A friend recently sent me a link to an article on the Mayo Clinic website which speaks to the many potential health benefits of yoga, including stress reduction, increased fitness, management of chronic health conditions, including insomnia, and weight loss. While this is not new information for the yoga community, it’s always nice to see it affirmed and put out there in the mainstream.
Yoga is both a physical practice as well as a practice of breathing and meditation. In the early days of yoga the physical practice consisted only of sitting cross legged to meditate. We now practice asanas, or postures, to bring alignment and flow back to our bodies so that we can find wholeness and train our bodies to meditate. Yoga practice ends in Savasana or corpse posture. For many of us, this is one of the hardest postures. It is a posture of total relaxation, stilling the body and the mind. It is that place where your mind is still active yet it is free of thoughts, thus being inactive = active inactiveness. This can be very challenging and it often takes time, which is why it’s called a practice.
In your own practice, if you find that it is hard to turn off your mind, to stop that monkey mind, be gentle with yourself, and notice your breath. When thoughts come in to your mind just allow them to pass through without attaching to them. If you find that your mind wanders off into thought just be aware, in that moment, and let your thoughts pass through. You might only find a few seconds at a time when your mind is free of thoughts, that’s ok. Keep practicing!
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