The Mind-Body Problem and Yoga

by Nina

Isaac Newton by William Blake

Just recently I was telling someone that I consider the mind and the body to be one and the same. After all, what we call our body is what makes it possible for our minds to interact with the world. Our five senses of sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch (which includes the skin that covers our entire bodies!) allow us to take in what’s happening around us and to respond in kind. So, our bodies and minds are in constant two-way communication. In addition, our two internal senses, interoception and proprioception (see Coming to Your Senses in Yoga Poses), allow our bodies to communicate their own internal states to the mind, so even within our bodies there is constant two-way communication from between all our internal parts—joints, organs, muscles, etc—and our brain. So even without considering that we our gut contains a semi-independent nervous system cells (our gut brain) that is in constant communication with the part of our brain in our skulls, our brains are so intertwined with every part of our body through our nerves—and can’t, in fact, exist without our bodies—that is really should be impossible to say where one begins and the other leaves off.

However, the traditional idea that most of us grew up with—that our brains and bodies are two separate entities—is so strong that most of us have a hard time of letting go of it. For example, it’s really hard to convince people that the best way to maintain brain health is physical exercise, the same thing that is the best way to maintain health of “the body.” I even find myself slipping back into that way of thinking. I’ve been wondering why that is for quite some time now, and I finally decided just to do some research on it. 

It turns out that this idea of the mind and body being separate and made of different stuff comes to us from ancient Greece, where Plato and Aristotle, who had different beliefs from each other, argued in different ways that the intellect was made of different, superior stuff (immaterial) than the body (material). This is called “dualism.” From there, dualism became a staple belief in Western civilization. Later on in the 17th century Rene Descartes modernized the concept saying that the body was made of a matter (a substance that it is spatially extended but which is unthinking) and the mind of a different substance (a substance that is immaterial but which thinks):

“A person… lives through two collateral histories, one comprising of what happens in and to the body, the other consisting of what happens in and to his mind… The events in the first history are events in the physical world, those in the second are events in the mental world” —Gilbert Ryle 

Unfortunately, this type of thinking led to a whole host of problems, as you might imagine. Thinking of our minds as being separate from our bodies led to us feeling shame about our bodies, as they were made of an inferior substance, and to having an attitude that ignoring the needs of the body was best for spiritual advancement or just for living in the civilized world. It also led to major problems in the way Western Medicine approaches our health. According to Neeta Mehta in her paper Mind-body Dualism: A critique from a Health Perspective:

“Mind-body dualism is an example of a metaphysical stance that was once much needed to unshackle science and medicine from dogma, but which later had far reaching restrictive influence on the field of medicine, on its complete understanding of real health issues, and on developing effective interventions to deal with the same.”

But surely yoga is different, right? After all, we yoga practitioners are all about being present in our bodies and learning to love and appreciate them from the inside out. Well, as is so often the case, it depends on what you mean by “yoga.”

In Classical Yoga, while and body and the mind are made of the same material (prakriti), it is the soul (atman) that is made of different material (purusa). And rejecting your body-mind in favor of the soul is what the eight-fold path is all about. In fact, I was recently surprised to learn that the traditional view of the body in yoga is very negative. For example, take this quote from the Yoga Sutras:

II.5 Ignorance is the notion that takes the self, which is joyful, pure, and eternal, to be the nonself, which is painful, unclean, and temporary. —translated by Edwin Bryant

I’ve already discussed in my post Spiritual Ignorance that “ignorance” in the Yoga Sutras means spiritual ignorance about what the real “self” is. In this sutra, Patanjali compares the true Self, the soul (purusa), with the non-self, the body-mind (prakriti), saying that the body-mind is “painful, unclean, and temporary.” In his commentary, Edwin Bryant explains what you mind be wondering about, that is, what is “unclean” about the body-mind?

“While anyone can understand that the body is temporary, what does Patanjali intend by saying it is ‘unclean?’ Vyasa quotes a reverse: ‘The learned consider this body to be unclean, on account of its location, origin, sustenance, excretions, death, and the continual need to keep it clean.’”

In fact, Bryant says that in Patanjali’s school of yoga, they viewed the body as “a rather unpleasant bag of obnoxious substances.” I read some quotes from original texts about this, and, boy, they really say some disgusting things about the body. Trust me. Bryant concludes his discussing by saying that eight-fold path is about ignoring and transcending the body, not about learning to love and listen to your body.

“In short, the Yoga tradition does not consider the body a suitable place to seek happiness for those interested in enlightenment.”

