Stop Adding to Your Suffering: A Yogic Alternative to “Feeling Better”

A Different Question

Looking around at the state of the world these days, it’s not hard to find suffering.  We see the hurting in our communities: the unhoused, the addiction, the failure of systems and loss of rights.

And then, some of the suffering we witness affects us on a more personal level. We each carry our own heartbreaks and losses, our own personal struggles with relationships, work, money, mental health, aging parents, and growing children.

You’re likely well acquainted with these types of suffering, but what might be less obvious is how you’re actively contributing to your own suffering.

Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra 2.16 says:

हेयं दुःखमनागतम्

heyaṃ duḥkham-anāgatam

Pain that is yet to come may be avoided.

At first glance, this feels almost… disappointing. I get it, we all want to feel our best and modern wellness culture is obsessed with feeling better... “Regulate your nervous system. Reframe the thought. Take a supplement. Do the practice. Subdue xyz feeling.”

The wellness industry is screaming for you to fix every aspect of yourself as though every little piece is wrong, broken, or incomplete. Spoiler alert: you are not broken, and you don’t need fixing. You need something quieter (and far more radical) than another quick fix.

This sutra suggests the work here isn’t about repairing the pain after it happens but removing the conditions that reliably create it in the first place. Think of it this way…

Rapids in a river aren’t caused by what's on the surface of the water. They're created by water flowing over rocks. The rapids are caused by what's below the surface.  If the rocks were removed, the rapids would disappear.

In your life, “stilling the water” isn’t a surface-level problem either. The work here is in the undercurrent of what’s causing the turbulence on the surface of your life.

Why “Feeling Better” Isn’t Always the Practice

So much of self-help assumes suffering is inevitable and must be managed, if it’s not avoidable altogether. If something hurts, the solution must be to soothe it, process it, or transcend it.

But yoga (especially when practiced beyond asana) often asks a different kind of question:

What if the suffering isn’t something that needs healing on the surface… what if, instead, it was a signal to look below the surface for the origins of the pattern? This is the work of Svadshyaya, or Self-study.

Personal inquiry isn’t about blame, it’s about discernment. It’s not about bypassing your suffering, but looking within for new ways of understanding (and by extension, respecting) the Self.

Discernment + Wanting What Isn’t Available

Here’s a real example from my own life on the suffering I create for myself by repeatedly engaging in a pattern of behaviour that I know results in… sadness, disappointment, resentment, and ultimately my own emotional turmoil and suffering.

My dad and I have a strained relationship. There’s history there—complex, human, unresolved. But, I still want what most people want from a parent: warmth, affection, acknowledgment. That desire isn’t naïve or wrong. It’s deeply human.

But desire alone doesn’t determine reality.

Pattern Recognition as Wisdom

Over the years, experience has made something clear: when I share vulnerable or exciting news with my dad, I’m usually not supported in ways that feel good or worse, I’m dismissed.

Recently, I did it again. I shared something meaningful to me with my Dad. I subtly held my breath, thinking maybe things would be different this time and I’d hear what I hoped to hear about my accomplishment. But, his response landed exactly as I could have predicted… as I knew it would: flat, minimizing, disconnected.

Nothing shocking happened. Nothing new happened. What happened was familiar, predictable. The pattern continues as it always has in our father-daughter history.

Me and my Dad circa 2004

The Moment of Choice

The practice lives in pattern recognition, in observation without judgement, in growing awareness of the Self. The suffering I felt from reading the response wasn’t created by the response itself (turbulence on the surface) but from repeating an action that reliably leads to the same painful outcome (the rocks under the surface).

Reaching out with vulnerability to someone who has consistently shown they cannot meet it is not hope; it's a habit. And habits can be changed with discernment.

Stop the Cycle

Remove the Trigger Instead of Managing the Fallout

It would be easy to blame my dad for all the pain, but it wouldn’t stop the pattern from repeating. Stopping this cycle of pain and suffering demands I make a subtle but powerful shift in my behaviour: Don’t reach out with news, and there’s no dismissal.

When there’s no dismissal, there’s no emotional whiplash. When there’s no whiplash, there’s nothing to regulate, reframe, or recover from. The nervous system never gets activated in the first place. The cycle is broken.

Breaking these cycles isn’t about withholding or avoiding. It’s about self-respect, self-care, and upholding the boundaries that keep you safe.

Knowing who to trust with your tender heart isn't avoidance. It's wisdom, and it protects your peace.

Choosing Receptive Ground

Here’s the important contrast.

When I share my news with people who have historically been supportive, affectionate, and engaged, it feels good. The same impulse (connection) placed in a different environment produces a completely different outcome.

The shift isn’t to "stop sharing joy."

The shift is to share it where it can actually land.

This Is Not A Bypass

Let’s be clear about what this practice is not.

It’s not punishment. It’s not resentment. It’s not emotional shutdown or indifference. It’s a practice in developing what yoga calls Buddhi, discernment.

That’s your capacity to see clearly; to recognize patterns, to understand cause and effect, and to choose wisely based on lived experience.

Avoidance denies reality. Discernment responds to reality.

A Yogic Lens on Suffering

From a yogic perspective, suffering increases when we repeatedly place ourselves in situations that reliably cause harm... especially when we already know the outcome.

Wisdom doesn’t always look like effort. Sometimes it looks like restraint, like ease. Sometimes it means not acting. Because relief doesn’t always come from adding more, more practices, more supplements, more movement.

Sometimes the healing comes when we stop doing. Sometimes it comes from removing the behaviour that keeps reopening the wound.

Relief Through Subtraction

The most surprising part of this practice is how gentle it feels. There’s no emotional hangover. No need to “feel better” afterward. No recovery period. Because the suffering never arrives.

This is yoga working quietly in real life... not on a mat, not in theory, but in the choices that shape our days.

An Invitation to Practice Together

These are the kinds of teachings we explore in our weekly practice, Saturday Sadhana, where yoga isn’t reduced to poses, but examined as a living philosophy for relationships, boundaries, timing, and self-respect.

We move, breathe, and find stillness together. There’s space to ask questions and share honestly. It’s a space to apply ages-old wisdom to modern life without bypassing or spiritual gloss.

If you’re curious about yoga as a practice of discernment (not just self-improvement), you’re warmly invited to join us for Sadhana on Saturday mornings at 9:00 am.

Sometimes peace isn’t something you need to create.

It’s something you stop interfering with.