The Essence of Yoga
Perhaps you’ve heard Patañjali’s quintessential definition of yoga? I captures the essence of yoga.
It’s quite simple, and simultaneously vast; two signature features of wisdom.
“Yoga is the stilling of all thought.”
This definition probably conjures more questions than answers and invites us to reconsider our mental space…. what are thoughts anyway?
Patañjali goes on to assert that the mind occupies the surface of our being, vailing our essential nature.
Who would we be in the absence of thoughts and opinions about self and “others”?
How does one still the mind?
And why would we want to do such a thing anyway?
More questions….
On a practical level, I invite us to consider the mutable nature of thought, how it can seem so dense, habituated and convincing at times and simultaneously amorphous, shifting and changing in every moment.
Sometimes the mental story is caked with adversity and sometimes it is not. Yoga is the process by which we can come to terms with our particular narratives, create a bit of space, and draw closer to our essential nature.