Blog #2 More Yoga Than Yoga

Jiu Jitsu is more yoga than yoga. This is something I say often, the reason why this is a deep truth for me is because there is a deep philosophy found in all yoga traditions known as Viragya. Viragya means dispassion. I always thought it was weird that to practice yoga you needed dispassion, I thought you would need the oposite of that, passion. My teacher explained to me that passion fades, so if you are relying on passion eventually you will get bored with your endeavor and eventually loose interest and stop. The concept of dispassion is a more long term commitment to your chosen craft. You will endure even when the novelty of your newly found path fades. You can find this concept in all of the various traditions of yoga. Yoga like martial arts has many styles. In each of these systems there is a weight placed on two specific words, Abyasa meaning prolonged uninterrupted practice and Viragya. Within Brazilian Jiu Jitsu you have so many practitioners in every school who train multiple times a week for decades at a time. Sometimes people go through periods where they train multiple times in one day. At each belt rank you receive it is a showing of both your abyasa and viragya. When you see a black belt what i see is a person who understands the depths of abyasa and viragya.