Desire & Aversion (Raga & Dvesha)

What Patanjali Can Teach Us About Business

I want to talk today about something connected to selling and promoting our work. More specifically, I want to explore the way we relate to putting ourselves out into the world as yoga teachers, wellness practitioners and small business owners. Recently I have been reflecting on two concepts from Patanjali's Yoga Sutras (raga and dvesha) and it strikes me that they have a great deal to teach us about the challenges many of us experience in business.

Raga and dvesha are two of the kleshas, the mental and emotional obstacles that Patanjali describes as creating suffering. They are patterns of mind that pull us away from clarity and freedom. Traditionally these teachings are applied to spiritual life and personal development, but I have increasingly noticed how accurately they describe some of the behaviours that keep people stuck in business.

Let us begin with raga. Raga is often translated as attachment, craving or grasping. It is the tendency to become attached to something we believe will make us happy and then cling to it very tightly. In its most extreme form, raga can become addiction: a relentless cycle of craving and temporary satisfaction that never delivers the peace we are seeking.

In business, raga often appears as a desire for immediate results. We want our courses to fill straight away. We want our social media to grow quickly. We want our income to increase this month. We want certainty, guarantees and evidence that everything is working. There is, of course, nothing wrong with having goals. The problem arises when our desire for a particular outcome becomes so strong that we lose sight of the work itself.

One of the ways I see this most commonly is through what might be described as "shiny object syndrome". We become convinced that success is hiding in the next course, the next certification, the next marketing strategy, the next platform or the next business coach. We keep searching for the thing that will finally make everything click into place. I say this with absolutely no judgement because I have done it myself many times. There is something deeply seductive about the idea that somebody else possesses the missing piece we have been searching for.

Last week I spent a VIP day with the wonderful Leonie Dawson and one of my biggest takeaways from our time together was so simple. There is no magic wand. There is no secret strategy that eliminates the need for consistency. There is no silver bullet that replaces the gradual process of building trust, creating relationships and showing up over time. The businesses that thrive are usually not the ones that discover a hidden shortcut. They are the ones that continue doing the work long after the excitement of novelty has worn off.

Raga also shows up in the way we relate to visibility and selling. We put a social media post into the world and immediately become attached to how many people liked it. We launch an offering and find ourselves constantly checking enrolment numbers. We begin to tie our sense of worth to the response we receive. Am I successful enough? Am I likable enough? Do people value what I have created? The more attached we become to external validation, the more emotionally exhausting business becomes. Our confidence rises and falls according to circumstances that are never fully within our control.

The second klesha, dvesha, is almost the mirror image of raga. Dvesha is aversion. It is the desire to avoid pain, discomfort, uncertainty and vulnerability. Whilst raga causes us to grasp for what we want, dvesha causes us to pull away from anything that feels uncomfortable.

This, too, shows up everywhere in business.

I see women who genuinely want to grow their businesses but are deeply afraid of being visible. They know they need to talk about their work, yet every social media post feels exposing. They know they need to invite people into their courses, yet selling feels uncomfortable. They know they need to send emails, follow up enquiries and share their expertise, but the possibility of rejection feels so unpleasant that they avoid taking action altogether.

What fascinates me is that most people are not actually lacking information. They already know what to do. The internet is full of business advice. Most yoga teachers could tell you exactly what actions would help them grow their business. The issue is rarely a lack of knowledge. More often, it is an unwillingness to experience the discomfort that accompanies those actions.

Visibility is uncomfortable. Selling is uncomfortable. Hearing "no" is uncomfortable. Launching a course and not knowing how many people will enrol is uncomfortable. Sharing an opinion publicly is uncomfortable. Yet discomfort is not necessarily a sign that something is wrong. Very often it is simply a sign that we are stretching beyond what feels familiar.

The more I contemplate these two teachings, the more I notice that many business owners become trapped between them. On one side there is raga: attachment to success, recognition, income and results. On the other side there is dvesha: an unwillingness to experience the discomfort required to create those results. We become intensely attached to the destination whilst simultaneously avoiding the path that leads there.

This creates a particularly frustrating form of suffering because we want the outcome but resist the process. We want growth without vulnerability. We want clients without selling. We want visibility without being seen. We want success without uncertainty.

Perhaps the invitation from Patanjali is neither to abandon our goals nor to become indifferent to our work. Rather, it is to learn how to act wholeheartedly whilst holding the outcome a little more lightly. To continue taking the actions that are ours to take, whilst loosening our grip on the results.

In practical terms, this means spending less time searching for a magic wand and more time doing the work that is already in front of us. It means becoming less attached to immediate outcomes and more committed to consistency. It means recognising that discomfort is not always a problem to be solved but often a natural part of growth.

Business, like yoga practice, asks us to walk a middle path. Not grasping and not avoiding. Not clinging and not withdrawing. Simply showing up with sincerity, courage and patience, and trusting that the results will emerge from the quality of our actions over time.