Svadharma: Appropriate action, role, and alignment

Happy new year, Treehouse!

As with every year, I sit with the energy of Treehouse and try to listen to what its spirit needs. Usually, and I kid you not, the themes come to me in dreams (just like the name "Treehouse"), and never has it failed me. This year, our umbrella theme is "Skillful Living" — a year of applying yoga as a way of responding to life, not escaping it. This is such a helpful reminder that the everyday work of yoga is expressed through wise choices, appropriate effort, and honest (yet respectful) responses, on the mat and in life.

Join us this year as we explore yoga themes that cultivate discernment, choice, and action: learning when to act and when to pause, when to engage and when to let go, and how to meet each moment with clarity rather than force.

The January theme is Svadharma. We've heard of dharma, but this one may be new to your eyes and ears. Before we explore svadharma, it helps to gently clear up a few common misunderstandings around the word dharma itself.

In modern wellness and yoga spaces, dharma is often translated as "purpose or life calling." While meaningful, this interpretation can be misleading. In classical yoga philosophy, dharma is less about a fixed destiny and more about right action—how we respond to life in alignment with reality, ethics, and responsibility. It is situational, not aspirational; practical, not idealized.

Svadharma takes this idea one step further. Sva means “one’s own,” pointing us toward what is appropriate for this body, this nervous system, and this season of life.

Svadharma is not about discovering who we are meant to become, but about discerning how we are being asked to show up right now.

In practice, this means letting go of comparison, releasing the pressure to perform, learning to trust our own pacing, and honoring what the body needs TODAY, not tomorow or yesterday. On the mat, Svadharma might look like choosing a variation, taking that child's pose without guilt, or engaging effort when it is genuinely supportive and challenging you in a non-painful way. In meditation, it asks us to listen rather than strive, to honor the Divine message being given to us instead of always being the one expressing desires and wishes (sometimes in a form of prayer).

If you come to Treehouse frequently enough, this may sound redundant. You probably know this already. So let me explain how the theme shows up in our daily lives.

I chose Svadharma for January, because this month often arrives carrying quiet pressure—to set goals, define direction, have a "resolution," and decide who we are meant to become this year. Even in wellness spaces, the language of purpose can easily turn into expectation: to find a grand mission, clarify a fixed identity, or optimize ourselves into a “better” version.

Svadharma offers a different starting point.

Unlike “purpose,” Svadharma does not demand a grand mission or a clear and permanent concept of who you are and who you are supposed to become. Instead, it asks us to meet the beginning of the year honestly—taking into account our energy, responsibilities, health, and lived realities.

January becomes less about reinvention and more about orientation: learning how to respond wisely to what is already here.

Svadharma gently softens the urgency of “new year” striving. It creates space to listen before acting, to choose pacing over pressure, and to honor that what is appropriate now may look different from last year—or from someone else’s path entirely. Or even from your own expectations of yourself. Let yourself be fluid: ever-changing, ever-adjusting.

Across all areas of life (work, relationships, friends and family, finances—oh, you name it!), Svadharma is the practice of asking:

What is the most skillful, yet most compassionate response here—given who I am, what I have, and what this moment requires?

In this way, Svadharma becomes a living practice—quiet, responsive, and deeply human. My hope, as well as your other teachers', is that you take this with you beyond the asana practice, and that, when you start to practice compassion and kindness, you do not forget to include yourself in the equation.

And, lastly, before your attention wanes, let me share briefly why beginning the Yoga Teacher Training this year under the theme of Svadharma is intentional.

Teacher training is often framed as a path toward becoming something—a teacher, a leader, an expert. While skill and knowledge are important, Svadharma reminds us that teaching does not begin with adopting a new identity.

It took us 10 years before we launched our Teacher Training, and I consider it Divine timing. Treehouse has matured over the past decade, yes, but also it took a while to assemble the right faculty and find the alignment in all our lives to make it happen— which makes me want to scream at the top of my lungs, "Avengers! Assemble!" because that's how it feels.

The program is not about reproducing a single style or ideal of what a yoga teacher should look like. Instead, it supports teachers in discovering how yoga can be expressed responsibly through their own bodies, voices, and contexts.

So for our trainees (and our yogis as well), my short message to you is this:

Learn without comparison.

Absorb as much as you can and trust that things will "click" later on.

Honor your personal limits, but also challenge your capacity and capability.

Be open to your own unfolding, your own becoming, your own unbecoming.

Be present— because this will not happen again in the timeline and permutation you're in.

Acknowledge the anxiety, the excitement, the fear, the courage.

Inhale it all in.

Exhale it all out.

Yoga Sutra 1.1

Atha Yoga Anushasanam

"Now, the instruction of yoga begins."

With so much love,

Rachel