“Let it be known that the mindful separation [viyoga] from union with what causes suffering is yoga.”

—Bhagavad Gita, 6.23

By Acharya Shunya

The word yoga means “union.” It aims to connect us with something higher, more expanded, that is Source, or God. We are fascinated with the concept of union. Every religion promotes union in marriage, and we all dream of that perfect union. But before you can have union in your relationships (that is yoga), it is important to learn about viyoga—an emotional, although not physical, detachment within relationships.

The concept of viyoga is less well known than yoga. Viyoga means to consciously detach from things we relate to so we can first be in yoga with our own Self. Instead of an instant desire for yoga in relationships, we should have the goal of viyoga: intelligent inner discernment and detachment, to connect with what is true within us.

Viyoga Defined

Viyoga means you consciously step back to first have a meaningful relationship with your own Self. Who am I? What are my values? What are my goals? What is negotiable, and what are the nonnegotiable issues in my life?

With viyoga then, any necessary actions you take in the future will proceed from a relatively neutral, less attached, more clarified space. Then you can know your gifts, visions, needs, and priorities and relate with your spiritual wholeness. Then you can know your true power. All too often people have given their power away in the chase, seduction, or manipulation of a relationship embarked upon without prior self-reflection.

While heading toward yoga, a beautiful union, you must first actively practice viyoga. You can initiate viyoga in all your current relationships. Do you have clingy and needy friends? Parents who still undermine your decision-making capability? Or a spouse who doesn’t give you attention? All these relationships need viyoga, not yoga. It’s also important to examine your positive relationships. Somewhere, you must be acting from viyoga. That is why those relationships thrive. The moment either of you turns needy or desperate, the relationship won’t remain so positive.

You need to know where your value, wholeness, joy, and power lie—with another or within you. Without that contemplation, sorrow-engendering patterns simply repeat. You need viyoga for ultimate emotional health. You will not need the other person to approve, endorse, or confirm your reality. You’ll be in your joy because you will recognize that your truth, power, and wholeness were never dependent on that person.

From this perspective, then, you will be able to influence a change in the relationship, leave it, or attract another. I love my husband of two-plus decades. I am grateful to have him in my life (he makes me laugh, feel comfortable, and cared for). But thanks to Vedic-Indian knowledge and wisdom, I embody my wholeness and my own light; I do not outsource it to him. I practice viyoga for a beautiful state of union (yoga) with him.

The only way we can really be whole with another is by walking the path, not just talking the talk. I obsess less over what my husband is doing or thinking and focus on myself. Everyone is a free operator. Everyone is Self, ultimately responsible for their own states of mind and degree of emotional sovereignty or bondage.

My wholeness, power, and joy are, indeed, mine alone to acknowledge. They are not coming to me from my external relationships, which at best give me occasional pleasure, strokes, or recognition, and many times displeasure. But there must be a specific reason for me to choose my husband as my life partner. Whatever he’s doing or not doing may be a gift for me, or a way to see through my own mind and the degree of consciousness or unconsciousness I am embodying. Once I realized this, I stopped my experiments with unexamined yoga in relationships (union at any cost) and instead started exploring my own truth and designing my own spiritual lifestyle and goals with mindful yoga.

Now, we have weekends when I’m meditating and he’s experimenting with cooking a new recipe (he is an Ayurveda chef). The kitchen does not call me much, and meditation is not his thing. Some days, I walk into our backyard, and he is cheerfully tending to the plants, vegetables, and Ayurvedic herbs we both grow with so much love. Then I join him, and we have fun together, tending to our plant babies. It feels no less meditative, that time spent together in our vegetable and herb garden together (our moment of yoga)!

In our relationship, there were some things that were non-negotiable. Some things were entirely negotiable. And I know the difference now, thanks to exercising viyoga before striking yoga.

Somehow, I’ve noticed that the brighter your light, the more convinced you become of your own Self, its gifts, power, wholeness, and joy. You learn that by saying nothing, simply being who you are, and living your truth, you positively influence the world.

My Personal Journey with Viyoga in Parenting

Questions I constantly faced as a parent while raising my son were, Should I relate with him as someone stuck inside a body made of matter of a certain age and bound by a mind of certain beliefs (ripe and unripe)? Or shall I continue trusting his inner-most nature, which is unbounded and free to express itself ?

When I regarded him as body alone, as a body I own, possess, and claim as my child, I became bound mentally to his body in dense emotional attachment. Clouds seemed to cover my inner sun of clarity. I was fearful and agitated at the same time, wanting to protect and enjoy what I own . . . forever, yet deeply knowing that all control is mere self-delusion. As I clip his wings, I sabotage my own sovereign flight in a free sky, psychologically speaking.

Control and love can never coexist. They never have. They never will.

The mental vines that bound me to him were thick with the glue of attachment, and the control, compulsions, scripted roles, and self-defeating expectations arose from unexamined attachments in the mind. I suffered as a result and made him suffer, pulling at his strings, making him an object to please my delusory “mom” consciousness parading as love, care, and concern (while really being control, panic, and sheer ignorance).

But when I see him as the unbounded one, the Self, I give myself the gift of inner freedom to relate to my son in all new ways. The clouds seem to float away spontaneously, and my inner sun of happiness, poise, and freedom begins to shine again (or rather, it shone all along, it’s just that clouds of self-ignorance had seemingly covered it).

Then, in the right light of my own mind, I see that we are not just another worldly mom and son defined and divided by conventional power struggles. We are no less than untethered spirits, mutually coexisting, supporting, understanding, and celebrating both of our flights in pure potential.

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This article was excerpted from the book Sovereign Self: Reclaim Your Inner Freedom and Joy with the Empowering Wisdom of the Vedas, Upansihads and Bhagavad Gita, pp 106-109, adapted by Well Being Journal, copyright © 2020 by Acharya Shunya, and is used with permission from the author and the publisher, Sounds True, Inc.

Acharya Shunya is an internationally renowned spiritual teacher of yogic nondual wisdom from India; bestselling author of the books, Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom and Sovereign Self and founder of Awakened Self Foundation with its international headquarters in San Francisco, California: www.AwakenedSelf.com