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 So, let’s take the title of this blog a bit further: Rather than simply, how yoga and meditation go hand in hand, let’s realize that yoga and meditation are one. The heightened state of awareness created by a directed gaze (meditation) allows the yoga practitioner more intimacy with the experience. This is when the yoga pose can contribute most optimally to our wellbeing, and this is when a yoga pose becomes healing! 

 Basically, this is when a yoga pose fulfills its objective. Consider this: The only way in the whole world to care for someone or something is to touch it gently. Gentle is neither passive or aggressive, nor is it static. Gentle means the multiplicity of conditions affecting the situation is considered as one determines where one belongs within these yoga poses.

 This type of intimacy not only optimizes the yoga pose, but it also is a healing tonic for our brains (and minds). This is because when our gaze is directed, our minds empty out or quiets down. The great seer Pantanjali called this emptiness the goal of yoga when he said Chitta Vritti Nirodha. This quietness is what allows for greater intimacy. This allows us to gain greater value from experiences. Quieting our minds allows for a very deep relaxation which may be most optimal for our health and wellbeing. Quieting our mind through a directed gaze also allows us to step outside of our normal thought patterns, helping us disempower unwanted thoughts. 

 Our brains spend much of their time recycling the same thoughts and themes. Not only is much of our time here unnecessary and wasteful, but most of these thoughts and themes are also negative and lead to stress. Yet, we have become a comfortable dwelling in our thought patterns even though they can be harmful. I like the analogy of the cigarette smoker who finds it pleasurable and comfortable to smoke even though they’re poisoning themselves. Very much like the cigarette smoker who is addicted to smoking we have become addicted to our own mental habits. We all know how hard it is to break addictions! Passing through the sickness of withdrawals from addiction is incredibly difficult. Maybe this is why some people tried to separate the poses from meditation. Maybe these people didn’t want to deal with the withdrawal symptoms that would surely arise when dealing with their own toxic mind.

This is what I call Fitness 201. No longer feeding mental energy and unconscious loyalty to malevolent thought patterns that poison our bodies. This is when we start to challenge our brains to focus our minds. When we start to bring yoga back into physical exercise making it again Yoga Asana!

Aloha,

BK

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Mindfulness really means “being mindful”. What are we supposed to be mindful of? The answer to the question is kind of tricky. You should be mindful of anything you want. So, what I’m saying is there isn’t anything you need to be mindful of other than the thing you want to be mindful of. Is this making sense?

Basically, mindfulness means placing your awareness on a point of your choosing. You’d be surprised at how rarely this occurs. People’s minds are constantly lost in thought. Have you ever had the experience of talking to someone and you notice that their eyeballs are looking away and they weren’t even listening to what you were saying? It’s annoying, right? You just want to slap them (gently) and say, “Hey, I’m talking to you. Will you please listen to what I’m saying?” Well, this is the way most of us lead our lives. We are not paying attention to what’s happening because we are mentally busy thinking about other things. We do this so often we have become attached and comfortable dwelling within these thought patterns. Psychologists call these neuron pathways. The more we think about something the more it becomes ingrained in us. Many studies suggest most of what we think about is negative. We are stuck or attached to negative thoughts. Negative thoughts create stress, affect our world view and affect how we interpret things, whether it’s experiences or even what someone is saying.

Most of the time one is not choosing to drift into these thoughts; thus, the lack of mindfulness. Here’s another example: Have you ever been naked and looked at yourself in the mirror and had a negative or critical thought about the way that you looked? Most of us have due to societal conditioning, yet how many people are mindful that they are doing it? Basically, many of us walk around all day long repeating a negative inner dialogue that we are not aware of. Mindfulness seeks to counter this. It’s our birthright that our mind dwells in a place we want it to dwell instead of some default mentality imposed upon us by our culture.

Here are some exercises meant to facilitate mindfulness outside of one’s yoga and meditation practice:

In the morning

When you wake up in the morning, before you get out of bed, spend five minutes in positive affirmation. Create a positive affirmation such as, “I am happy and healthy and prosperous,” or, “May I bring joy to all I encounter”, or, “May I see beauty in all things.” Better yet, make up your own. Something you deeply believe and resonate with. Spend five minutes creating it and excavate a neuron pathway of your choosing.

Throughout the day

Notice your thoughts. Become aware of where your mind dwells. If the thoughts are not benevolent or uplifting, let them go and bring your attention back to whatever is happening in the present moment.

