There is a point in almost every meaningful Sankalpa practice when something uncomfortable happens.
You know what matters to you.
You have chosen your resolve carefully.
You may even feel completely clear about the direction in which you want your life to move.
And then, almost inevitably, the old pattern returns.
The same fear.
The same avoidance.
The same anger.
The same self-doubt.
The same relationship dynamic.
The same internal voice telling you that perhaps none of this is going to work.
This is often the point where people begin to question the Sankalpa itself.
Perhaps I chose the wrong one.
Perhaps I am not ready.
Perhaps I do not have enough discipline.
Perhaps nothing is changing.
But from the perspective of yoga psychology, the return of the old pattern is not particularly surprising.
A Sankalpa does not enter an empty psychological field.
It enters a mind already shaped by years of experience, memory, habit, attachment, fear, adaptation, and repetition.
It meets samskara.
And understanding what happens when Sankalpa meets samskara can make an enormous difference to how we experience the process of change.
What Is a Samskara?
In yoga psychology, a samskara is an impression left in the mind by experience.
Every thought, feeling, action, and significant event leaves some form of trace.
A single experience may create only a light impression.
Repeated experiences strengthen that impression.
Repeated reactions strengthen it further.
Over time, the mind develops familiar pathways.
Big Shakti’s yoga psychology teaching describes these impressions as becoming increasingly embedded through repetition, eventually shaping how we perceive situations and how we respond to them. From these impressions arise habitual tendencies, or vasanas, that influence emotional reactions, relationships, beliefs, and behavior.
I sometimes think of samskaras as psychological tracks.
If you walk across the same piece of ground once, very little happens.
Walk across it every day for years and eventually a path forms.
The path becomes the easiest route to take.
You may not even consciously choose it anymore.
Your feet simply go there.
The same thing happens psychologically.
We develop familiar pathways through experience.
Someone who repeatedly learned that speaking openly led to criticism may develop a pattern of withholding.
Someone who learned that achievement brought approval may become intensely driven.
Someone whose early relationships were unpredictable may become highly alert to signs of rejection.
Someone who repeatedly avoided conflict may eventually experience avoidance as simply “who I am.”
These patterns are not random.
At some point, many of them served a purpose.
They helped us adapt.
The difficulty comes when an old adaptation continues operating long after the circumstances that created it have changed.
Samskara Is More Than a Bad Habit
It is tempting to translate samskara simply as “habit,” but that does not quite capture its depth.
A habit may be obvious.
You bite your nails.
You procrastinate.
You check your phone too often.
A samskara may operate much further beneath the surface.
It can shape what you expect from life.
What you think is possible.
How much love you believe you can receive.
How visible you allow yourself to become.
What happens in your body when somebody disagrees with you.
Whether success feels exciting or dangerous.
Whether rest produces relaxation or guilt.
Whether intimacy feels nourishing or threatening.
This is why changing a samskara is rarely achieved by simply deciding to behave differently.
The behavior is often the visible end of something much deeper.
There may be memory underneath it.
Emotion.
Identity.
Fear.
Loyalty.
A story about who you are.
A story about what happens when people like you attempt certain things.
Sometimes an entire inner structure has gathered around the original impression.
Then Sankalpa Arrives
Now imagine introducing a Sankalpa into this field.
Perhaps your Sankalpa concerns courage.
Or creative expression.
Or healthier relationships.
Or freedom from an old destructive pattern.
Or greater self-respect.
Or deeper spiritual practice.
At first, the new direction may feel wonderful.
There is energy around it.
Possibility.
Hope.
Recognition.
You begin repeating the Sankalpa in Yoga Nidra or meditation.
You imagine the life connected with it.
You start making different decisions.
And then the new direction encounters the old pathway.
This is where the practice becomes interesting.
Because the Sankalpa says:
We are going this way now.
And the samskara says:
We have always gone this way.
Neither of these movements is imaginary.
Both have force.
The Sankalpa carries the energy of conscious resolve.
The samskara carries the momentum of repetition.
Why Positive Thinking Is Not Enough
This is one reason I am cautious about reducing Sankalpa to positive affirmation.
If an old pattern has been strengthened through years of experience and repetition, simply placing a pleasant sentence over it does not necessarily change the underlying structure.
You may repeat:
“I trust myself.”
But beneath that sentence there may be decades of evidence, memory, and emotional conditioning organised around self-doubt.
You may say:
“I speak with confidence.”
But another part of you remembers the consequences of speaking.
You may repeat:
“I welcome love.”
While the body quietly prepares for rejection.
This does not mean the new statement has no value.
It means the deeper mind also needs to be brought into the process.
Sankalpa is not about shouting more loudly than the samskara.
It is about creating a new organising principle strong enough to gradually change the relationship between the old pattern and consciousness.
The Old Pattern Has Momentum
This word — momentum — is important.
When a wheel has been turning in one direction for a long time, it does not stop immediately because we decide to turn it another way.
There is residual movement.
Psychological patterns are similar.
You may understand intellectually that a behavior is no longer useful.
You may sincerely want to change.
