Poems from the Yoga Sūtras: Wisdom in Verse
About the Creator
Leslie is a life coach, CBT and NLP practitioner, hypnotherapist and yoga teacher who blends psychology, practical spirituality and meditation to help people understand their patterns, create meaningful change and live with greater clarity.
Journey Description
Poems from the Yoga Sūtras: Wisdom in Verse is a contemplative journey through the teachings of Patañjali, expressed not as explanation, but as poetry.
Each track takes the essence of a Yoga Sūtra and translates it into a reflective, lyrical experience. Rather than analysing the teaching intellectually, these poems invite you to feel it, sit with it, and allow its meaning to unfold inwardly.
The poems explore some of the central themes of the Yoga Sūtras, including awareness, stillness, practice, identity, attachment, resistance, clarity, discipline, inner freedom and the nature of the mind.
Each poem stands on its own, but together they form a gentle progression through the deeper wisdom of the text.
This Journey is for anyone who is drawn to contemplative poetry, yoga philosophy, meditation, self-inquiry or spiritual reflection.
You do not need any prior knowledge of the Yoga Sūtras. The poems are designed to be accessible even if you are encountering these teachings for the first time.
It is also ideal for those who already study yoga philosophy and want to experience the teachings in a more intuitive, emotional and reflective way.
Listen slowly and reflectively, you may begin to:
connect more deeply with the meaning of the Yoga Sūtras experience the teachings
Journey Tracks
The Seer Remains | A Poem on Yoga Sūtra 1.3
Tadā draṣṭuḥ svarūpe 'vasthānam
“Then the Seer rests in its own true nature.”
When the movements of the mind become quiet, something deeper is revealed.
Not something newly created.
Not something we have to become.
But the awareness that has been present all along.
Thoughts change. Emotions change. Roles change. Circumstances change.
Yet there is something within us that notices all of it.
This poem is an invitation to turn gently toward that quiet witnessing presence.
To notice the difference between what changes and that which is aware of the change.
For these few moments, there is nothing to achieve.
Simply rest as the one who sees.
Reflection:
Who are you when you are not defining yourself by your thoughts, emotions, roles, or experiences?
Begin Now | A Poem on Yoga Sūtra 1.1
Yoga Sūtra 1.1 — Atha Yogānuśāsanam
“Now, the teaching of yoga begins.”
This poem is a reflection on the word “Now” — the quiet threshold with which Patañjali opens the Yoga Sūtras.
As you listen, there is nothing you need to analyse or understand.
Simply allow the words to meet you where you are.
Notice what happens when you stop waiting for the perfect moment, the perfect conditions, or a different version of yourself.
Perhaps the invitation of this Sūtra is very simple:
Begin here.
Begin as you are.
Begin now.
Reflection:
What in your life might be asking you to begin — not someday, but now?
Lost in the Waves | A Poem on Yoga Sūtra 1.4
Vṛtti-sārūpyam itaratra
“At other times, we identify with the movements of the mind.”
A thought arises, and suddenly it feels like truth.
An emotion appears, and for a moment it becomes who we are.
“I am afraid.”
“I am angry.”
“I am not enough.”
The mind moves, and without realizing it, we move with it.
Yoga Sūtra 1.4 points toward one of the most familiar human experiences: forgetting the awareness beneath the thought and becoming absorbed in the thought itself.
This poem is not asking you to stop thinking or feeling.
It is simply an invitation to notice when you have become lost in the waves.
And perhaps to remember that you are also the one watching them rise and fall.
Reflection:
Which thoughts or emotions do you most easily mistake for who you are?
Beneath the Waves | A Poem on Yoga Sūtra 1.2
Yoga Sūtra 1.2
Yogaś citta-vṛtti-nirodhaḥ
“Yoga is the stilling of the movements of the mind.”
The mind is rarely completely still.
Thoughts rise. Memories return. Plans form. Emotions move through us. One moment flows into another, like waves moving across the surface of a lake.
This poem is an invitation to notice something deeper.
Beneath all the movement, there is stillness.
You do not have to force the mind to become silent. You do not have to fight every thought or push away every feeling.
For these few moments, simply listen.
Let the waves be waves.
And see if you can sense the quiet presence underneath them.
Reflection:
What becomes possible when you stop trying to control every movement of the mind and simply rest beneath the waves?
The Shapes of Mind | A Poem on Yoga Sūtra 1.6
Pramāṇa-viparyaya-vikalpa-nidrā-smṛtayaḥ
“The five movements are correct knowledge, misperception, imagination, sleep, and memory.”
The mind does not experience life in only one way.
Sometimes it sees clearly.
Sometimes it misunderstands.
Sometimes it creates possibilities that have never happened.
Sometimes it rests in sleep.
Sometimes it reaches backward into memory.
These are not failures of the mind.
