Most people expect a yoga practice to involve flexibility and strength of the body, eventually leading to standing on your head. This is the great myth, for yoga is a lifestyle practice of flexibility and strength that is rooted in the mind.
The lens we choose to relate to a person, react to a situation or interact with the world can be changed. Yoga teaches us how to change the lens and see the deeper meaning below the surface.
This is practicing perspective.
Ok, But What Iiiiiis Yoga…?!
I know... You’ve probably experienced or learned about yoga through a wide range of teachers, organizations, marketing or entertainment, so that understanding may not be clear.
Here’s the deal. The general intention/meaning of the word “yoga” is: to join together, to link. Throughout the nearly 200 yoga sutras (the foundational text scribed over 2500 years ago) you’ll find the goal of yoga is to join body, mind and spirit; to become whole yourself and a part of the greater whole/universe/collective that exists energetically.
Practicing strength and flexibility in each of these three dimensions of the human experience can work as a tuning fork of sorts - it’s a process of calibrating human harmony.
Identifying imbalances that are causing suffering or blockages in one of those three dimensions - body, mind or spirit, gives us a hint where we can re-distribute strength with action, or ways we may need to be more flexible for another area to take priority in order to balance the three.
When we experience injury, or illness in the body, it affects our spirit - ever get bummed out when you can’t go to a party because you’re sick or can’t walk because you broke your pinky toe?
When our minds are chronically overwhelmed or clouded, we generate excess cortisol leading to disease in the body; or we may experience depression of the spirit.
When we are judgmental or bullying ourselves from the mind, the body and the spirit suffer.
If our spirit – or heart or often referenced as our soul – is weak, we can strengthen it by moving the body [think Zumba class or nature walk…] or through talk therapy or focusing the mind on something humorous or uplifting. Who can watch a cat video and not release endorphins…?
But Wait, There’s Morrrrre!
Of the three dimensions we’re talking about here, the mind is the ringleader when it comes to the most common source of imbalance. The second yoga sutra knows this about us humans like your Dentist knows whether you’ve been flossing or not. At the very beginning of this ‘being human’ textbook is the cut to the chase, ground zero of insight in the very second sutra:
Yoga Sutra 1.2
योगश्चित्तवृत्तिनिरोधः
Yogaś citta-vṛtti-nirodhaḥ
Yoga is harnessing/cessation of the fluctuations of the mind.
Why do we want to harness the fluctuations of the mind?
Because the thoughts in our mind often cause suffering in the body and the spirit/heart, which leads to behaviors and actions that aren’t in alignment with our core values, purpose or intentions.
Those ancient teachers of ours in the yoga tradition – 2500 years before social media, fast cars, and corporate ladders – were on to something. While yoga sutra wisdom was practiced and experienced in community settings lonnnnggg before white lab coats, brain scans and clipboards were even invented, modern research susses this out. Countless studies have demonstrated how meditation and mindfulness have measurable effects on the areas of your brain involved in muscle control and sensory perception, including emotions, memory, speech, seeing, hearing, and decision making. [Look out for my deep dive, link-rich research post to be posted soon - if not already posted at the time you’re reading this…!]
“A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.”
~Mahatma Gandhi
Yoga empowers you with tools of awareness and discernment in all aspects of your life - at home, at work, at school, in your car, on the bus, at the grocery store, on the toilet, on the subway, everywhere you actively think. You don’t even need a mat.
All you need is curiosity and a little practice of perspective with friends here.
Try This:
So where do you find the greatest imbalance today, in this moment - body? Mind? Or Spirit? Make note on this routinely and return here for simple, accessible tools that will bring balance.