Where were you today? You might now be thinking about where you were physically, but where did you go mentally? Most of us spend most of our daily living in the past or in the future with our mind. Most of us even go over the same thoughts day after day without realizing it.
Yoga and meditation are complex journeys of the mind. In terms of yoga practice and asana, it helps us become steady and comfortable in the mind by doing our poses with totality. The practice of asana also allows us to reach the upper part of our brain which represents will power and awareness. Essentially, there are three parts of the brain. There is the lower brain that is connected with ego and with movement. When we hold poses long enough, we can move to the middle part of the brain, which is connected with emotion. The upper part of the brain is attained when your mind tells you to exit a pose and you consciously decide to stay there for two more breaths. This changes your whole life as it teaches you not to escape. It disempower the mind from being the master of our life.
Meditation, on the other hand, allows us to delve deep into us. The moment we are no longer busy and we sit with ourselves, our selves are revealed. This can seem like a scary process as most of us spend our energies living in the external world and do not dare to go inside our minds to clean it out. At first, it may seem like entering a deep and dark forest, a scary environment. The truth is that we need to go through the forest and clean the surrounding area to create a beautiful garden for ourselves. There aren’t many people in the world who are afraid of going into a garden because everything is organized properly and most of the weeds are pulled out. This then allows our mind to be a manager but not the master of our lives.
All this to say: our thoughts are like seeds, the seeds you water will grow. If you don’t do anything, there will be a mess. Our duty then is to create a garden with our minds. Yoga and Meditation are powerful tools for creating this garden.
