04/17/2026
The first time I encountered Sankhya philosophy was in the text Ayurveda: The Science of Self Healing by Vasant Lad. Here, there is an illustration titled "From Consciousness to Form" — a map of how what is formless becomes form, how the most subtle aspects of reality manifest in the world as what we can hear, touch, see, taste, and smell.
Since then I have come across this model many times in books and workshops and it has become a framework for understanding so many aspects of life from the most mundane to the most sublime.
For example, why do we so enjoy the smell of earth after a bountiful rain? Sankhya explains it.
Or how do new scientific insights arise simultaneously in the minds of individuals who have never met? Sankhya offers a framework for understanding how this happens.
Or in what ways can planetary energies present in a birth chart express themselves through us, as us? Sankhya provides an elegantly simple explanation.
Sankhya is the philosophy Krishna teaches Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita and he calls it yoga. Sankhya yoga comes before karma yoga, before bhakti yoga. It is the foundation needed to understand who we are, why we're here, and what's going on.
If this piques your interest, I hope you will join me for Awaken: A Weekend Yoga Immersion — a weekend to learn, discuss, and explore the richness of yoga as taught in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and the Bhagavad Gita. For anyone who loves their practice but has never encountered the framework in which it developed, this weekend will offer tools that deepen and enrich it for years to come.
Questions? I'd love to hear from you!
