Yoga, Certainty, and Remaining Open to Truth

by Sally Gill, Managing Partner of The Yoga Effect, E-RYT 500, Yoga Educator

One of the greatest gifts yoga has given me isn’t flexibility or strength.

It’s the willingness to question what I think I know.

We live in a time that rewards certainty. Hot takes. Quick opinions. Choosing sides. But yoga asks something different of us. It asks us to observe before reacting, to listen before speaking, and to remain open to the possibility that our understanding is incomplete.

That doesn’t mean we don’t stand for what we believe in. It means we hold our beliefs more lightly than our ego wants us to. We learn to notice when we are tightening around an idea, a judgment, or a story, and instead of locking-in, we soften just enough to see what else might be true.

In asana practice, this shows up in small, almost invisible moments. The pause between breath and movement. The space between sensation and reaction. 

That practice also extends off the mat. In Yoga Sutra 2.33, Patanjali writes, 

vitarka-bādhane pratipakṣa-bhāvanam
When disturbed by negative or unskillful thoughts, cultivate their opposite. 

This can be interpreted in several ways, or as simply as controlling our thoughts. But if we notice our thoughts in response to outside influences, we buy ourselves time to pause before we act. We become less interested in being right and more interested in being honest. Less interested in winning conversations and more interested in understanding them. Less certain perhaps, but more awake.

Yoga doesn’t give us answers in the way we expect.

It gives us space.

And in that space, we begin to meet life not as something to conquer or control, but as something to keep discovering.