Root Down to Rise Up: The Spiritual Strength in Embracing Difference

“You need to get down to get up.”

My teachers Sharon Gannon and David Life often said this phrase—equal parts earthy wisdom and spiritual instruction. I’m reminded of it now as I reflect on the dance of opposites that defines both yoga practice and life itself. In Yoga Sutra 2.33, Patanjali offers a deceptively simple instruction: Vitarka-bādhane pratipakṣa-bhāvanam—“When disturbed by negative thoughts, cultivate the opposite.”

This teaching is not a call to bypass discomfort, but rather an encouragement to broaden our perspective—to see the fullness of what is, to see the forest for the trees. In every tension lies a hidden harmony. In every contrast lies the potential for wholeness.

Earth First, Then Sky

Too often in yoga (and life), we try to float above our challenges. We reach for the peak pose, the higher vibration, the perfect outcome. But yoga reminds us: the elevation we seek must be grounded in something deep and real. The roots matter as much as the fruit. Our lower chakras must be balanced to provide a stable base for the upper chakras.

You may have heard a yoga teacher say, “Root down to rise up.” When we press into the earth—through our feet in mountain pose, our forearms in forearm stand, or our hands in handstand—we create the possibility for true uplift. This is not just biomechanics. It is a spiritual principle: stability creates freedom. When we are rooted in awareness, compassion, and humility, we rise—not only in posture, but in presence.

Polarity as a Portal

From breath to brainwaves, nature is a symphony of opposites: inhale and exhale, sun and moon, ida and pingala, expansion and contraction, joy and sorrow. To live fully is not to eliminate these polarities, but to dance with them. In the June Jivamukti Focus-of-the-Month essay, Huma Jalil writes of ecstasy and agony, beauty and brutality—and reminds us that difference is not disorder. It is the very fabric of life. 

Difference fuels creativity, stretches compassion, and calls forth evolution. Just as no two blackberries taste exactly alike, no two humans carry the same frequency. Yoga helps us hold the fullness of that truth. It teaches us to see others not as "other," but as a mirror—another face of the same infinite Self. As Sharon Gannon said: “When otherness dissolves, then there is Yoga.”

The Sacred Web of Interbeing

Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh spoke of this same truth with luminous clarity:

“Interbeing is the understanding that nothing exists separately from anything else. We are all interconnected. By taking care of another person, you take care of yourself. By taking care of yourself, you take care of the other person. Happiness and safety are not individual matters. If you suffer, I suffer. If you are not safe, I am not safe. The understanding of interbeing is very important. It helps us to remove the illusion of loneliness and transform the anger that comes from the feeling of separation.”

This is yoga—not merely a personal practice, but a planetary one. A remembering that we rise and fall together. Healing is not isolation. It is integration.

Composting the Rot

Sometimes what rises in practice or in life is not light, but shadow: pain, regret, confusion, anger. These are not signs that something is wrong. They are compost. Fertile ground. The invitation is not to escape, but to stay—and transmute. Through steady breath, through awareness and devotion, we can turn rot into nourishment. We can compost fear into courage. We can alchemize anger into clarity. This is radical work. And it begins not in the mind, but in the body. In our knees bent to the earth. In our hands pressing into the mat. In our breath—steady through the fire of transformation.

Reciprocity: A Sacred Relationship

The mat is a mirror. Our practice is a rehearsal for life. Just as we balance effort and surrender in asana, we must balance taking and giving in the world. The yogic path asks us to step into seva—sacred service—without martyrdom or ego. To receive from the world with reverence. To give back to the world with love. As Sharon Gannon teaches, if we want Yoga—wholeness—our relationships with others and with the Earth must be mutually beneficial. My guru, Neem Karoli Baba (Maharaji), instructed his devotees seeking enlightenment: “Love everyone, serve others, and remember God.”

Life itself is a pulse of becoming and unbecoming. River becomes ocean, becomes cloud, becomes rain, becomes tea in your mug. Nothing is separate. Everything inter-is. Thich Nhat Hanh expresses this teaching in a meditation on a single sheet of paper:

“If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper.

The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are.

‘Interbeing’ is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix ‘inter-’ with the verb ‘to be,’ we have a new verb, inter-be. The cloud and the sheet of paper inter-are.

If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. If the sunshine is not there, the forest cannot grow. In fact, nothing can grow. Even we cannot grow without sunshine.

And so, we know that the sunshine is also in this sheet of paper. The paper and the sunshine inter-are.

And if we continue to look, we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed into paper. And we see the wheat. We know the logger cannot exist without his daily bread, and therefore the wheat that became his bread is also in this sheet of paper. And the logger’s father and mother are in it too.

When we look in this way, we see that without all of these things, this sheet of paper cannot exist.

Looking even more deeply, we can see we are in it too. This is not difficult to see, because when we look at a sheet of paper, the sheet of paper is part of our perception. Your mind is in here and mine is also.

So we can say that everything is in here with this sheet of paper. You cannot point out one thing that is not here—time, space, the Earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat.

Everything co-exists with this sheet of paper. That is why I think the word inter-be should be in the dictionary. ‘To be’ is to inter-be. You cannot just be by yourself alone. You have to inter-be with every other thing.

This sheet of paper is, because everything else is.

Suppose we try to return one of the elements to its source. Suppose we return the sunshine to the sun. Do you think that this sheet of paper will be possible? No, without sunshine nothing can be.

And if we return the logger to his mother, then we have no sheet of paper either. The fact is that this sheet of paper is made up only of ‘non-paper elements.’ And if we return these non-paper elements to their sources, then there can be no paper at all.

Without ‘non-paper elements,’ like mind, logger, sunshine and so on, there will be no paper. As thin as this sheet of paper is, it contains everything in the universe in it.”

Toward Wholeness

What polarities are present in your life today? What would it mean to root down—into your breath, your body, your truth—before rising? Yoga doesn’t ask us to erase difference. It asks us to honor it—to recognize the essential unity dancing through all forms. It asks us to reach deep—into the soil of our own being, into the shared breath of humanity—and draw strength from the Source that has never been separate from us.

In Chapter 11 of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna grants Arjuna divine vision and reveals His Vishvarupa—the Universal Form. It is dazzling, infinite, and terrifying. It contains everything: gods and demons, creation and destruction, radiance and fire, birth and death. Arjuna sees the entire cosmos embodied in Krishna—the entire play of opposites, held together as one indivisible Truth.

This is the heart of yoga: To see clearly is not to see only the light. It is to see everything—and bow.

So when life feels polarized or painful, remember Patanjali’s gentle directive: Contemplate the opposite. Not to deny the darkness, but to remember the light that always coexists with it. Yoga doesn’t ask us to choose one side over the other. The light and the dark, the root and the reach—all of it belongs. Yoga teaches us how to hold both the light and the dark—and remain whole. Everything relies on everything else. To be is to inter-be. We are already whole, together.

With blessings and love,

 Sharada Devi