There are two important topics in the title I have to explain straight away before we get into this article. One is the concept of Yoga. Many people only know the westernized concept of Yoga, I am willing to bet that the majority of people straight away think about all kinds of Yoga Poses and stretches, some of you might think about meditation and breathing techniques.
It is true that these things exist and are a large part of Yoga, but these are simply relatively small and commercialized concepts of Yoga. Yoga scriptures are actually the oldest scriptures in the world, preceding the Hindu religion. This is important to understand so you know Yoga has much more to offer than stretches and meditation.
The second topic is the phrase: You are not the body, which is borrowed from one of the most famous Yogis (someone who practices Yoga) of our time; Sadhguru.
The Influence of Sadhguru
Anyone who has heard of Sadhguru will immediately recognize the title of this article. For those who do not, Sadhguru is a he calls himself a Yogi and a Mystic and also one of the most influential people in India.
He has put together many programs to make people experience the power of Yoga. One of the most famous meditations from Sadhguru is called Isha Kriya.
During this meditation one constantly takes the following thought: I am not the body (when breathing in) I am not even the mind (when breathing out). As Sadhguru says: this should create some distance between you and your physical body. Hang on a minute that sounds very strange. We will get back into this later.
For now what is important to remember is the basic thought in Yoga. In anthropology, we call this an ontological assumption. The thoughts start from here. The assumption we make here, following Yoga and Sadhguru is that we are not the body and we are also not the mind.
The Yogi Assumption
Now let’s explore this thought a little bit deeper. Why is it so important? Once more we will discover the importance of the way we use our language and how it influences the way we think and feel.
The importance of this assumption in Yoga is as follows:
When Sadhguru tries to make us aware that we are not our body and not our mind, he wants us to realize that our body and our minds are for us to control.
The mind is like a powerful computer, I often compare it to a Tesla with autopilot or an airplane with autopilot function. If we don’t control it, the autopilot will take over and control us and our emotions. The comparison with a Tesla or Airplane is dual in the sense that you can choose to be in the driver seat or in the backseat, but also that is a vehicle that you get in, similar to the assumption we borrow from Yoga where the body is the vehicle and the mind is the operating system with autopilot functionality.
I also often compare it to the concept of a soul to show the importance of language for our way of thinking. When people use the word “soul” it is often used as posession, like something that you own and is yours. “My soul will go to heaven” or “his soul remained on earth after he passed away”. You cannot be what you have, so in a way this assumes that you are your body and your mind and you possess a soul.
The big difference with yoga thought, although not 100% accurate but to give a rough idea is basically that Yoga says: You do not have a soul, you are your soul and you have a body and a mind. This emphasizes the active role you can play in your life to control your mind and your body.
Thoughts and Feelings
Another important influence from Yoga for me is the realization that we often treat things as exact opposites while they are not.
In this case in particular it is the distinction between feeling, emotions on one hand versus thoughts and logic on the other. In many languages around the world thought and the rational are associated with the brain or mind while feelings or emotions are often associated with the heart.
This distinction in our languages might seem innocent, but language can be powerful. We know how powerful language and words can be when people say mean things to us. Or when one child bullies another, just with words. Words can manifest, and we can start to believe them as I think is the case with the heart and brain distinction.
The problem with this distinction is that people feel logical thoughts, rational thoughts are easy to control because we can have control of our minds. Emotions or feelings on the other hand seem to have a complete life on their own and most people feel like they have no control over the ” heart”.
The Reality of the Mind versus the Heart
If we would stay closer to reality and stay out of the romantic or poetic in this case we will find that the heart is just pumping blood around our body.
There is truly no such thing as a broken heart. If the heart was truly broken we would probably be dead or at least in the back of an ambulance on our way to the hospital. The truth is that our hearts are doing the same thing from the day we were born, for all of us.
This realizations has been important for me to understand that actually our mind is responsible for bot our rational thoughts as well as our emotions.
One yogi once said that emotions are simply thoughts that are connected to sensations in our body.
When I understood that both feelings and rational thoughts come from the same source, it became much easier for me to understand that one can influence the other. Emotions influence thoughts and thoughts influence emotions.
But of course, we already knew this, who ever has very positive rational thoughts when they are in a grumpy mood?
The other way around, rational thoughts influencing emotions, might be less evident, but is nonetheless true. As Sadhguru once said: the difference between rational thoughts and emotions is only that emotions are slow to catch up. We can change our thoughts every second, but emotions will take some time to follow, but in the end, they will follow.
Energy and Sound
One more interesting insight I had from Yoga is the realization that everything consists of energy.
When we are able to observe energy with our ears we call it sound. When we are able to observe with feeling or sight we call it material.
According to Yoga it’s all the same thing just different forms of energy. When we would zoom in to the deepest level of Molecules, Atoms, Neutrons, and Protons we will see that everything is made from different energy. Whether something is positively or negatively charged depends on the frequency of its vibration. High frequency is often associated with positive energy while low vibration is associated with negative energy.
In Yoga, a form of meditation is usually through making certain sounds called Mantras. Even though mantras have a meaning in words to most Yogi the meaning of these words is kind of irrelevant. They are just a way to memorize it more easily or make people feel more comfortable performing the mantras. The real purpose is to use your vocal cords to create certain positive vibrations or sounds.
Even most of us already know the power of sound. I always think about the soldiers in the British army in the 19th century marching under the sounds of the drum. Not only to keep a rhythm and discipline but also to give courage. Would a high-sounding triangle have the same effect? It could definitely keep rhythm and discipline.
Or how many of us have played a certain type of music to either drown deeper in certain emotions or let the music help us to get out of that emotion? We already know it’s not just the lyrics of the song but even more so the rythym and the sounds, we just don’t know why.
According to Yoga, sound and energy are the same thing. And the use of sounds is a powerful tool to positively influence our feelings.
