायोगः॥
tapaḥ-svādhyāya-īśhvara-praṇidhānāni kriyā-yogaḥ
You must be fueled by a burning desire to continuously study the Self, which is only available in the present moment, and to devote your self wholly to this effort—these are the actions to be taken to attain Yoga.
Follow Your Bliss
- Joseph Campbell
Take From Me All That Is Not Free
The phrase is a popular chant often dedicated to the Hindu goddess Kali, symbolizing the removal of ego, fear, and illusions. It entered modern spiritual culture largely through the chanting and teachings of spiritual teacher and musician Bhagavan Das.
This month’s Pushti is a revisit from June 2024’s Pushti. It is very apropos given that we are in the midst of Summer heat. So come sweat. May we utilize it. Let all your physical, mental, spiritual, and energetic impurities burn up in the fire of our great desire for true joy and bliss. May we be forever transformed by the fire!
Svāhā! is exclaimed when offerings are thrown into the fire, agni. It is a fire offering, ceremonially called Agnihotra. Svāhā is the female energy of fire, the wife of Agni. Our emphatic proclamation of svāhā, often at the end of chanting a mantra, it means ‘I release this into the exalted fire of transformation’. It changes the act of the “letting go” from a bitter and resentful ‘whatever’ - when things don’t go according to plan, to a blissful path to freedom. We dance on the grave of our attachments.
The idea of letting go resonates with us so deeply - we put it on t-shirts and hats, write songs about it, remind a friend to do it when they’re freakin’. Because the truth is that there is absolutely nothing one can hold on to. Yoga asks, ‘when it’s time for the inevitable transition out of this body, what can you take with you?’ Nothing. And there is little in our culture that prepares us for this reality. With great fanfare we battle, we hold on, we accumulate, we rage, we fear. And we perpetuate this ruse by making the only certainty we know of in this life - death, which is completely natural - the absolute worse thing that could ever happen. This insane and dysfunctional dynamic is perhaps the greatest source of suffering.
Sadhana (conscious spiritual practice), however, requires that we not only contemplate death, we practice it (shavasana). We become intimate with the reality of our own demise, thereby fully embracing the preciousness and abundance of our days embodied, as well as the mystery of death’s unknown arrival (who doesn’t love a good mystery?) When death is close, befriending the thing that terrifies us most, life is vibrant, unapologetic, courageous, and adventurous - Svāhā! Let’s dance!
Svāhā is a cathartic shift in perception. By making ‘svāhā’ part of common language, inserting it where blame, anger, and resentment used to be, we identify our attachments and the burn of disconnection from the reality of our Being. Knowing that this exalted letting go is an act of profound love—and that in surrender we gain everything—we boldly proclaim ‘Take from me all that is not free - Svāhā! Svāhā! Svāhā!’
In Yoga we dwell,
Jeffrey
July 2026