“Yogas citta vritti nirodhah” is translated as ‘the technique of yoga can stop the movement of the mind’. Lancashire Yogi loves this sutra by Patanjali. Not least because his mind is always swinging like a monkey from branch to branch in the forest of his thoughts. So how do you stop the restless movement of the mind with all of its disturbances and distractions?
The three most obvious tactics you can deploy to calm the mind and eliminate the mental disturbances and distractions are asana, pranayama and meditation. Yoga asanas (postures) are the first way you can do this: try getting your body into one of the yoga postures and you’ll find that you are soon focused on the twists and contortions and not on “the boss yelling at you today” or “the girl who ignored you” or “the boyfriend who has left you for a new lover”, or the countless other “he did”, “she said” type of things that can drive you to distraction. Pranayama (breathing) is another way you can do this: using the breath to focus and calm the mind. And meditation is the third most obvious tactic that you can deploy.
Interestingly, Lancashire Yogi thinks that we tend to forget the role of the Yamas in eliminating the mental disturbances and distractions. They are a longer term framework for living that can help eliminate the afflictions. They consist of ahimsa, satya, asteya, brahmacarya and aparigraha.
Ahimsa – denotes an attitude and behaviour towards all living creatures based on the recognition of the underlying unity of all life. Ahimsa is effectively non-violence and extends to physical acts of violence, and verbal aggression, as well as mental attitudes of violence and harm towards others. All the negative attitudes of mind such as anger, are as much acts of violence as throwing a fist. The use of horrid words are equally violent acts in their own right. Where you have an attitude of violence or aggression you only serve to crank up more disturbance in your own mind, let alone others’ minds.
Satya – means more than simply being truthful. It means avoiding exaggeration, dissembling, equivocation, pretense and similar faults which are all part of the spectrum of untruthfulness. To be living satya, one must be speaking truth unequivocably. Of course being honest and truthful is hard: do you say what you really think? Or do you withhold this if it is hurtful? A clue is to go back to Ahimsa – above all do no harm. So, communicating the truth of your feelings or thoughts needs to be done in a non-violent way: one which avoids causing harm, but in a way that enlightens and opens out possibilities. It’s amazing how a little lie becomes a bigger and bigger lie – as Shakespeare said in ‘the scottish play’ – “oh what a tangled web we weave’. The more you live by the spectrum of untruth: the more caught up you get and your mind becomes disturbed and distracted.
Asteya – means abstaining from stealing. But it also means avoiding the misappropriation of anything. Stealing ideas, stealing property, stealing relationships are all equally regarded as stealing, and should be avoided. Taking the credit from someone else for something they did and getting the praise or adulation is also a form of stealing. The objects of theft are always going to worm their way into your mind and create chaos. Your mind can no longer stay calm when you are stealing ideas, property, reputations or relationships.
Brahmacarya means not getting trapped in the pleasures of life. Most people read this yama as a call for celibacy and avoidance of sex and sexuality. While it is a request for the the yogi to be careful and sensible about sex and not get caught or trapped in the arms of maya the temptress – its also about not indulging in any of the pleasures in life to the extent that you can lose yourself so much in the pleasure that you begin to lose yourself in life. Brahmacarya is also about avoiding and certainly not becoming addicted to the pleasures of other sensory features of life – drugs, alcohol, food, gambling, play etc. The trick is not to so overindulge that you become addicted and lost in the experience. Alcohol may be ok in very small doses but think about it – too much alcohol and then your inhibitions drop and before you know it you may be causing harm to others (by arguing with them) or exaggerating about something to impress someone. So Brahmacarya can help the practitioner avoid getting caught up in the net of the senses and disturbed and distracted along the way.
Aparigraha is translated as the absence of greediness, but it can also relate to not being possessive. If you are grasping, greedy or possessive you are immediately hooking yourself into things that then can control you. Trouble is that the tendency to accumulate things, possessions, and relationships is very strong for most us. But of course, the moment we get hooked in this way,it is yet another way for us to be caught up and our mind becomes distracted and disturbed. Accumulation of possessions, things, relationships, and objects means that we are able to increasingly complicate our lives. We can spend lots of time and energy accumulating things and then worrying about the things we accumulate. The result is that we are forever on a treadmill of mental thoughts about obtaining, maintaining and keeping things.
By working towards the achievement of these five yamas over the long term, the mind can gradually become less afflicted by disturbances and distractions. Working in tandem with asana, meditation and pranayam which are daily short term measures – the yamas can provide an ethical framework in the long term to reduce the afflictions that create the disturbances and distractions in the mind
a very english yogi 