So how exactly does contorting yourself into a pretzel help you to get along better in the world?
Only a small portion of Yoga has to do with how we move our bodies (through postures, which we call asanas). It is merely but one aspect that Yoga has to offer.
Yoga has to do with our actions- acting in such a way that our “attention is solely directed toward one thing at a time, and keeping our attention there without distraction. Can you relate? And this can be with any activity at all-- cooking, going for a run, reading-- it doesn’t have to be the postures that we immediately associate with Yoga. We have made asana King in the West, at the cost of missing out on understanding Yoga as a whole.
So how does sustaining a one-pointed focus translate into the way we show up in the world? Through drawing our attention to a single point of focus, we can slow or even stop the whirling fluctuations of the mind, in order to streamline our attention to our thoughts and reactions [without all the noisy ditractions] And this is where the good stuff lies! Through continued practise, we start to become acutely aware of our thoughts and reactions; allowing space for us to make conscious modifications of those reactions.
Yoga has roots in Indian thought, but it’s content is universal because it is about the means by which we can make the actions or changes we desire in our lives. Yoga has to do with the way we perceive things and it explains why we are always getting ourselves into difficulties in life. If we know how we create such problems for ourselves, we can also learn how to free ourselves of them.
And we can tell if Yoga is having an effect when it starts to spill over into our lives-- the way we see the world and how we carry on in our relationships with others and ourselves.
Yoga has to do with our actions- acting in such a way that our “attention is solely directed toward one thing at a time, and keeping our attention there without distraction. Can you relate? And this can be with any activity at all-- cooking, going for a run, reading-- it doesn’t have to be the postures that we immediately associate with Yoga. We have made asana King in the West, at the cost of missing out on understanding Yoga as a whole.
So how does sustaining a one-pointed focus translate into the way we show up in the world? Through drawing our attention to a single point of focus, we can slow or even stop the whirling fluctuations of the mind, in order to streamline our attention to our thoughts and reactions [without all the noisy ditractions] And this is where the good stuff lies! Through continued practise, we start to become acutely aware of our thoughts and reactions; allowing space for us to make conscious modifications of those reactions.
Yoga has roots in Indian thought, but it’s content is universal because it is about the means by which we can make the actions or changes we desire in our lives. Yoga has to do with the way we perceive things and it explains why we are always getting ourselves into difficulties in life. If we know how we create such problems for ourselves, we can also learn how to free ourselves of them.
And we can tell if Yoga is having an effect when it starts to spill over into our lives-- the way we see the world and how we carry on in our relationships with others and ourselves.
Yoga attempts to create a state in which we are always present-- in every action, in every moment. And when we are attentive to our thoughts and actions we are no longer prisoners to our own mind and habits.
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