Before bed

Become aware of your natural breath. In other words, don’t try to breathe loud or deep or fast – just let it be natural. See how long you can keep your attention on your breath before your mind drifts into a thought. It’s like you are playing a game and the game is, “How much space in my mind can I create in between my thoughts?” As soon as you notice your mind drifted into thought, let the thought go and come back to your breath. This game will truly help with falling asleep as well. Don’t allow yourself to get frustrated or competitive with this.

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Our topic was, “What is a successful business person?”

My nephew’s definition was “Someone who turned one million dollars into a billion dollars,” as he was talking about someone in particular. I asked, “What if that billionaire lied, cheated, stole, and hurt a lot of people to acquire their billions?” He responded, “Makes no difference how the money is acquired, the ability to transform so little into so much makes this person a success.”

This mentality is not surprising with our no-holds-barred capitalistic culture that glamorizes wealth and fame everywhere we look. Not only do we glamorize the monetary result of success, but we glamourize the type of person who acquires the profits at all costs – as opposed to glamorizing the process of how the “success” was achieved.

I Googled the word “success.” The first definition was obvious: “acquiring one’s aim or purpose.”  The second definition was “the attainment of popularity or profit.” To me, the second definition is the most important. The first definition is a given, as it is the literal definition; however, the second one shows how success is viewed or conceptualized, especially in our careers and lives. This is why we see success as the attainment of superficial adornments like popularity, profit, and power, as opposed to ethics, morality, and contentment.

You know the psychological law, “the more you see something the more you believe it”? Well, this is what the children are seeing. For our society, success is not defined in correlation with character. If character is not in the equation, then success, as it relates to character, will not be important. One of the many ingredients of our society’s prosperity is “the rule of law.” The rule of law is supposed to even the playing field, as well as keep us safe. If the people who abide and flourish within these laws are not admired and promoted as “successful” to the same degree as the “rich and famous at all costs” folks, we create a mentality adverse to our health. Not only is it adverse to our personal health, but to the health of our culture and planet. We create laws for protection and safety. It’s not always easy to abide by laws. It’s very easy to lie, cheat, steal or treat others unfairly when you are fearful of an outcome that’s not aligned with your culture’s template of “success.” It’s way more difficult to develop the courage that subdues and conquers fear than it is to build your biceps and glutes. Why do we not emphasize these muscles of character? Why do we seem to care less about morality, ethics, personal responsibility, and cognitive ability? Why don’t we put those people who have those qualities on the magazine covers more often? Why is this not the theme of more dramas, television shows and news stories as often as scandal, crime, wealth, power, and violence?

Does it make us feel better about succumbing to our fear, when we see how others have succumbed to their fear? Fear is a strong emotion and can easily trump logic. It would take a lot of strength and moral character to overcome what fear can do to us. Our society does not put that type of strength and moral character up on the pedestal of media nearly as often as it puts money, fame, violence, and sexual beauty. This is a tremendous cultural flaw. This absurdity is what prevents us from taking our next steps toward an enlightened and benevolent society. This keeps us groveling in and catering to our tribalism, violence, and fear.

So I pondered how I would define a successful businessman or woman. This is how I would define my own career success and the example of success I’d like to pass to my kids because as Mahatma Gandhi once said, “Be the change you’d like to see.“ My simple definition is, “Someone who is content in career and able to comfortably care for the people he or she is responsible for, including themselves while providing honestly and ethically a needed service to their community.” Success is not material items or earning the biggest paycheck

Generally speaking, my definition is obviously not what we’ve seen; it may be difficult to actualize, especially without cultural support. As a society, we would need to be more dominated by our wisdom than by our fear and vanity. It might seem like a long shot, but we can start to take baby steps together. One initial step would be to notice our own desires and mentality and witness how our desires may have been impressed upon us by our culture, and begin disempowering them. You can weaken anything by no longer giving it food. In this case, this would mean witnessing the desires and tendencies implanted within you by the culture program you have seen. Once witnessed, decide for yourself whether these desires will give you peace and contentment, and if not, steer your mind away towards benevolent thoughts and desires, and the old ones will become weaker and weaker.

Acknowledge the psychological law of “the more you see something the more you believe it.“ Start noticing what you are seeing. Shift media input (especially for the kids) from entertainment to upliftment. If we are going to allow into our psyche (which is way more impressionable than we may know) any media, be aware that it is emphasizing benevolent qualities. There is so much more we can do, yet this would be some baby steps, and this is what our Power Yoga classroom supports, as this is some real powerful stuff.  Peace out, people!

Sincerely,

Bryan Kest

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