I have been writing recently about cleansing with nutrition, breath, and visualisation. We can add to this herbs and specialy sequenced Hatha Yoga practices for an all-round Yoga-Ayurveda approach to cleansing the body.

Did you know that Yoga is essentially a path of purification? We tend to think of it as a fitness-based physical practice, right?  However, as I am sure you are already coming to understand, it is so much more.

In the early stages of Yoga practice, we are purifying the body with postures, breath, lifestyle, and Yogic diet. Think about the nature of the postures we practice and their effect on that part of the torso from the upper abdomen down.

In forward folds, prone backbends and in twists, not only are muscles made more supple and strong, but the internal organs of detoxification and elimination get a little inner massage. Stagnant blood is squeezed out and fresh blood is moved in and around the internal organs as we come in and out of these postures giving them more tone and supporting their better function.

Also, as we take a different shape in each posture, so the breath also takes a different shape and it seems as if the breath moves into different parts of the torso. Of course, the breath does not really move below the diaphragm but the shaping of the breath via Yoga postures helps to carry fresh Prana (through the breath and posture shape) to the inner organs, revitalising them and enhancing their function.

This enhanced functioning of the inner organs increases their capacity to breakdown and assimilate nutrients making the body stronger, and also their capacity to expel metabolic and food wastes and toxins. As wastes are expelled, the body is also supported to become stronger and more vital, and the energy that was once used to process toxins can now be used for living.

Moreover, in working with fuller and more aligned breath patterns during posture practice, and moving in breath coordinated movements, alongside pranayama (breath practices), our nervous system becomes more steady and stronger. We thereby develop greater stress resilience as our whole body-mind-energy system moves into a harmonious alignment.

All this contributes to a body which can keep itself cleaner, freer, clearer and so more vital.

This is that Yoga glow some of you recognise in dedicated practitioners!

If you’ve been practicing Yoga for any amount of time, you will have felt the wonderful aligned feeling that arises at the end of a good class.

My friends, a good practice has nothing to do with having attained the next complicated posture. It has everything to do with how you feel at the end of class. If you feel balanced and at ease in body and mind at the end of your Yoga class, then you have had a successful practice.

And with regular and frequent practice, this alignment and strength starts to spill over into daily life, right? Some of you experience this already. The body-mind-energy balance can be sustained beyond the class, and we become happier, and kinder as with greater internal balance and resilience, we are less easily knocked off centre. We have more control over our choices and can make healthful choices supported by a new steadiness of mind which allows us to pause a little before we commit to anything and/or move into action. We perhaps begin to feel a still, steady presence within the core of our being, despite the flux of life. This presence carries us, and allows us to feel supported to make better choices which are true to who we really are, and to be less reactive and more compassionate towards ourselves and others.

The sign of a successful, committed Yoga practice is not that you are becoming more flexible and able to do more advanced postures. It is about finding yourself becoming a kinder and more compassionate, forgiving person. I’m sure you get that, yes?

Because you see, dear friend, whilst in the initial stages, Yoga practice is about purification of the body. As we become gradually more and more adept and committed, and as we (hopefully) get drawn into deeper and subtler aspects of practice, we naturally enter pathways for purification of the mind.

Purification of the mind allows us to know and experience who we truly are in our essential nature and consequently our personal suffering begins to decrease as well as the suffering we may unwittingly cause others decreases, as our thoughts, words, and actions become more aligned with our true Self. 

This is the real goal of Yoga and, in fact, for Yogis it is the true purpose of our life.

Our prime responsibility in life is  held to be awakening to who we truly are in the heart of our being, and to live from that. Our Essential nature is one of infinite wisdom, love, compassion and kindness – all the qualities of the heart where our true Self dwells.

There is so much that clouds that knowing and experience of our True Nature, isn’t there? And one of the greatest blessings of the Yoga practices, I feels is that they begin to remove those clouds from the mind, so that we can remember that we are not our feelings and thoughts, and recall who we are in truth. 

The Yoga texts talk about “vrittis”, which are waves or turbulences that pass through the body and the mind. Vrittis are the various disturbances we all experience on a daily basis. By harmonising the flow of Prana in the body, the vrittis are pacified and this not only restores and supports health in the body, but also brings balance and calm to the mind, which allows an experience of that part of us beyond the reach of the mind, that part of us that can watch and expereince the mind. As mind is stilled, the whole, indivisible and and unlimited Self is revealed to us.

A helpful analogy is perhapas to equate vrittis in the mind to waves on the surface of the ocean. The waves disturb the ocean surface so that when the moon shines on it, for example,  the reflection is distorted due to the moving waves. The reflection then is  “Impure”. In the same way, when vrittis are arising in the mind, our understanding of the nature of things and of our own True Nature is distorted. The water which makes the waves on the ocean is the same as that vast and still body of water that is there in the ocean’s depths. And yet in it’s depths, the water is untouched and undisturbed by the surface waves. When the waves are stilled, we can see through into the depths. 

And it is so within our own being. The turbulences moving through the mind as vrittis can be stilled by purification practices so that we see the clear and infinite nature of our being. Perhaps you have glimpsed this also in your Yoga practice? Vrittis become quiet, so that maybe you reach a state where not even a thought moves through your mind. Have you expereinced this? 

And when the mind is still, we feel our whole selves to be still, spacious, boundaryless and timeless, as our sense of presence extends endlessly into the space around us. 

The vrittis arise through wrong living (such as intake of stimulants, lack of sleep, poor diet and/or irregular eating, overwork, living in stressful or toxic environments).

And they are also the effect through past experiences. This is usually a mix of memories, conditioning, learning, past karmas, traumas, and emotional hurts, maybe in our early life. 

This process of pacifying the mind, allows us to see into our own depths, from where we have a capacity to draw on a still, ocean-like reflection on the nature of the vrittis  arising in our field of awareness. 

Anchoring ourselves in the stillness of our being through the purifying practices, we become less pulled and hooked by the vrittis. We become more and more able to anchor ourselves in that changeless, still ocean of consciousness which is untouched by (the now quietening) surface waves of the mind.

Less hooked by the vrittis, we are less likely to be pulled into the pain they endlessly give rise to, and our mind and life is purified.

We can then move in life from clear seeing, which allows us to make wholesome choices and take actions which give rise to positive and beneficial effects in our inner world and in the world around us.

And so to recap, Yoga is a path of purification of the body and the mind, It brings us from the clouded, distorted perspectives of who we are and mistaken notions about the world we interact with, to a clear and true perception of who we truly  and how this world works.

This purification therefore reduces suffering on the mental-emotional level, just as physical purification reduces suffering in the body. And that is it’s whole intent in Yoga.

There are many different paths of Yoga, not only Hatha Yoga. There is Raja Yoga (Yoga of the Mind), Jnana Yoga (the Yoga of Enquiry), Karma Yoga (the Yoga of Selfless Service), Bhakti Yoga (Yoga of Devotion). The thread that links all of these Yogas is that they all purify and transform the mind so that we may awaken to spiritual consciousness. 

I hope this has been of interest and that it might add a little to your Yoga journey and it’s potential to transform your life.

PS By the way, Ayurveda understands that our foods and lifestyle will also affect our state of mind and it’s capacity for clear or distorted seeing! 😊 The Yogi practices Ayurveda to support health and strength in body and mind.

I hope you will enjoy the short video below, where I teach you how to work with a Raja Yoga practice from the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali for transforming negative and destructive thought tendencies.

If you’d like to do more work on the Yoga of the Mind, then why not join us for study of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. We will look at the Sutras from both a Yoga and Ayurveda perspective. 

OR ask me for access to my new Podcast, Tea with Patanjali