Samskara

I've always loved yoga's approach to the conditioning of one's state of mind, but my fascination was recently refreshed when my husband and I went to see three nights of music in Miami over the holidays. We spent our days quiet and blissful, walking on the beach, watching the people and the waves, and we filled our nights with the kind of music that swept us up, body and mind, and just let us hang-glide in the bliss of music that made us dance and laugh, throw up our hands and scream with the pleasure of deeply felt, celebratory music. And, as we hung there, that state of mind started to become more familiar, broken-in, and so much easier to find in the days that followed, like a favorite spot in the woods whose path just needs to be re-beaten every now and again.

It was my most tangible experience in a while of the yogic practice of familiarizing oneself with bliss. If yoga means balance, then vacation, time in nature, time with music and beauty that feeds our souls, all serve to balance our daily business-doing state of mind with its complete opposite: reminding us how to play, and beating open the path to the parts of our brains where we are still children, innocent, open, curious and ready to play.

In yogic philosophy, samskara is the term used to refer to states of mind that become habitual. It is a fact with which every practicioner of yoga (and every conscious liv-er of life) will eventually contend. Samskara can be thought of as the ruts in a road when wagon wheels keep finding the same path to drive on, until they are deep and nearly impossible for future wheels not to settle into. Samskara, from the words "sam", meaning same and "skara", meaning action, refers to the habits of thought that just become the familiar way our brain works, until that sameness starts to feel to us like wisdom... instinct... when all it is, for better or worse, is simple, blind habit.

Throughout our lives, our brains are remaking themselves, just like our bodies are, in order to make themselves optimal for the tasks that are required of them. So, when what we experience day after day is stressful, drama-driven and chaotic, then that is the state to which our minds most readily default, even to the point that they are so much more comfortable with drama that they will find it even where it does not exist. Conversely, when we make a practice of finding and lingering in bliss.... or at least in peace as a mid-point to bliss... that state is easier to find the next time we are in need of it.

In yogic meditation, mental ruts are what mantras are created to address, every time we exhale. Poetry, scripture, song lyrics, quotes from favorite books or people... anything that ushers your mind into a state of calm, hopefulness, benevolence, gratitude. It's also soothing just to meditate on breath itself: inhaling strength, exhaling tension; inhaling joy, exhaling frustration; inhaling light, exhaling dark. When we are finally able to rest in a mantra, our bodies respond the same way they do to things like laughter and celebration: we become more alkaline, and so less prone to inflammation, our parasympathetic nervous system engages to lower our blood pressure, and we release even our deep, habitual tension.

In asana yoga, have you ever changed your whole state of mind just by adopting an open-hearted, exuberant posture, and breathing deeply into the extension, just taking up space? Since we throw our faces to heaven and our hearts open in moments of exuberance, our bodies can effect the same change inversely, reminding our minds of the path back to the state of mind that has inspired that posture before.

I'll write more in the future about learning mental quiet, but I can't leave this subject without also inviting comment on the off-the-mat mental peace that grows out of the same mindfulness we practice on the mat when we are finally able to rest in a difficult posture. When we can be both calm and challenged at the same time, when we can keep our breath relaxed and joyful while our bodies are working, we are learning to let our calm exist next to our discomfort: to observe the work without reacting to it and losing our peace. Then is when whole-body transformation takes place. The muscles we are trying to strengthen can finally take responsibility for the work that is theirs, and the muscles that have been straining under habitual tension can melt into the breath.

Our bodies have the potential to be powerful teachers for our minds, and our minds for our bodies. Just like practicing a difficult pose strengthens our bodies' ability to be there, practicing a positive state of mind strengthens our minds' ability to be there. I'd love to hear how you as practicioners learn to be familiar with the state of mind that allows both effort and surrender, strength and ease, focus and adventurous play. May that be the mental posture from which we move into the moments in life when we know we need to establish a new pattern: cultivate a new strength, let go of a habitual tension, compose a new mantra, and just breathe the bliss!

Namaste!