the be line

You know I love her. I've written about her here before and I was so excited that she agreed to be the first beU interview.

Julianne Brenza practiced corporate securities law before taking up the practice of yoga after adopting her third child 9 years ago. This was very fortunate for her students, like me. One of the many things I admire about Julianne is the depth of knowledge about both the anatomical and philosophical aspects of yoga she brings into class to help us evolve our practice and our lives.

Recently she introduced us to the Vedic concept of Gunas, and I was excited to have the opportunity outside of class to learn more about it.

BeU: Tell me about the Gunas.

JB: Guna is a quality.

BeU: Meaning a characteristic?

JB: Exactly. Interchangeable with the concept of characteristic or nature. If you can picture or feel this, it is something that can be reduced no further, it is irreducible. These states, the Gunas, are that which can go no further down. Ultimately, the Gunas are the 3 forms of that which cannot be reduced no further in nature and human nature. In all of matter.

The three Gunas are: Rajas, Tamas and Sattva. So when one describes these, which makes them adjectives, one would say Rajastic, Tamastic and Sattvic.

When something in nature is said to have a lot of Rajas, it has a lot of fire. It’s a masculine quality, high energy. There’s on open, anxious quality to it. It has the quality of change.

Tamas is stagnant. It’s dark, it’s very heavy, depressed. There’s lack of movement as opposed to change. It really is the opposite of Rajas. There’s a decaying quality to Tamas.

Now, the balance of the both, not the absence, which is really cool. The balance is Sattva. The balance of the two. Clarity, lucidity, balance. Sattva is clear energy.

BeU: Do each of these qualities have a spectrum from positive to negative? So when you describe Rajas as anxious, that would be the down side of Rajas energy?

JB: Absolutely. You would say the higher side of Rajas, the upper scale of Rajas.

Think about nature, the seasons. The leaves fall off the trees, they decay which is tamasic, but then the way they feed and nourish the earth is the sattva quality of that.

In a person, someone who is Rajasic is aggressive and can be frenetic. Sometimes to effectuate a goal, you need Rajasic energy. Other times, you need Tamasic energy, time to contemplate where you are and to get perspective. You can't just keep running and running. When you are able to slow down and dilute your Rajasic energy and give a boost to your Tamasic energy, it brings you into your Sattvic state. Everyone’s got a different state, obviously, with a different balance, but it’s all relative. Just as in nature, everyone has their own balance.

In Ayurvedic terms, there’s the personality types called constitutions: pitta, vata, kapha. Pitta is Rajasic - notoriously the leaders, the effectors. Kaphic is typically thought to be tamasic. Taken out of balance, an overly kaphic person can go into depression.

BeU: Right, when you first described Tamasic it sounded entirely negative. I guess a big part of this is acknowledging and appreciating value of the whole spectrum.

JB: Exactly. Too much fire in a room blows the room up. Too much tamas in a room makes it perish and that’s where, when one has a group, in a perfect world, you would hope to have a combination of all characteristics. It's all about balance.

BeU: Since I’m always trying to put things in a box to understand them more clearly, I’m wondering...is the theory that we are innately one or the other, tamas or rajas? Or in different situations or different parts of our lives we tend to default to one or the other?

JB: I guess one can argue they’re one in the same. At different phases of your life, external circumstances bring one state or another. How you react is what your innate characteristic is. There’s where you go when you are imbalanced. Very important point. When you become imbalanced, what happens? Rajasic energy or Tamasic energy? There are also external situations like the weather - is it really hot out? is the air rajasic? The weather changes, your body changes. You become one with your environment.

BeU: When you spoke about this in class you connected it to springtime.

JB: In the yogic cycle, in any cycle, but certainly in yogic, spring is awakening . You’re firing up your rajasic energy. Very often in classes the way to do it is through inversions. So you're taking tamasic energy from the winter (grounding, hoarding, hibernation) and you're turning it upside down in the spring. Very typically, yoga teachers and disciplines will get you on your head. Literally, shake up your energy, let it flow in a different direction. That’s the asana way of doing it. So you have your nature and that which is natural to the environment or season and you have to make that balance.

BeU: And be able to trust that as opposed to rigidly sticking to one way of being all the time.

JB: In our culture it's easy to run faster. For the sattva concept of self acceptance, adding tamas energy to create your own sattva is not inconsequential.

BeU: I love conversations like this that help me appreciate the full spectrum as opposed to wanting to label each part as good or bad, as I was doing initially - this is where you want to be, and this is where you don't want to be. The truth is in the middle. You want balance of the two and the ability to appreciate there is a reason for where you are and that you are working your way back to balance. It reminds me of when I was really into the Myers-Briggs work and thinking in terms of introvert and extrovert. This is another language for people to use to understand and accept themselves and others.

JB: Completely. Particularly as one moves through different stages of life, recognizing what is in your environment and who is in your environment is important. The foods in your environment, the lifestyle. How all of that has perhaps aggravated or overly enhanced your state such that there's an inability to create sattva.

BeU: Do you believe we could get to a point where we are intuitive about it? I get overwhelmed by trying to understand this at an academic level. I'd love to think that I was sensitive enough to get to my own sattva easily.

JB: Resoundingly, yes! It's self regulation. The coolest, most underestimated concept of development in your 40's. But that's another subject. A whole other blog I think! (Laughing) Are you giving yourself the space literally and figuratively to learn to self regulate and to learn what your calibration is? Hopefully the external environment triggers or inspires you to re-balance yourself which is really a beautiful thing.

BeU: It is.

Sometimes I can only identify I've been through a stage, for me it's usually tamasic, until after it's over. It's so helpful to be able to know - I'm in X stage now - and it will balance out. Again, it comes back to not letting myself get to the point where I'm experiencing something as really wrong in my life as opposed to a natural transition. Somehow finding a way to appreciate that. I don't know that your ever going to enjoy it, but to appreciate it for what it is and to anticipate something beneficial coming out on the other side.

JB: Something sattvic. I find there's a comfort in being able to reduce everything, there's a simplicity, it is the law of the universe, the law of nature. I believe people are trying to get to their own balance. Learning what you need to do to get to your own sattva is so exquisite, so wonderful and it's completely achievable, although over a lifetime.

BeU: Sattva itself is never static. So you're always coming in and out.

JB: And that is so cool. It's dynamic. Your sattva at any given moment could be way more rajasic energy than you may have innately. To stay up all night to nurse a sick child. That type of thing. You do it because you do it.

Now I have to go meet a school bus!

BeU: Thanks Julianne!