Why do I feel fine one moment and triggered the next without obvious reason?

Your nervous system has a memory longer than your conscious mind. Patanjali understood this—he taught that impressions (samskaras) layer beneath awareness, shaping how we perceive and respond. The polyvagal lens adds precision: your vagus nerve is constantly scanning for threat, often based on cues so subtle you don't register them consciously. A tone of voice. The quality of light. A smell. A body position that echoes something from years ago. Your system recognizes danger before your thinking mind catches up. This isn't broken; it's protective. The problem is when your nervous system generalizes—when it tags safety situations as threats because they share some feature with something difficult. That's where practice comes in. Yoga Sutras teach us that by observing our patterns without judgment, we interrupt the automatic loop. In polyvagal terms, you're training your vagus to recognize true safety again. Start by noticing the felt sense: where in your body do you detect the shift? What was happening just before? Not to blame yourself, but to understand your system's language. Once you speak it fluently, you can negotiate with it. Regulation becomes possible.