​Crossing the Threshold Into What’s True

Written by Abbe Ciulla, Owner of Troy City Yoga, Wonderland Yoga Studio and the Solar Flow Yoga School

The Threshold:

Maybe it’s the change of seasons, or the returning of the school year, but I’ve been thinking a lot about thresholds. How autumn asks us to shed what no longer serves, how it pulls us toward what feels alive. That rhythm brought me back to the time I shed a career that looked successful from the outside but a dead-end on the inside. The memory rose like a reminder: every season, we’re invited to choose again.

There are moments in life when the roles we’ve been playing no longer feel like our own.

I remember when I decided to leave that job. On paper, everything was fine- I had the job title, the steady paycheck, the sense of stability. But inside, I felt hollow, like I was showing up to a life that didn’t actually fit. Every morning I’d slip into that role like a uniform, but it was wearing me down.

The day I finally admitted this truth to myself was terrifying. Walking away meant stepping into the unknown without a clear plan, without the safety net I thought I needed. And yet, it was also the first time I felt fully alive- because I wasn’t choosing what was familiar, I was choosing what felt true.

The Lesson:

In yogic philosophy, there’s a teaching for this kind of moment from the Yoga Sutras: antarāya-bhanga, the breaking of obstacles, the crossing of thresholds.

We often cling to the comfort of what we know, even when it no longer serves us. Sometimes the greatest obstacle isn’t external- it’s our own attachment to security, habit, or identity. A new job, schooling, training, or really any new chapter, can feel the same. It asks you to leave behind the “job” of being who you’ve always been, and to walk toward the work you’re really meant to do.

Crossing the threshold isn’t about becoming someone else- it’s about letting go of everything that wasn't you in the first place.

The Reflection:

Antaraya-Bhanga invites you to reflect on:

• What roles or identities might you be ready to set down?
• What values or passions do you want to carry forward?
• How might you honor the teacher within you—the part that has always been there, waiting to be remembered?

To seal this reflection, I want to share a favorite line from Rumi:

“You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean, in a drop.”

Crossing the threshold is about no longer being defined by the small box you once lived in, but realizing the vastness that already belongs to you.

Yoga Philosophy Sidebar:

(because we love to cite our sources)

Yoga Sutra I.30, Patañjali lists the antarāyas—the obstacles that block progress in practice:

vyādhi styāna saṃśaya pramāda ālasya avirati bhrāntidarśana alabdhabhūmikatva anavasthitatvāni cittavikṣepāste’ntarāyāḥ
​
“Disease, dullness, doubt, carelessness, laziness, overindulgence, delusion, failure to attain a stage, and instability in maintaining it—these distractions of the mind are the obstacles.”

• antarāya = obstacle, hindrance
• bhaṅga = breaking, dissolving

​Together, antarāya-bhaṅga means the breaking of obstacles. Commentators like Vyāsa (5th c. CE) and modern translators (Edwin Bryant, Swami Satchidananda, Georg Feuerstein) explain that steady practice (abhyāsa) and detachment (vairāgya) are the keys to dissolving these barriers.

Crossing the threshold of change—whether in yoga or in life—is itself a form of antarāya-bhaṅga: breaking through what once held us back.