It is only when we move ahead to Tantra and Hatha Yoga that there is a change to viewing the body in positive light. In Hatha Yoga, which is what we are practicing when we do our modern asanas, the goal is to make your body strong (through asanas) and clean (through cleansing practices, some of which are pretty weird) so it can withstand our spiritual practices and allow us to achieve self-realization.

“Instead of regarding the body as a meat tube doomed to fall pretty to sickness and death, they viewed it as a dwelling place of the Divine, and as the cauldron for accomplishing spiritual perfection. For them, enlightenment was a whole-body event.” —Georg Feuerstein

But even though in traditional Hatha Yoga the body is no longer viewed as shameful and disgusting, the original aim of Hatha Yoga was the same as Classical Yoga: to transcend the body-mind and achieve enlightenment (self-realization). So, your body-mind (prakriti) is still your non-self, not your true Self. And the body-mind needed a lot of cleansing and purification to make that happen!

From there, we come to modern yoga, where our thinking about the body (and the body-mind) has changed. Now we see our body as having value on its own, not just as a vehicle for achieving enlightenment. Our body is no longer something “unclean” to be ashamed of, but quite the opposite—something to value, cherish, and be amazed at. And listening to our bodies is an essential part of yoga practices that can help us tune into what we need at any given time and sometimes even help us heal.

Right now, I don’t have information about how we came to this point, but no doubt modern understanding of anatomy, new modern philosophical concepts that challenge dualism, the yoga teachers of the early twentieth century, like Krishnamacharya and B.K.S. Iyengar, who taught us to listen to and nurture our bodies and even practice asanas mindfully as a form of moving meditation, mindfulness practices from Buddhism, etc. all come into play. But, regardless, I’m very grateful.

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Metamorphosis

by Jivana

Photo by Sarit Z Rogers

The monarch butterfly spends two weeks as a caterpillar before metamorphosing into a butterfly. Then it lives as little as two more short, yet magical, weeks in an ethereal dance before it dies. Amazingly, the monarch’s annual migration across all of North America is achieved over the lifespan of four generations. One monarch can only make a portion of the journey and it’s up to the next generations to complete it.

Are our lives much different? In the U.S., women can expect to live to the age of 81 and men to 76. In the grand scheme of things, those eight decades are the blink of an eye and are as fleeting as the life of the monarch. These few precious decades hardly seem adequate to figure out what we’re here to do. Is reincarnation, a foundational concept of yoga philosophy, our version of the monarch’s migration journey? Will future me’s complete my soul’s work? 

Personally, I feel like putting all my chips on reincarnation is a risky gamble. Seems like I need to make the most of the time I have here rather than bargaining on future lives which I know nothing about. So, I should do my best to figure out what I’m here to do. As a long-time yoga practitioner it seems like enlightenment (samadhi) is supposed to be my goal, but that seems like such an impossible feat. 

In his Yoga Sutra, Patanjali describes how to achieve the state of samadhi, which he simply refers to as the state of yoga. He goes on to describe at least six distinct levels of samadhi. Reading through them recently I began to feel disheartened, and to doubt myself and my ability. I know I’ve learned so much about myself through yoga, but without working towards samadhi am I just fooling myself?

As I practice longer I am noticing a few important things. I’m more aware of a split within my own mind: the part of me that’s thinking and the Witness or inner consciousness observing it all. Patanjali would describe this separation as the dance of purusha (spirit) and prakriti (nature). I often think of prakriti as the natural world around us, but it’s not so simple. Every part of our human birth, including our mind and emotions, is prakriti. The only thing that is purusha is atman, the soul. 

Most of the time I’m talking to myself, aren’t you? But who is talking and who is listening? The mind, part of prakriti, is talking to purusha, the Witness, as Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra explains. If so, then my stream of consciousness is some kind of endless prayer—a continual flow of sensory experiences, self-criticism, and internal fights with everyone who bothers me. It’s embarrassing to think of all this mind-stuff as prayer, and I sure hope God isn’t listening when someone makes me mad!

I usually think of yoga as union–bringing something together. But, really, it’s more about separation. Using my discriminating discernment to tease out purusha, my Essence, from the complexity of nature. So much of my time is spent in the rituals of daily life: eating, sleeping, etc. But, as I go through all these activities, part of me is separate, simply watching the outer activity. This witness seems unaffected by these outward experiences. It’s always there, listening and watching. In my meditation practice I try to create an opportunity for that inner witness, the eternal Listener, to move into the foreground for a brief moment.

