Reason isn't the only reason
Some of you have been at the end of my instructions to "just do it, don't think! Once you think, you are not doing!" during yoga classes recently (especially during those warm up wrist rotation repetitions). Perhaps not that easy an instruction to follow -- especially while you are trying to think it through. . .
Okay -- for those of you who still believe that yoga is just an exercise for the body, this might sound weird: there are other ways of knowing the world and being in the world besides relying on your analytical thinking AND yoga is a way of helping you see and develop all these other ways.
There is nothing occult about this. The problem is that we have allowed logical thought to dominate how we approach the world, drowning out the possible contributions of other approaches of feeling, intuition and your body. Observe for yourself: how many times when you do a warrior (veerabhadrasana) pose are you thinking the pose, how many times are you feeling the pose?
"Yoga" means "to unite" and in yoga practice, the aim is to seek unity in your person. In yoga, we let the analytical mind take a back seat. The breath is in the driver's seat, the other passengers are feeling, intuition, action. The vehicle is the body. This is why yoga is a refuge for you. You step into an place where you can experience things through all the aspects of yourself, where there isn't just logical analyses, comparisons and judgments -- this is where you can just exist. . . in entirety. As your yoga practice matures, you will grow to experience, not just the phenomena within your yoga classes, but everything in the same holistic way.
Okay -- for those of you who still believe that yoga is just an exercise for the body, this might sound weird: there are other ways of knowing the world and being in the world besides relying on your analytical thinking AND yoga is a way of helping you see and develop all these other ways.
There is nothing occult about this. The problem is that we have allowed logical thought to dominate how we approach the world, drowning out the possible contributions of other approaches of feeling, intuition and your body. Observe for yourself: how many times when you do a warrior (veerabhadrasana) pose are you thinking the pose, how many times are you feeling the pose?
"Yoga" means "to unite" and in yoga practice, the aim is to seek unity in your person. In yoga, we let the analytical mind take a back seat. The breath is in the driver's seat, the other passengers are feeling, intuition, action. The vehicle is the body. This is why yoga is a refuge for you. You step into an place where you can experience things through all the aspects of yourself, where there isn't just logical analyses, comparisons and judgments -- this is where you can just exist. . . in entirety. As your yoga practice matures, you will grow to experience, not just the phenomena within your yoga classes, but everything in the same holistic way.
