12 Secrets of How Yoga can help with Mindfulness in 2022!
Before we begin, let’s define what mindfulness actually is.
I like the explanation from the book “The Neuroscience of Mindfulness” by Dr Stan Rodski, he explains, that “once upon a time we used words like relaxation, hypnosis, meditation, yoga . . . Well, mindfulness is a relatively new term that’s plucked out of what is the essential aspect of all of them, which is being aware of where you are in the moment, and being able to focus on the activity that you’re doing, to the exclusion of everything else” (1).
There are many ways you can achieve this focus. This blog post focuses on how yoga can not only teach you more about how mindfulness works, but also how you can perhaps incorporate some of the practices below into your life.
Yoga for one is not just the poses, it encompasses so much more than what we see on social media and the beautiful images displayed.
The practice of yoga, I think, can help with mindfåulness and being a more mindful individual in general, as there are many parts to it, from the principles and philosophy, like from the Yoga Sutras’s 8 Limbs of yoga, and through practice, there is plenty to teach us to focus on one activity at a time.
Let’s get into it…
Here are the 12 secrets I think the practice of yoga can help you be a more mindful individual and teach you invaluable skills on how to live a life with more intention and yes that word again, living a life with more mindfulness…
MEDITATION. The obvious one, meditation, the yoga practice teaches and encourages us to do this practice, whether it be in a seated posture or in a moving meditation. The premise of meditation is to notice how our minds thoughts fluctuate, and being a witness to what goes on in the mind, which thus is focusing on one thing at a time. How are mind is wandering.
Whether we practice more of a moving mediation, with yoga styles like Hatha or Power yoga or sit like Buddha cross legged in a seated meditation, its the act of noticing and witnessing what arises - the fluctuations of the mind.
But the key thing to meditation is do this without judgement. Noticing what arises in our minds, again without judgement, this practice teaches us the skill of focusing our attention on one thing, which in turn grows our awareness of our distracted “monkey mind”.Check out my previous blog post on that here: Why Meditate? How Science says it's good for us..
YOGA ASANA. The poses, and physical practice. When we practice yoga poses this allows us to focus on just this action. The moving body, our attention is forced upon the action our body is, and needs to take.
Attention is key when we move in and out of poses or even hold postures like Tree pose that require our balance and strength, without focused attention we would fall out or be moving mindlessly.Moving without careful attention can lead to injury, when we aren’t paying attention to the body’s sensations and signals it provides us.
Any form of exercise really, like running, skiing, or cycling, whenever we immerse ourselves in an activity and only think about the activity, this act teaches us to focus our attention inwards and be mindful on the task at hand, otherwise our performance can suffer. Or in yoga we can fall out of a pose, and be a toppling Tree pose, as when the mind or gaze waver so does our balance thus the pose.
Meditation and Yoga Asana (postures) are part of the 8 Limbs of Yoga from Patanjali. Its important to know, without me getting into ALL the 8 limbs of yoga, that the 8 Limb Path progressively work into the other principle/Limb, and one cannot proceed to the other unless the other is mastered.
PRANAYAMA, another principle from of the 8 Limbs of yoga which simply means breathing techniques. With Pranayama / Breath you can build heat or cool down the body using your breath. There are also calming and energizing effects breathing techniques can do.
But more specifically breathing techniques can teach us to focus the mind to concentrate on the breath moving in and out of your nose and body.
What the breath does to our body, how it can calm our minds, energetically change our body.Even how the breath makes us feel before, during and after, doing certain mindful breathing techniques. When we do specific breathing techniques, whether it be ones where we count our breath or do a specific pattern or sequence of breathing, this truly brings our mind and attention to just that, our breath.
PRATYAHARA – Sense withdrawal (2) another Limb to the Yogic 8 Limb Path…we withdraw some of our senses to drop into the present moment, be a witness to our experience during our yoga practice. It’s a conscious effort to withdraw and move inward. Whether that be closing your eyes, during meditation or perhaps doing your practice away from it all. Turning off your devices and notifications, creating a space where you won’t be disturbed for your yoga practice. This helps with allowing your senses to withdraw, sight, sound, to allow awareness to set in and limit distractions.
Which leads to another limb of yoga which is…DHARANA – Focused Concentration (2), during practice we learn to focus our attention. This is again a conscious effort, of directing our mind to where we want it to go. Mind shifts perhaps to the breath, the way our arm is raised in a specific pose, or our pelvis positioned., or perhaps noticing tension in the body where it’s being held unnecessarily, like the jaw, or our face, neck, shoulders.
Whether it be on our breath, on our body sensations, what’s going on in a pose during Yoga Asana, or moving in and out of yoga poses, we have that focused attention and concentration, as we focus on one thing at a time, our experience.PRANA / LIFE FORCE / ENERGY. Our body is energy, as we’re made up of cells that are also energy. Our brains are energy. When we move, breathe and pay attention to our body which this connects us to our mind, all through breath. Our breath allows us to focus on that energy flowing through.