You may even have experienced moments in which the new way feels completely possible.
And still the old reaction appears.
This is where people often become discouraged.
They interpret recurrence as failure.
But repetition of an old samskara does not necessarily mean nothing has changed.
The more useful question is:
What is my relationship with the pattern now?
Perhaps the anger still arises, but you notice it sooner.
Perhaps fear still appears, but it no longer determines the decision.
Perhaps you still withdraw, but you recognise what is happening and return more quickly.
Perhaps the self-critical thought still arrives, but some part of you no longer believes it completely.
These can look like very small shifts from the outside.
Psychologically, they are significant.
Awareness has entered the pattern.
And once a pattern can be observed, it is no longer entirely unconscious.
Sankalpa Creates a New Centre
One of the ways I understand Sankalpa is as the creation of a new inner centre of gravity.
Before Sankalpa, the psyche may be organised largely around existing patterns.
Fear organises decisions.
Approval organises behaviour.
Avoidance organises relationships.
Old identity organises possibility.
The Sankalpa introduces another centre.
A deeper value.
A chosen direction.
A consciously held image of what life is becoming.
It does not immediately erase everything that existed before.
Instead, the psyche begins to reorganise around something new.
This is why a carefully chosen Sankalpa can reach much further than the specific words in which it is expressed.
A resolve around courage, for example, may gradually alter relationships, work, speech, boundaries, and creative expression.
A resolve concerning self-respect may begin changing where you place your time, what you tolerate, and how you respond to criticism.
The Sankalpa becomes a point of orientation.
When the old pattern appears, you have somewhere else to stand.
Resistance Is Often the Meeting Point
This brings us to resistance.
Resistance is usually treated as an obstacle.
Something irritating that needs to be overcome.
But resistance can also tell us where the new resolve is meeting an established structure.
If a Sankalpa concerns greater visibility and suddenly you find every reason not to put your work into the world, that resistance may be showing you something important.
If your Sankalpa concerns intimacy and you become acutely aware of your impulse to withdraw whenever somebody comes close, the practice is beginning to reveal the pattern.
If your Sankalpa concerns rest and your mind suddenly produces an extraordinary list of tasks every time you sit down, there is information there too.
Resistance is not always proof that the Sankalpa is wrong.
Sometimes it is evidence that the resolve has reached something real.
The Sankalpa workshop material speaks directly to this territory: genuine resolve is tested, and doubt, setbacks, discouragement, and forces that draw us back towards old patterns are part of meaningful change.
That does not mean every form of resistance needs to be ignored.
Sometimes resistance is intelligent.
A Sankalpa may need refinement.
The timing may be wrong.
The language may not be authentic.
A goal may genuinely be unsuitable.
Discernment remains essential.
But resistance deserves inquiry before it is interpreted as failure.
The Pattern May Become Louder Before It Becomes Weaker
There is another paradox in psychological work.
When we begin paying attention to a pattern, it can initially seem as though it is getting worse.
Often it has simply become more visible.
Before awareness, you may have reacted automatically ten times a day without noticing.
Now you notice all ten.
It can feel rather discouraging.
But awareness changes the situation.
Big Shakti’s teachings on deeper yogic practice describe how old fear, grief, unresolved experience, and samskaras may become more noticeable when inner work begins to loosen established psychic structures. The task is not to become overwhelmed by what surfaces, but to remain grounded enough to meet it consciously.
The same principle is relevant to Sankalpa.
When you make a conscious resolve, you begin illuminating everything within you that supports it — and everything that conflicts with it.
What was previously operating invisibly may now become impossible to ignore.
That can feel like regression.
Sometimes it is actually increased consciousness.
The Samskara May Be Protecting Something
This is where compassion becomes important.
Many old patterns developed for understandable reasons.
The avoidance may once have protected you.
The perfectionism may have helped you receive approval.
The emotional distance may have reduced vulnerability.
The need for control may have developed in response to instability.
The self-silencing may once have kept a relationship safe.
If we approach these patterns only as enemies, we can create another internal conflict.
One part of us says: Change.
Another says: This kept us safe.
Then we become frustrated with ourselves for not changing quickly enough.
A more useful question may be: What does this pattern believe it is protecting?
That question changes the quality of the work.
Now the samskara is not simply a defect to be destroyed.
It becomes something to understand.
This echoes Big Shakti’s shadow work, where unconscious material is approached not as something inherently bad, but as material that has been unrecognised, excluded, or left outside the usual self-image.
Understanding does not mean allowing destructive patterns to continue indefinitely.
It means we stop wasting energy fighting ourselves blindly.
Sankalpa and Identity
Some samskaras become woven into identity.
This makes them particularly difficult to change.
A person may say:
“I am shy.”
“I am terrible with money.”
“I have always been anxious.”
“I am not creative.”
“I cannot speak in public.”
“I am the responsible one.”
“I am just someone who gives up.”
Notice what has happened.
A repeated pattern has moved from:
This is something I do
to:
This is who I am.
Once a samskara becomes identity, changing it can feel threatening.
Even positive change may produce anxiety because the familiar self is being disturbed.