This shift, allowing the Witness to move from background to foreground, is unnervingly powerful, and yet I’ve noticed that sometimes I avoid it on purpose. Some days it feels easier to focus on what I’m going to eat for lunch or to allow my mind to be lost in the endless blur of other people’s lives in my Facebook feed. But in the end, I know for sure that I’m supposed to find a way to bring that Witness into the foreground more and more. Perhaps that is the experience of samadhi?

When I allow that shift to happen the experience is beyond words. It feels like my sense of self steps forward in a bold way that quiets the noise in my head. My normal experience of the world changes. The feeling that I’m seeing through my eyes shifts to an experience of my eyes. It’s not always so peaceful or some spiritual cliché. In fact, it forces me to feel whatever emotions I’m having, which I don’t always want to do. But it always feels honest.

And if I’m being honest with myself, then I also have to admit that my inner life isn’t really so private. The connection between prakriti in my mind and prakriti around me is very strong. For example, the idea that I can just think whatever mean thing I want about someone else or even myself is a lie I tell myself. It’s not that other people can hear my thoughts—at least I hope not—but my intuition tells me that my internal struggle is bound up with everyone else’s. At least if I act as if my inner experience is public, then I will clean up my mind. 

Ultimately, I know that we are all looking for happiness of some kind and maybe samadhi is simply happiness. According to the yoga teachings, happiness actually comes from peace of mind and not from any external thing or other person. Peace of mind occurs when I allow the Witness to come into the foreground. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says:

“There is neither wisdom nor meditation in an always-changing mind. Without a meditative, one-pointed mind, there is no peace. And without peace of mind, how can anyone be happy.” (2.66 Translation by Swami Satchidananda)

What a great question. Without peace of mind, how can anyone be happy? Ironically, I think that’s the exact opposite of what we’re taught in the West. We’re taught that external validation and material possessions will make us happy, and, sadly, my mind is still invested in those pursuits. I have to wonder why my mind allows itself to suffer when I know in my heart that samadhi is the answer. For now, I’m like a hungry caterpillar eating all the leaves. Hopefully someday the yoga chrysalis will transform me completely and allow me to spread my wings. 

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Finding Your Own Yoga

by Nina

Kitcheree

If you carefully read the Yoga Sutras cover to cover and learn about what the eight-fold path really entails, you would realize—and maybe you already have—that this path is not one that we householders can follow in a literal way. First of all, we would have to become renunciates because even being attached to people you love, including your family, interferes with your ability to achieve samadhi. And the path—with its intended goal of liberation from everyday life as we know it—is really quite arduous and severe as we would eventually have to let go of all connection to external reality. As Georg Feuerstein says in The Yoga Tradition:

“At the peak of this ecstatic unification, yogins reach the point of no-return. They become liberated. According the dualistic model of Classical Yoga, this implies the dropping of the finite body-mind. The liberated being abides in perfect “aloneness” (kaivalya), which is a transmental state of sheer Presence and pure Awareness.”

Yet you will also realize that the Yoga Sutras is clearly full of invaluable wisdom, which can bring you a deeper understanding of human nature and help you move toward equanimity in your everyday life. So what's an ordinary householder to do? If we can’t fully commit to the path detailed in the Yoga Sutras, is it okay for us to pick and choose and just use those things that are helpful to us and ignore what doesn’t apply to our every day lives or even our life goals? 

I was very pleased and a bit surprised to see Edwin Bryant address this issue way down deep in the third chapter of The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali under sutra III.29, which is about one of the siddhis (mystical powers). He was discussing how cakras, as well-known as they are, are not part of classic yoga, and he used the metaphor of kitcheree (an Indian dish of rice, legumes, spices, and other ingredients all cooked together) to describe how Westerners tend to mix different elements from different yoga traditions into one big single “generic” Yoga.

“Thus, while the siddhi/sakta/tantra metaphysics is a wonderful and vibrant spiritual universe in its own right, with deep roots in the ancient Indic past, and with its own internal coherence, logic, and appeal, it is not by any means the same as the system being taught by Patanjali. The integrity and distinctiveness of these traditions have a tendency to be erased into a hodgepodge in their Western exportations—into a kind of kitchorie Yoga.”

That sounds a bit negative, but Bryant later goes onto to say that this approach is actually “understandable” and perhaps “inevitable,” and that same type of approach occurred within the Indic culture itself throughout its own history. 

“Thus one finds a generic sort of yoga as presented here in the bits and pieces of Patanjali-type practices as presented here in the sutras but articulated with neo-advaita-vendanta/Brahman terminologies and flavored with elements from tantric subtle physiology, all blended together as if representing a single coherent homogenous tradition. This is understandable—and with plenty of antecedents in premodern Indic traditions themselves one might add (indeed it can be argued that such blending is the very nature of religious traditions)—and perhaps inevitable in the modern West.”