Breath simply is our life force which in Sanskrit is referred to us “PRANA” or in Chinese philosophy it’s referred to as “Qi” or “Chi”. Our breath is what keeps us alive, it’s our life force. Breath is life.HEAT or better known in Yoga as TAPAS. Yogapedia.com defines Tapas are spiritual practices that often involve a high degree of self-discipline, solitude and periods of deep meditation. The word comes from the Sanskrit root word tap, which means "to be hot." This relates the word to the concept of spiritual rebirth and the inner fire needed to achieve it. Disciplined, spiritual yoga practice can be one type of tapas (3).
SELF-AWARENESS, in both body and mind. Yoga makes you notice shit about yourself. You discover more and more about yourself in every way. From your thoughts, emotions to how your body feels anytime you draw your attention inwards, we witness and learn more and more about ourselves. Anytime you hit that yoga mat, or sit in a meditative seat and take time to practice, the result is awareness.
ACCEPTANCE, simply accepting whatever arises, through thought, emotions, feeling or how a posture looks or feels in our physical body, we learn to just accept without judgement whatever is and arises. Meet ourselves where we are at. Yoga teaches us to truly witness things, as mentioned above, but without judgement truly accepting ourselves in every way. We become aware of shit about ourselves, and learn to lead life with less judgement.
EMBODIMENT, which simply means we discover ourselves through our body. Because Yoga seems to be more about the physical aspects more so in the Western world, we tend to learn about all of the above, through the practice of yoga poses. And some would even say by accident. That’s how I found myself, after doing the thing, the poses and flowing in yoga I realized it changed things about myself. You start to notice what you eat, who’s in your life, what makes you happy, and what doesn’t.
Through the postures we learn and come to understand our body’s limitations, and thus become aware, accept where we are at and focus on that one thing at a time, our experience of what goes on during our practice.
I like this definition of embodiment, “…one which focuses on awareness and development of how we are as people through the body” (4). Once yoga is practiced consistently, even once a week, eventually the principles are absorbed beyond the body.ON/OFF YOUR MAT. There is that understanding amongst anyone who has practiced yoga long enough and consistently, even if its just once a week, you will start to live your life with how and what you learn on your mat and during your practice.
All of the above mentioned eventually seeps to not just when you do the yoga, you’ll start to live some of the tools and techniques or better yet principles of yoga, in your life!
MIND BODY CONNECTION. Yoga has been known to help the body connect to the mind, and the mind connect back to the body. If you’re feeling scattered mentally, there is nothing better than after a yoga practice, Its like the weight gets lifted, stress reduced, mind feels clearer - why?! When we get into our body, we get out of our head.
Combined with breathing and movement, this helps us get back into connecting the mind and body. When we get busy we can forget how we feel physically. As soon as we land on our mats and move, breathe, notice what arises both mentally and physically, we connect. Connect back to ourselves, our body ,mind, and spirit, all with breath.
Yoga has a sneaky way for those that just to come yoga for the cool poses, as it enter your life and create a mindful human out of it. The result of practicing yoga regularly (about once/week) brings about more mindfulness in your life. Through the physical postures we learn valuable skills to quiet our mind, as our attention is drawn inwards (5).
TL; DR
Yoga helps with mindfulness, by teaching us other skills, like how to meditate, breathe and notice shit about ourselves, starting from our body and our thoughts, feelings and emotions. Yoga helps with concentrating the mind to do one thing at a time, usually with breath focus, but also with the physical postures, doing them and focus on what happens in and out of poses. Eventually the practice of yoga seeps into your life, so whatever you learn on your mat, you take away in living off the mat. The mind body connection is an important reason that yoga helps and trains us to be more mindful, as it helps connect us back to ourselves, our body, mind, spirit all with breath and our focused attention. The action of practicing mindfulness, leads us to be more mindful and still the mind.
Sources and Other Resources
The Neuroscience of Mindfulness. Dr Stan Rodski. Harper Collins Publisher (2019).
THE 8 LIMBS OF YOGA EXPLAINED https://www.ekhartyoga.com/articles/philosophy/the-8-limbs-of-yoga-explained
TAPAS DEFINED, YOGAPEDIA.COM, https://www.yogapedia.com/definition/5365/tapas
WHAT IS AN EMBODIED APPROACH TO YOGA (2018) https://www.embodiedyogaprinciples.com/single-post/2018/01/10/what-is-an-embodied-approach-to-yoga
Theorizing Yoga as a Mindfulness Skill. Timothy Gordon (2008). Elsevier Ltd. https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S1877042813018077?token=CB43E29969D91B2A4FECAF621937603602BDCD93AA890902151DAAAB794C6BF16C3B37C6221604C3F17EFB6011DB649C&originRegion=us-east-1&originCreation=20211230173242