Mastering your mind

I love the physical practise of Yoga but the truth is, it is just a fraction of my Yoga practice and only a small part of what it means to live a Yogic life. My goal here is to share with you a gilmpse to my personal practice as well as my take on Yoga philosophy and how it relates to the modern-day life. This one is about mastering your mind!

Yoga citta vritti nirodha

Patanjali's Yoga sutras is one of the most popular texts about Yoga. I think of it kind of as an ancient self-help manual. The book is composed of short sanskrit verses that describe how Yoga is practiced and how the ultimate state of Yoga / liberation / freedom or whatever you wanna call it, is achieved. In the second sutra Patanjali reveals the goal of Yoga. In sanskrit it goes “Yoga citta vritti nirodha” and it can be translated as “Yoga is the restraint of the fluctuations of the mind”.

It’s all about awareness

So let’s unpack that for a moment. It is a common misconception that the goal of Yoga (Yoga citta vritti nirodha) is stopping or getting rid of all thoughts. In contrary, at least how I see it, the goal of Yoga is to become more aware of your thoughts. Which is very powerful because when you can choose which thoughts to focus on, there is really nothing in the outside world that can bind you. You begin to give less power to things that are out of your control such as your external circumstances and other peoples behaviour and you focus your energy to things that are within your control such as, your own behaviour and actions. By becoming more aware of your thoughts you can also change your perception of them (are you seeing the glass half full or half empty?). For any of this to make sense it is important to understand one core concept of Yoga: you are not your mind.

You are not your mind

If you don’t believe me, just try this. Close your eyes, sit still and just focus on your breath for 30 seconds. Try it now, before you keep reading forwards.

I am sure at least one thought came into your mind although you were trying to just focus on your breath. Where did that thought come from? What about, have you ever experienced a moment in which you just can’t stop thinking about something that you don’t want to be thinking about? I figure the answer is yes. This is because your mind has a mind of its own.

The mind is a muscle that can be trained

We all know that channelling your thinking into a different frequency is not easy. However, the mind is a muscle that can be trained. With regular Yoga and meditation practice, you can actually strengthen the parts of the brain that are connected with positive emotions and weaken the parts that are connected with the negative ones (Lazar,2011). To be clear, all emotions are valid and it is not like we need to get rid of all the negative ones. Those thoughts and emotions will always be there, in some form or another. The point is, with practice, you can learn how to choose which thoughts to follow and which thoughts to give power to.

Thanks for reading this post! Please leave your comments or thoughts below. I would love to hear them!

S x