YOGA EXERCISE

Articles In This Section:

· HOW OFTEN DO WE GET SICK?

· EXPRESSING FRUSTRATIONS

· YOGA AND MEDICINE

· YOGA EXERCISE

· SELFKNOLEDGE OF YOGA

A typical exercise is to sit on the floor, tailor fashion, choose a mental target of the simplest kind—a spot on the wall before you, a piece of paper, your own nose—and concentrate on that target for thirty seconds. You may close your eyes and continue visualizing it until you lose it—and lose it you will— then open your eyes and capture it again.

This may seem absurdly easy—until you try it. Few of us realize how our minds are apt to flit from thought to thought and how much discipline it takes to conquer this tendency. It does little good to be stern and make good resolutions about self-control. They won't work. What will work, however, is steady, repeated, conscious practice. At the end of a few weeks the daily thirty seconds' concentration stint may even be stretched to a whole minute. You will be surprised how long the minute lasts.

Now consider the many ways in which developing your power to concentrate can benefit you in your search for self-knowledge. We all know how quickly, how instinctively we shy away from unpleasant thoughts, especially if these thoughts happen to be directed against ourselves. Yet in order to learn to know ourselves it is essential to turn on the searchlight of the mind and survey without turning away or glossing over whatever we find inside, unattractive and unflattering as the discovery may be.

One reason why self-analysis is all but impossible for the average person is because such sustained examination is in itself all but impossible. We may start out with every intention of being objective and ruthlessly honest, but when the going gets tough our mind will play tricks on us. All at once we will find ourselves thinking, not of the facet of our personality we have just discovered we do not like, but of how interestingly that same weakness colors the behavior of a friend, and how understanding we have been of the friend in a time of need, and why didn't we get more appreciation, anyway? Once the chain of association starts, there is no stopping it.

A basic exercise in concentration, however, can serve to break the habit of flitting until we have learned to stay with the thought we have chosen. In this way it becomes the key— or rather, one of the many keys—to mastering the art of self-analysis.

Another striking parallel between the analytical method and Yoga practice is in the realm of dreams. In a general way everyone is now familiar with the use analysis makes of dream material. Yoga, on the other hand, makes it possible to control dreams until they flow in orderly fashion, are remembered and provide revealing insights; this the advanced student can accomplish simply by willing himself to dream, just as he can will himself to go to sleep and wake up at a certain time. He can thus make the subconscious work subliminally, to good advantage, while the conscious mind rests.