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Before class the other day, one of our beautiful students was telling me he was having a hard time keeping his mind quiet, even during his ashtanga practice. There is a lot going on in his life, and it keeps getting churned up, uncontrollably.
I suggested he follow his breath in the practice, paying attention to the sound and quality, and trying to keep the same sound for the inhale and exhale. This is a simple and profound way of keeping the mind occupied with something that doesn’t create emotions and distraction.
After class, we had a great conversation, and I suggested he use a mantra in his daily life, as an anchor back to “no-thinking”. This is an important practice, one which I do pretty much during the whole day, to rest the mind and nervous system and to stay connected to the present.
Everyone knows, through experience, how lost we can be in our thoughts. We lose hours of the day from our consciousness by simply being in a thought fog that only brings anxiety and really just repeats the same dilemmas without any true solutions or insight. In fact, the brain, which takes up more energy than any other organ in the body, becomes so tired from this constant churning, that it loses its capacity for novel thoughts, and we become exhausted from the calories consumed while it’s just running in circles.
Having a mantra practice, and keeping to it as much as we can during the day, actually relieves the brain, and allows the body to unclench from the tightness of mental loop-running. Practicing this for a week or so, we begin to feel spaciousness in our day, a quieting of the mental looping. The longer we do this, the more established this quiet spaciousness becomes. And in that space, we have a much greater capacity to think outside the box. We are less tired and we can actually dedicate time consciously to the issues we have, and with the spacious approach, we have room for insight!
Any mantra will do. It can be in any language you want, even in one you don’t really understand. I suggested to our student that it have a vibration that feels good, a rhythm, and for it to be a little longer than 3-4 words, simply because it takes a little more awareness to repeat a longer phrase.
Finally, the most important point is to do this with the clear, conscious intention of liberating the mind from these unhelpful loops. To consciously become the driver of thinking and attention, rather than be the victim of whatever stress or confusion life brings. Being the driver in this sense is not about ‘controlling’ thoughts, quite the opposite, it’s about releasing control, and we do so by gently guiding the mind away from its automatic pilot and into a quiet and relaxed state. Only then can we truly make novel choices and find solutions to daily problems.
