The Steady One: Sthita-prajña in the Bhagavad Gītā and Iyengar’s Alert Stillness
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Knowledge, Practice, and Healing
Knowledge, Practice, and Healing
Readers can approach the Bhagavad Gītā as a psychological text, a philosophical text, or a religious text. Richard H. Davis notes that the text has historically supported all three readings:
“The Gītā has been read as a work of philosophy, as a religious scripture, and as a psychological guide. Each of these readings finds support in the text itself.”
(Davis, The Bhagavad Gita: A Biography, p. 4)
Inside any single action, the text holds three strands together: karma, the action that must happen; jñāna, knowledge of what the action is and of the one who performs it; and bhakti, the orientation of the actor toward something larger than the personal result. The three appear at once, and each supports the others. Kṛṣṇa’s best-known verse already holds them in a single sentence:
“Your right is to the action alone, never to its fruits. Let not the fruits of action be your motive, nor let your attachment be to inaction.”
(Bhagavad Gītā 2.47)
The verse asks for action, for a clear knowledge of where one’s right begins and ends, and for a release of the result, which opens the way to offering.
The opening chapters already show this structure. Arjuna has to act (karma). He has to know the nature of the Self and of his own duty (jñāna). He has to offer the action while releasing its fruit (2.47), which plants the seed of bhakti. Later, Kṛṣṇa brings that seed to full flower: whatever one does, eats, offers, or gives, he asks that it be done as an offering to him (9.27). The rest of the text returns to the same three strands under changing conditions.
In chapter 4, Kṛṣṇa shows how closely knowledge and action belong together:
“He who sees inaction in action and action in inaction is wise among men; he is yoked and has performed all action.”
(Bhagavad Gītā 4.18)
Here seeing is itself a way of acting well. The wise person acts fully and sees clearly in the same moment, and knowledge and action stay joined.
A text speaks differently when we read it with its commentators, its language, and its living tradition.
B.K.S. Iyengar says the same thing in his own words. Near the end of Light on Life he writes, “Yoga talks of karma (action), jnana (knowledge), and bhakti (devotion). These are three intertwined limbs of yoga” (p. 221). The word “intertwined” carries the point. In a story from chapter 6, he lists the qualities of a person who works through a hard season: “patience and perseverance (tapas), physical prowess (sakti), study (svadhyaya), intellectual skills (yukti), and devotion (bhakti)” (p. 212).
In Aṣṭadaḷa Yogamālā, Iyengar places this weave inside the physical practice itself:
“The practice of āsana, without the ethical background of yama and niyama, is merely physical. The five gross and five subtle elements of the body have to be purified and sanctified by āsana by incorporating yama and niyama in them.”
(Iyengar, Aṣṭadaḷa Yogamālā, vol. 2, p. 203)
For Iyengar, the ethical and devotional strands already live inside the physical action. Āsana purifies and sanctifies the elements of the body when the whole person enters it.
The strands appear inside the posture as well, and this reading is mine. The posture is an action. It asks for knowledge of alignment and of the body’s present condition, and Iyengar wants that intelligence “everywhere in your body and throughout the asana” (p. 29). It also asks for a quality of attention that goes beyond calculation. In the same passage Iyengar writes, “The brain may instruct the body to do a posture, but the heart has to feel it too” (p. 29). Action, knowledge, and a heart that feels belong to one posture. When one strand drops out, the posture stays incomplete. When all three arrive together, the action itself supports steadiness.
I feel this most clearly in forward bends. A forward bend gives me something to do: to extend, to lengthen, to work. It also brings a great deal of knowledge, of the spine, the breath, the back body, and the edge of what is possible today. At the same time, I feel that I am offering: surrendering, letting go. Yet the three strands can meet in any posture. What brings them together on a given day is my own disposition as I come to the mat.
The Gītā gives this steadiness a name. In chapter 2, Kṛṣṇa calls evenness of mind yoga, samatvaṁ yoga ucyate (2.48), and a few verses later he calls yoga skill in action, yogaḥ karmasu kauśalam (2.50). Evenness and skill, the heart’s feeling and the intelligence of alignment, meet in the posture.
A class can emphasize one strand and lose the others. A class that stresses effort drifts toward performance, a class that stresses study drifts toward talk, and a class that stresses feeling drifts toward mood. The Bhagavad Gītā keeps the three joined, and a teacher can use the same discipline when sequencing a practice.
For me, teaching a class feels like navigating a ship through changing waters. Sometimes the water is shallow, and we risk getting stuck. Sometimes there are dangers in the water, and I steer the ship away from them. Sometimes high waves rise, and we meet them together. The energy of a class moves in the same way. I watch what is happening and what may happen next, and I navigate with the sequence, with my wording, and with the adaptations of each posture. The Gītā uses the same image: when the mind follows the wandering senses, it carries away wisdom as the wind carries a ship on the water (2.67). The teacher’s task is to keep a hand on the helm, so that action, knowledge, and feeling travel together.
Iyengar used to distinguish yoga from religion, and he said that he practiced it religiously. I feel the same. The practice is sacred, even as it remains an everyday activity. I know it intimately, and it connects me to the divine. On the mat, I bring everything I have: my willpower, my discipline, my wishes, my logic. And there comes a point where all of these reach their limit, and the practice asks for faith, a trust in something beyond what I can touch. For me, that trust is bhakti. It completes the other two strands, and it lets action and knowledge become an offering.
In your practice, which strand comes most naturally to you: effort, understanding, or feeling? Which one do you tend to lose?
What changes in a posture when you practice it as an offering, rather than as an achievement?
As a teacher, how do you know when a class has drifted toward one strand?
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Bhagavad Gītā live course begins April 2027 → The first essay in this series ended with Arjuna collapsed on his chariot seat, and with
Bhagavad Gītā live course begins April 2027 → The Bhagavad Gītā opens with action. The Yoga Sūtras open with a definition: yogaś citta-vṛtti-nirodhaḥ, “yoga
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Agi Wittich is a yoga practitioner since two decades, and is a certified Iyengar Yoga teacher. Wittich studied Sanskrit and Tamil at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, completing a PhD with a focus on Hinduism, Yoga, and Gender. She has published academic papers exploring topics such as Iyengar yoga and women, the effects of Western media on the image of yoga, and an analysis of the Thirumanthiram yoga text.