This seems to be a theme today with my clients so I thought I’d take a moment to reflect on it. Yes, the goal of yoga is to quiet the mind but that is not only for stress relief. It’s much bigger than than that. Yoga today is about feeling good, relaxing and finding some time for ourselves in this very hectic society and lifestyle we find ourselves in. However, that is not the reason we practice.
In the yoga practice we do many things to help improve our physical and mental well being. What we are really after is that sense of peace and freedom we have when we end the lesson in sivasana, or the corpse pose. That alone is to make us embrace our mortality which is already work enough. It is supposed to give us a sense of separation from the body. This is not your body nor is it your mind. They are vehicles alone. In the corpse pose we are supposed to realise this. Here we are supposed to be able to completely separate from the flesh and connect with the spirit.
Once we can embrace that concept then we can look further to see the True Self as something completely different than these bones, flesh and thoughts that we have. That’s the person we are trying to connect with. That is our own little piece of God right inside of us.
When we are able to make this connection, it is ever so brief. You get this overwhelming sense of calm. You realise nothing else matters and you are content and happy with things just as they are. That’s what it feels like to be connected with your True Self.
The more you practice the easier it is to get into that space, to reconnect with who you truly are. The longer you are able to stay in this space the stronger the connection becomes and the easier it is to return to it in the future. This is where we truly reside, hence the body being only a vehicle, and in this space we can learn to hear and feel what we really want and who we really are.
We feel lost or uncertain only because we have lost the connection to reality by outside stimuli and the senses. Before we become active members of society, and live as free spirits (children) we live through this awareness of who we truly are. Then everything on the outside is exciting, amazing and wonderful. Thats why kids are so nice to be around. They live in the present more than we can ever hope for as adults. Society, responsibility and over stimulation take us away from our true nature. In doing yoga all we wish to do is to bring ourselves back to that natural state that we have lost.
It sounds easy but its a quest that we will be on for the rest of our lives. Thats why its called a yoga practice.
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