The Thinking Yogi
by Kerry Maiorca

November 2006: The myth of enlightenment

Have you ever been in a yoga class, trying to stay focused on breathing and relaxing and following the sequence of poses, when suddenly you’re bombarded by negative thoughts and judgments?

Perhaps you feel frustrated at not being able to keep your balance in tree pose. Or you’re discouraged that you still can’t touch your toes in a forward bend. Or maybe you get annoyed that you’re even thinking about these things in the middle of a yoga class. Meanwhile, your teacher tells you to clear your mind and follow your breath, but the harder you try to stop the negative thoughts the more persistent they seem.

Thoughts pop in and out of our heads all the time. The job of the mind is to think and it’s next to impossible to shut that off. So, you may ask, why is your yoga teacher asking you to do the impossible, to let go of thoughts and judgments? Is it just flowery “yoga talk?”

Your teacher isn't asking you to stop judgments from coming altogether, she's suggesting that you alter your reaction to them. In truth, the initial negative thought that pops into your head isn’t the problem; it’s the five minutes of ruminating on that thought and allowing it to snowball into something huge that has such a negative impact on the mind.

When I first began yoga I believed that if I practiced enough, I would become “enlightened” and negative thoughts and judgments would cease. It was frustrating when after practicing for several years it seemed that not only were the negative thoughts still there, they almost seemed more prevalent than before!

Of course this wasn’t the case. Rather, because I was paying such close attention it seemed that I was experiencing a greater volume of judgmental thoughts. In order to stop the automatic process of going from one negative thought to a string of negativity and judgment, I needed to understand the pattern. For example, the thought “You’ve messed up again,” would come up and rather than automatically proceeding to “You never do anything right,” and “You shouldn’t even bother trying,” I’d simply focus on something else, be it breath or a sensation I felt in a yoga pose, as a way of redirecting my focus.

After experiencing a bit of success with this method, I started to feel proud that I’d conquered negativity and could enjoy this new judgment-free me. But I soon discovered that judgmental thoughts kept coming and still required just as much discipline to not follow them, although the more I practiced the easier it became to disengage from it.

I suppose it’d be nice if there was such a thing as a state of “enlightenment” in which we were simply content all the time, but the more years of practice I have under my belt, the more I see practice not as a chore but rather an integral and enjoyable part of daily life, as it enables me to improve my experience of the world and come closer to being the person I want to be.