I have always thought of raga and dvesha (attraction and aversion) as two forces that pull in opposite directions, creating a feeling of getting tossed around. At my first Somatic Experiencing training a month ago, the teacher talked about impulse and inhibition and how we are more or less constantly living in this place of having an impulse and then stopping ourselves from following it. This is not good or bad, but is a fact of life. Socially speaking, it serves a purpose for sure. How would things work if we followed all of our impulses without consideration of the consequences?
And it is interesting to look at that place where impulse and inhibition meet. As I started to look at this in myself and to practice my SE skills with some willing volunteers, I kept seeing this dynamic between impulse and inhibition arise. And it usually appeared as a feeling of being “stuck.” I feel like I am a person who has a lot of experience with “stuck,” but I was suddenly having a whole new understanding of what it is. I had always thought of stuck as a feeling of being constricted, either by something outside of me or inside of me, that it was a unidirectional. But what I think actually creates the feeling of stuck is that there is an impulse or desire to do something AND something stopping it, so there are actually two forces at work. I’m not sure why I always thought that being stuck was sort of passive—it seems clear to me now that I only feel stuck if I am wanting to do something and perceive that I can’t somehow. This feels like a really important discovery for me—maybe some of you other stuck people can let me know what you think.
So when I was thinking about how this relates to yoga concepts, I thought about raga and dvesha. These opposing forces might pull on a person, but maybe they can also push on a person. Or maybe both raga and dvesha manifest as impulses and our yogic ideas of how we should be are the inhibition. Well, I guess that’s it. Seems kind of anti-climactic.