So now I have a name for the type of yoga I’m practicing: Kitcheree Yoga. And I’m willing to bet that’s what most of you are practicing, too. Of course, my kitcheree is created from different elements than yours because we have learned from different teachers and have different temperaments and inclinations. I, myself, don’t go for cakras or koshas, but I certainly mix some of Yoga Sutras with some Bhagavad Gita and other yoga texts into a kitcheree of Iyengar-style poses and mindful asana practice. And my personal recipe is always evolving based on new information I glean as I continue to study yoga history and philosophy. I just keep in mind this statement from Georg Feuerstein that has influenced my personal practice of yoga, in which he says that we should never accept a yogic path or yogic ideas and practices without questioning them.

“In our struggle for self-understanding and psycho-spiritual growth, we can benefit immensely from a liberal exposure to India’s spiritual legacy. We need not, of course, become converts to any path, or accept yogic ideas and practices without questioning. C.G. Jung’s warning that we should not attempt to transplant Eastern teachings into the West rings true at a certain level; mere imitation definitely does more harm than good. The reason is that if we adopt ideas and lifestyles without truly assimilating them emotionally and intellectually, we run the risk of living inauthentic lives.”

As an example of this in action, in his beautiful upcoming post "Metamorphosis" you’ll see how Jivana is currently striving to find what’s authentic for him in the Yoga Sutras and how to apply that to his everyday life as a householder. 

I personally find it "liberating" to have this permission for all of us to have our own individual yoga recipes. And because our blog is written by a collection of very different people, from different yoga backgrounds who practice very different kinds of "yoga," our blog itself is an even more complex and interesting kitcheree of yoga points of view.

My only concern here is that I think when we create our personal kitcherees, even from just those ideas and practices that feel authentic to use, that we should be clear to ourselves and others that this what we’re doing. If we’re not fully committed to the path outlined in the Yoga Sutras or any other path, we should be clear that we’re picking and choosing to find what’s useful for us and our students. And if we’re mixing more modern practices into our kitcheree—which most of us are—we should own up to where they come from and not claim that everything in the kitcheree comes from one single ancient yoga text. That will not only be a practice of truthfulness (satya) but will help avoid confusing yoga students who often struggle to make sense out of completely contradictory claims about what’s in the early yoga texts. 

What’s in your kitcheree?

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Continuing Education

by Nina

The Student by Gwen John

Back in the day when I was an English literature major, I used to feel overwhelmed by all the important classic works of literature I had not yet read. Eventually though I had an insight: wasn’t it wonderful that I would never run out of good things to read? No matter how much time I spent reading, even at the end of my life there would still be undiscovered treasures out there.

These days I’m trying to look at yoga the same way. Even after more than 25 years of practicing, an excellent 500-hour teacher training, numerous special workshops, and ongoing independent studies of yoga history and philosophy, there is still so much I don’t know. And when I crack open a book like Edwin Bryant’s The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, I can feel overwhelmed and insecure because I start to find out that I was mistaken about certain things (though Melitta and I who are reading it together both agreed that at least we were felt ready to read and understand this book—had we read it 15 years ago we wouldn’t have gotten nearly as much out of it). 

Wow, and just the other day when I was researching yoga during the time of Vedas, I went back to Georg Feuerstein’s The Yoga Tradition, which I’ve read cover to cover twice a number of years ago, and found some details that I hadn’t really absorbed the first two times (the part about the three different types of meditation I wrote about it Is Yoga Really 5,000 Years Old). That was rather humbling. I even thought, maybe I should read this book again.

But today I decided that I should look at this the same way I looked at English literature back in the day: how wonderful it is that I can keep on learning new things about yoga on an almost daily basis. After all, I not only learn from research that I do to write posts for you, but because many of the people who write for the blog come from different yoga traditions than I come from (Beth, Jivana, Jill, etc.), when I carefully read the first drafts of their posts—sometimes asking for clarification on certain points so I can understand more thoroughly in order to help them improve their writing—I learn so much! 

As we have learned in The Power of Mental Exercise, Part 1 by Ram continuing education about yoga, whether you’re learning new poses or doing them differently, studying Sanskrit, or digging into yoga philosophy, is excellent for brain health. I love that idea but I think that I'd do it even without that extra motivation because for me learning can be just pure joy. 

So, thanks to all you dear people from whom I've been learning! And thanks to all of you out there for coming on this journey with me!

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