Who am I if I am no longer the one who keeps everybody happy?
Who am I if I allow myself to succeed?
Who am I if I stop being needed?
Who am I if I become visible?
Who am I if I no longer organise my life around this wound?
These are deeper questions than habit change.
And sometimes the resistance to Sankalpa is actually resistance to the death of an old identity.
This Is Why Change Can Feel Like Loss
We often imagine meaningful change entirely in terms of gain.
More confidence.
More love.
More freedom.
More health.
More expression.
But genuine change also contains loss.
Old roles fall away.
Old relationships may change.
Certain explanations no longer work.
Ways of obtaining approval lose their usefulness.
Familiar emotional positions become less comfortable.
Sometimes we even grieve the person we have been.
This does not mean the change is wrong.
It means psychological reorganisation has consequences.
The Sankalpa is asking for something new to live.
Something old may therefore need to release its central position.
Repetition Works in Both Directions
Here is the hopeful part.
Samskaras become strong through repetition.
But this also means new impressions can be strengthened through repetition.
Yoga psychology does not regard conditioning as fixed. The mind is capable of forming new patterns through awareness, meditation, reflection, behaviour, and repeated conscious experience.
This is where Sankalpa becomes particularly meaningful.
Each time you remember the resolve, you strengthen the new direction.
Each time you act in accordance with it, you give it embodiment.
Each time you notice the old pattern without automatically obeying it, something changes.
Each time you return after forgetting, you strengthen your capacity to return.
This is less dramatic than the idea of sudden personal reinvention.
It is also much closer to how deep change usually occurs.
The Sankalpa Needs Action
The inner work is essential.
So is behaviour.
If your Sankalpa concerns courage, there eventually has to be an act of courage.
If it concerns speaking more truthfully, at some point a truthful conversation needs to happen.
If it concerns creativity, something needs to be created.
If it concerns changing a relationship pattern, a different response needs to appear inside an actual relationship.
Otherwise, the old samskara continues receiving reinforcement from behaviour while the Sankalpa remains largely conceptual.
This is why Sankalpa brings together inner and outer life.
The resolve begins internally but gradually seeks form.
The Sankalpa workshop series describes it as a living practice, something increasingly embodied rather than simply repeated.
When You Fall Back Into the Old Pattern
You will.
Probably more than once.
This matters enough to say plainly.
If a samskara has been established over many years, there will be occasions when it takes over before awareness arrives.
You may react exactly as you hoped you would not.
Avoid the thing.
Say the thing.
Return to the relationship dynamic.
Lose confidence.
Forget the Sankalpa completely for several days.
The critical moment is what happens next.
The old pattern may say:
See? Nothing has changed.
But Sankalpa gives another possibility:
Return.
Not dramatically.
Not with punishment.
Simply return.
The capacity to return is itself part of the new pattern.
Over time, perhaps the detour becomes shorter.
Then less frequent.
Then less compelling.
The old pathway may still exist, but it is no longer the only road.
When Resistance Has Something to Teach You
There is one more possibility.
Sometimes the samskara does not simply resist the Sankalpa.
It reveals something the Sankalpa needs.
Perhaps your resolve is too idealised.
Perhaps the language asks for a version of yourself that you do not actually believe in.
Perhaps an unconscious fear has not yet been acknowledged.
Perhaps the desire beneath your Sankalpa is different from the one you initially identified.
This is why resistance can become part of the creative process rather than merely something to defeat.
Ask:
- What exactly am I resisting?
- When does the resistance appear?
- What does it seem to protect?
- What image of change feels threatening?
- What would I lose if the Sankalpa came fully into being?
- What part of me has not yet been included in this resolve?
These questions can mature the Sankalpa.
They make it more psychologically honest.
From Conflict to Integration
Ultimately, the relationship between Sankalpa and samskara is not simply a battle between good and bad.
It is a movement towards greater integration.
The old pattern becomes conscious.
Its history becomes clearer.
Its protective function may be understood.
Its limitations become visible.
A new direction is consciously chosen.
Then, gradually, energy begins to move differently.
This is one reason Sankalpa can be such a powerful psychological and yogic practice.
It does not ask us merely to think differently.
It asks us to establish a relationship between who we have been, what has shaped us, and what we now consciously intend to become.
The past is not erased.
But it no longer needs to remain the sole author of the future.
Working With Sankalpa When Old Patterns Return
This meeting between resolve and resistance is one of the central areas we explore in our Sankalpa Workshops: The Ancient Art of Creating Positive Change.
Across the workshop series, we look not only at how to choose and word a Sankalpa, but at the deeper creative and psychological process through which it becomes lived.
In particular, we explore what happens when doubt appears, when old patterns return, when enthusiasm fades, and when change begins asking more of us than we expected.
Rather than treating these moments as evidence that the practice has failed, we learn to understand what they reveal and how to continue working with the resolve in a way that is steady, intelligent, and psychologically grounded.
Because a carefully chosen sentence is only the beginning.
The real practice begins when Sankalpa enters life and meets everything already living there.
And very often, that meeting with the old pattern is exactly where the deeper work begins.
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