They are simply some of the shapes the mind can take.
This poem is an invitation to become curious about those changing shapes.
To observe the mind without immediately believing, resisting, or correcting everything that appears.
Because awareness begins when we can say:
“This is what the mind is doing right now.”
Reflection:
Which of these five movements do you notice most often shaping your experience?
What Is True | A Poem on Yoga Sūtra 1.7
Pratyakṣānumānāgamāḥ pramāṇāni
“Correct knowledge comes through direct perception, inference, and reliable testimony.”
How do we know what we know?
Sometimes we see something directly.
Sometimes we understand through reason.
And sometimes we trust the insight or testimony of someone whose knowledge is reliable.
Yet the mind can easily confuse assumption with fact.
Fear with certainty.
Habit with truth.
This sūtra invites a quieter kind of inquiry.
Before believing every conclusion the mind produces, we can ask:
What have I actually observed?
What am I inferring?
And what have I accepted from others?
This poem is an invitation to approach truth with both openness and discernment.
Reflection:
How often do you pause to distinguish between what you know, what you assume, and what you have simply been told?
The Mistaken Shape | A Poem on Yoga Sūtra 1.8
Viparyayo mithyā-jñānam atad-rūpa-pratiṣṭham
“Misperception is false knowledge based on seeing something as other than what it is.”
We do not always see life exactly as it is.
We see through memory.
Through fear.
Through expectation.
Through old wounds and old stories.
And sometimes what we believe we are seeing says more about the lens than about the thing itself.
This sūtra invites us to become curious about misperception.
Not with self-criticism, but with humility.
Perhaps the person is not rejecting us.
Perhaps the situation is not as dangerous as it feels.
Perhaps the story we have repeated for years is not the whole truth.
This poem is an invitation to loosen certainty and look again.
Reflection:
Where in your life might you be seeing through an old story rather than seeing what is actually here?
A World Made of Words | A Poem on Yoga Sūtra 1.9
Śabda-jñānānupātī vastu-śūnyo vikalpaḥ
“Imagination arises from words or concepts without a corresponding reality.”
A few words can create an entire world inside the mind.
“What if?”
“They probably think…”
“This always happens.”
“What if everything goes wrong?”
Nothing has happened yet.
And still the body responds.
The heart races.
The mind prepares.
We begin living inside a reality built from words.
Patañjali calls attention to this remarkable power of imagination.
It can create fear, but it can also create possibility.
This poem invites you to notice the stories being built from language inside your mind.
And to remember that a thought can be vivid without being true.
Reflection:
What story has your mind been repeating lately that may exist more strongly in thought than in reality?
The Quiet of Sleep | A Poem on Yoga Sūtra 1.10
Abhāva-pratyayālambanā vṛttir nidrā
“Sleep is a mental movement based on the experience of absence.”
Even sleep leaves a trace.
We wake and say:
“I slept deeply.”
“I barely slept.”
“I remember nothing.”
Patañjali includes sleep among the movements of mind because even the seeming absence of waking experience becomes part of our experience.
There is a quiet mystery here.
The mind can know activity.
And it can know absence.
This poem is an invitation to explore the spaciousness we sometimes touch when the usual stream of thoughts disappears.
Not unconsciousness, but the suggestion of a deeper quiet beneath constant mental activity.
Reflection:
What do you notice when you allow yourself to rest without needing to fill every quiet space?
What the Mind Keeps | A Poem on Yoga Sūtra 1.11
Anubhūta-viṣayāsampramoṣaḥ smṛtiḥ
“Memory is the retention of what has been experienced.”
The past does not remain only in the past.
A scent can bring back a childhood room.
A song can return us to a moment we thought we had forgotten.
A single word can awaken an old emotion.
Memory carries our experiences forward.
It helps us learn, remember, love, and recognize.
But memory can also color the present.
Sometimes we meet today through what happened yesterday.
This poem is an invitation to notice what the mind keeps.
And to gently ask whether every memory still needs to shape the way you experience this moment.
Reflection:
What memory or past experience still influences the way you see the present?
Practice and Release | A Poem on Yoga Sūtra 1.12
Abhyāsa-vairāgyābhyāṁ tan-nirodhaḥ
“The movements of the mind are stilled through practice and non-attachment.”
Patañjali now offers two foundations for the path.
Practice.
And release.
Practice is the willingness to return.
Again and again.
To awareness.
To steadiness.
To what matters.
Non-attachment is the willingness to loosen our grip.
To stop demanding that every thought, feeling, outcome, or experience remain exactly as we want it.
One teaches us to stay.
The other teaches us to let go.
Together they create a different relationship with the mind.
This poem is an invitation to hold both movements at once:
the courage to keep returning,
and the wisdom to release what cannot be held.
Reflection:
Where in your life are you being invited to keep practicing, and where are you being invited to let go?
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