Currently, I’m staring down a huge transition. As many of you know, this June I’ll be leaving Prague, my primary home for the past 12 years, and moving back to Portugal (where I spent a few years before the pandemic). It’s a return to a place that has been part of my life for a while, but only recently has started to feel like a place where I might be able to build something.
And as I’ve struggled to articulate how I’m feeling about the move, I’ve observed that I’m flipping between two very human tendencies: wanting to hold on, and wanting to push away.
In yoga philosophy, these are known as rāga (attachment) and dveṣa (aversion). They’re two of the five kleshas, or afflictions, outlined in Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtras (2.3)—the patterns of mind that create friction, restlessness, and ultimately, suffering.
The kleshas are:
- Avidyā (ignorance or misperception)
- Asmitā (ego, the sense of “I”)
- Rāga (attachment)
- Dveṣa (aversion)
- Abhiniveśa (fear of loss, often framed as fear of death)
While all five are deeply intertwined, this month I want to spend a little extra time on the middle pair that I’m experiencing so clearly at the moment: rāga and dveṣa.
The grip of attachment (Rāga)
Rāga is usually described as attachment to pleasure. It’s the pull toward what feels good, familiar, comforting, a tendency that isn’t inherently problematic at first glance. Of course, we prefer ease over difficulty, warmth over cold, connection over loneliness.
But rāga becomes sticky when that preference turns into dependence. When we believe we need things to be a certain way to feel okay.
It can show up in obvious ways, becoming fixated on attaining a particular outcome, holding tightly to relationships, chasing a version of ourselves we’d like to maintain or realize. But it can also be the small irritation when something doesn’t go as planned, or the disappointment that creeps up when an experience feels different from what was expected.
Stephen Cope, Kripalu Yoga teacher, puts it beautifully:
“I understood that the attachment to myself and my image… was actually taking me away from myself, away from this wonderful opportunity just to sit, just breathe, just feel the warm animal of my body.”
That line has been coming up for me lately.
Because in preparing to leave Prague, I can feel both the tenderness of what I love here, including my incredible friends and wildly inspiring yoga community, and the attachment to how things have been. The routines, the familiar faces, the version of life that feels known. There’s beauty in that. But there’s also a part of me that suspects my growth might lie elsewhere.
The reflex of aversion (Dveṣa)
If rāga is the pull toward what we like, dveṣa is the push away from what we don’t.
It’s the instinct to avoid discomfort, uncertainty, awkwardness, or pain. It shows up as resistance, judgment, impatience, and sometimes fear.
And just like attachment, it’s completely human. We’re wired to seek safety and avoid threats. But in doing so, we often close ourselves off from experiences that could expand us.
There are lines from the Bhagavad Gītā that speak to this:
If a man keeps dwelling on sense-objects,
attachment to them arises
from attachment, desire flares up:
from desire, anger is born
[2.62]
Cravings and aversions arise
when the senses encounter sense-objects.
Do not fall prey to these two
brigands blocking your path.
[3.34]
“Brigand,” meaning a plunderer or outlaw, sounds dramatic. Still, it’s also accurate because both rāga and dveṣa can hijack our experience by narrowing our perception and making us reactive rather than responsive. These hindrances block the path to inner peace and liberation, trapping the mind in automatic, emotional responses.
This is essentially the resistance to uncertainty that we have all experienced, the discomfort of change, and every time we have said to ourselves, “I don’t want this to be so hard.”
Yoga doesn’t ask us to eliminate these responses. It asks us to notice them.
Bringing this into practice
This month, our classes will become a space to explore these patterns by feeling them in real time.
We’ll begin, as always, with the intention of sharpening and cultivating our awareness.
At the start of class, as we settle in, you might notice:
Are you eager to move?
Or already wanting to stay exactly where you are?
Even here, rāga and dveṣa are present, the pull toward, the push away.
As we move, we’ll play with doing things slightly differently to gently disrupt habit. This could include holding a pose a little longer than expected, taking a variation that feels unfamiliar, or
pausing when the body expects to continue.
And in those moments, the mind often speaks up:
“I don’t like this.”
“I wish we were doing something else.”
“This is my good side—I prefer this version.”
That’s the practice: giving ourselves the time and space to actually notice our thoughts and what lies behind them.
Hips, habits, and holding on
There will likely be a strong focus on hip-opening postures this month, as they tend to bring up sensation, resistance, and sometimes restlessness.
In longer-held shapes, especially, you might feel the urge to escape or the desire to deepen before the body is ready. Both are expressions of rāga and dveṣa.
Can you stay, without gripping?
Can you soften, without collapsing?
In addition, balancing postures have much to teach us about the impossibility of certainty. In shapes like Ardha Chandrāsana (Half Moon), Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana (Extended Hand-to-Big-Toe Pose), Natarajasana (Dancer’s Pose), and all balancing inversions, the practice of detaching from outcomes becomes even clearer. These shapes require a lot of focus, yes, but they also demand adaptability and a willingness to wobble.
If we’re attached to “getting it right,” frustration arises quickly, and if we’re averse to falling out or not “succeeding,” we might stop trying altogether.
The pauses matter
We’ll also pay attention to the spaces in between. Moments of stillness and transitions are often the places where attachment and aversion become most visible.
When nothing is happening, where does the mind go? What does it reach for? What does it resist?
These are small questions, but they point toward something much bigger: How much of our experience is shaped not by what’s happening, but by how we relate to it?
A different kind of rest
Toward the end of class, I may occasionally change the structure of savasana. Maybe there’s no music. It may be longer or approached differently.
If something feels different from what was expected, what arises? Resistance? Relief? Indifference?
Can you find your way back to rest, even when the conditions aren’t exactly as you’d prefer?
Off the mat
Outside the studio, this practice becomes even more relevant. And these will all be big themes in my own life over the coming weeks.
Rāga might show up as:
- Holding onto how things used to be
- Wanting certainty about what’s next
- Clinging to comfort, routine, or identity
Dveṣa might look like:
- Avoiding difficult conversations
- Resisting the lessons change offers
- Rejecting discomfort too quickly
The invitation isn’t to remove these tendencies; together, we can shift how we relate to them.
To pause and ask:
Is this attachment really creating ease, or is it closing me off to the full experience of consciousness?
Is this aversion protecting me, or limiting me?
An intention for May
If there’s a thread running through this month, it might be this:
Question attachment. Soften aversion. Stay curious.
Transitions have a way of revealing what we hold onto and what we push away.
For me, this move is bringing both into sharp focus. There’s love here in Prague. There’s uncertainty ahead. There’s a great deal of excitement, but also hesitation as I attempt to grapple with all the unknowns. I keep saying, “I’m sure the things I’m worried about now are not going to end up being the biggest problems. I probably haven’t even thought of those yet.”
But maybe that’s the wrong framing. Maybe what’s important to remember is that no matter what does or doesn’t happen, I have my practice. I can sit, breathe, and feel whatever’s there, without needing to solve or fix anything.
That’s what I hope to share with you this month. Not a perfect way of moving through change, but a more aware one.
breathingspace.yoga 
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