Yoga in One Syllable

Have you ever noticed that often when you arrive somewhere your mind is trailing 20 minutes behind? Either that, or it’s raced 20 minutes ahead. You may have got to work, sat down on your chair and turned your computer on, but you’re still thinking about the morning’s traffic jam. Or, as you eat your breakfast, in your head you’re already running for the train.

Becoming fully present – with the body and the mind – is an enormous challenge. The mind likes nothing more than to escape the present moment by remembering last month’s holiday, or planning next year’s remodelling of the kitchen.

So how can we learn to fully embrace the experience of the present moment? There are all sorts of physical cues that we can use once we’ve clocked the mind day-dreaming. Taking a few seconds to become aware of the breath, shrugging the shoulders to ease tension, or gently rotating the head from side to side and up and down are a few different techniques that help the mind to zone in on exactly what’s happening right now. But they all rely on the same thing: awareness. We need to become aware that our thoughts have wandered.

Taking control of the wandering mind is like trying to grab a bar of soap in a handbasin full of water: you think your have it under control, only to have it fly right out of your hands.

Yoga uses Asana as one way to tame the wandering mind and develop awareness. In any posture, as we observe the body, the breath and the mind, we are slowly learning the skill of awareness. We are watching what happens, when it happens. The challenge then is to take this skill into the rest of our lives so that  our mind always arrives and departs at the same time as our body.

Image by Joe Wong at Flickr