YOGA AND THE ART OF LETTING GO: LESSONS FROM MY FATHER'S RECENT PASSING

When people know they’re dying, they often become reflective. In those final moments, if fear doesn’t consume us, we get the chance to take one last long look at life. This was the case with my dad. Over the previous seven years, his lungs slowly filled with scar tissue, making it increasingly difficult to breathe.

During the last week of his life, I sat by my father's bedside, sharing profound philosophical conversations and observing how he dealt with his imminent death. He faced it with tremendous grace and acceptance.

As a yoga teacher, I often talk about how yoga can help us navigate life better. In my dad’s final days, I realized that yoga also has a lot to teach us about how to navigate death.

One morning, my dad asked, “What have you learned from yoga?” Before I answer, I’ll preface what I’m about to say: How we experience death depends on a number of things: circumstances, culture, religion, beliefs, past experiences, and more. Some see death as an ending, others as a beginning, a doorway to the beyond. For some, it’s a form of condemnation.  For others, redemption. For many, saying goodbye to a loved one causes deep suffering. Ultimately, how we interpret and find meaning in death is personal.

When I reflected on my dad’s question: What have I learned from yoga? I considered what would be helpful in his dying moments. A quote from Ram Dass kept running through my head: “Dying is completely safe. It’s like taking off a tight shoe.” Watching my dad struggle to breathe, I knew his death would indeed feel like taking off a tight shoe, ending his suffering.

I also thought about the yogic concept of the five Kleshas. Instagram might suggest that the purpose of yoga is to master a handstand, but yoga’s true aim is to bring us into a state of blissful absorption in the oneness of everything (samadhi). To reach this state of bliss, we must first address the problem of human suffering. According to yoga philosophy, the cause of suffering is rooted in the Kleshas: five mental obstacles that cloud our perception and understanding. The 5 Kleshas are Ignorance, Ego, Attachment, Aversion, and Fear of Death. They are universal and affect us all. If we don't address them during our lifetime, we will inevitably face them at the moment of death, whether our own or that of a loved one.

The 5 Kleshas
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1. Ignorance (Avidya)
Ignorance is a misunderstanding about the nature of reality and is considered the root cause of all suffering. It leads us to believe that the temporary aspects of ourselves are our true selves, confusing the impermanent (the body) with the permanent (love and consciousness). Under the influence of ignorance, we mistake what is visible for what is essential. In his book Light on Life, BKS Iyengar says, ‘Your whole world is upside down because you take the artifacts in your living room to be more real than the unity that connects us all.’ It’s a human tendency to focus on what is visible, rather than what is essential and unseen.  Ignorance causes us to perceive ourselves as separate from nature and from each other, but this is a trick of the eye.  It’s an illusion. Yoga reminds us that our true self is pure consciousness, which is eternal and beyond the physical body and mind. 

​2. Ego (Asmita)
When we forget our true self, we anchor our sense of self to the ego, our sense of "I-ness." The ego identifies with our positions and possessions in life and attaches itself to labels, roles, and identities (e.g., “I am successful”, “I am a parent”). It focuses on what makes us ‘different,’ ‘special,’ and at its worst, what makes us ‘more’ or ’less’ than someone else. This attachment to labels, roles, and identities, obscures our true nature and creates a sense of separation from others. By understanding and transcending the ego, we can move toward unity, compassion, and inner peace.

3. and 4. Attachment and Avoidance (Raaga and Dvesha)

Attachment and Avoidance are two sides of the same coin. Both are responses to our desires and preferences, driven by motivation to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Attachment is the tendency to cling to pleasurable experiences, objects, or people, while aversion is the tendency to push away unpleasant experiences. Attachment and avoidance can pull us into cycles of negative thinking and fear when what-ifs and worst-case scenarios plague our minds as we worry about how to avoid what we don’t want — sorrow, pain, and loss. 

By becoming aware of our attachments and aversions, we can see how they dominate our thoughts, emotions, and actions.  They cause us to resist life’s natural ebb and flow. Life ONLY guarantees us a mixed bag of experiences: births, deaths, love, breakups, financial wins, and losses.  The path to peace isn’t in clinging desperately to the sweet stuff in life.  It’s learning to greet the inevitable highs and lows with equanimity. We can’t stop pleasant experiences from ending any more than we can prevent unpleasant ones from starting. What we can stop is attempting to resist and control the natural flow of life.  When we accept life, we also accept change. 

5. Fear of Death (Abhinivesha)
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Clinging to life is the ultimate attachment, hard-wired into our DNA. Death forces us to confront all 5 Kleshas.  We fear death because we take the physical world to be more real than love and consciousness.  We fear death because we mistakenly attach our identity to our bodies and individuality instead of realizing our essential connectedness with the universe and with each other. We fear death because it means letting go of everyone and everything we’ve loved in life.  We fear death because it might not be pleasant. Yoga aims to end this suffering by connecting us with our true self.  We experience our true self in moments of awe, peace, and connection.  These moments remind us that the path to blissful one-ness with everything isn’t something we reach for outside ourselves. To achieve this state (samadhi), we must go in.  

Everything is Okay (Even When It’s Not)

Freeing ourselves from the Kleshas reveals that everything is, and always has been, perfectly okay, including death. Death is a natural part of life, reminding us of love, interconnection, and transformation
 
Savasana: Practicing Letting Go

One of the simplest and most profound practices for grappling with the Kleshas is savasana (corpse pose). In savasana, we lie on our backs, fully relaxed, and surrender. This practice represents the death of the ego. There is nothing to do, to get, or to achieve in Savasana.  By surrendering to stillness, savasana helps us let go of yearning and grasping for external sources of happiness. In his book Light on Life, B.K.S. Iyengar describes savasana as a process of shedding our thoughts, prejudices, preconceptions, and future projects, leading to a temporary loss of identity and a state of pure awareness.

At the time of death, we must ultimately release all identities, including our attachment to our bodies. Iyengar explains, "To lose identity is to find out who we are not." In finding out who we are not, we find out who we are. In savasana, we feel present and formless, experiencing an absence of specific identity. This relaxation allows us to transcend our everyday roles (parent, partner, worker) and realize their temporary nature.  At the time of death, we must release all identities, including our attachment and identification with our bodies. 

When we take off our social masks in savasana, neither the past nor the future taints the present.  Savasana represents being without “was” or “will be.” Present moment awareness, free from movement and time emerges.  The ultimate goal of yoga is to live outside of time, but inside its essence – always in the present.  Savasana is the key to this understanding.  It’s not just about relaxation.  Savasana places us on the edge of one of life’s greatest mysteries!

A Final Lesson

Just a few days before he passed, my dad and I had a rare morning alone. He felt reflective and wanted to talk philosophy. He told me he’d recently realized that time and distance were illusions. Though I didn’t fully understand how he arrived at his epiphany (something about seeing it in the way a paint roller left marks on a wall), I completely understood what he was trying to tell me on a deeper level: that when he left his body, it would look like there was time and distance between us, but that was an illusion. And he didn’t want me to be fooled by appearances.

And that was when he asked “What have you learned from yoga?”
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Our interconnectedness transcends the bounds of time and space. Love is always present, and we don’t have to see each other again for it to remain.

Sources: 

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
Light on Life by B.K.S. Iyengar
https://www.ramdass.org/death-dying/