Patanjali starts out the Yoga Sutras by declaring that the state of yoga is attained by focusing the attention and maintaining that focus on one object. When the mind wanders away and the attention goes from one thing to another willy nilly, then the stare of yoga is lost.
Part of yoga asana practice therefore consists of attending to an object, noticing the attention wander off of it’s own accord, regaining control of the attention and then drawing the attention back to the object. Over and over and over again. At first, you can attend to one thing for maybe 3 seconds before the attention wanders. After much practice, you train the attention and it stays on a chosen object for a longer duration. It’s important to note here that correct practice is neither, “I’m attending to an object so I’m doing it right.” because that is a set up for, “My mind is wandering, I’m doing it wrong.” Correct practice is: I’m aware of how my wanders and I direct it back. And start again.
Ashtanga yoga is designed to address an important aspect of practice: mind training. By learning the count, by learning the dristi, by learning the correct order of vinyasa, we surround the mind with things to attend to. In other words, these are the objects to which you direct your attention. By listening to the breath, by attending to bandha, by proper body dynamics, we support the mind with direct embodied objects to focus on. In theory, no room is left over for the attention to wander into discursive “thoughting”. Yet it will. So we have to catch it and practice bringing it back.
With consistent practice our mind develops the ability to hold these various objects as one experience. Rather than flitting from one thing to the next, the mental capacity enlarges and embraces the entire process of practice. For example, moving from Eka to Dwe in Suryanamaskar A for a newbie may look like this, “ Ok, arms go up this way on the inhale. Oh yeah, the hands touch, right? Dristi on the thumbs? Yes. Okay next on the exhale I fold over. Head relaxes right? My hamstrings are tight, is it okay to bend my knees a bit? I better ask the teacher. “
In short many dynamics are at play within the simple experience of moving from eka to dwe, and the newbie’s mind flits around from one piece of content to the next because the entire movement is new. And this experience is just as it should be. Practice enlarges the field of awareness. Practice means the mind can now focus on more subtle layers of content. The more seasoned practitioner jumps into a pose, “ septa, inhale breath, exhale … lift mula bandah… “ The mind is settled and steady after thousands of repetitions and attends to subtle content like quality of breath and bandha.
The process continues as the attention, now honed and one pointed, penetrates into subtle body layers; the experience of embodied asana satisfying, grounding and expanding all at once.
Ashtanga yoga, through body awareness , mind awareness and your body as the object, offers the opportunity to attain and maintain the state of yoga as prescribed by Patanjali. We surround ourselves with the allies of the count, the vinyasa, etc so that when the mind goes prancing off into undisciplined distracted states, we have a retinue of objects to bring it back to. As practice develops, those objects become more internal and more subtle. With this subtle comes the sublime: the simple and hard won experience of being absorbed and fully present to embodied human form saturated with conscious awareness.
