the Mind as a Field of Experience in our Yoga Practice

Yoga Leaflet 6

Richard Freeman in his book "The Mirror of Yoga; Awakening the Intelligence of Body and Mind", sees yoga as "a path to undo the root of all types of misery through the direct experience of deep, clear, open awareness. Ultimately we find that it is an attraction to the joy of this liberating experience that underlies all our other desires and that attracts us into the realm of practice in the first place."(page 21)
In short we know the world through our bodies, we are embodied beings. Our schooling may have given us the idea that gaining knowledge is an activity that negates the body(is of the mind), within the yoga tradition the body is seen as our means of practice, our instrument or tool of perception, through which we perceive and get to know our reality.

We feel fulfilled and centred at the end of a yoga class as if we have re-claimed a larger part of ourselves.

In yoga asanas combined with the breathing practice, we have a situation where we focus on and join different aspects of the body and mind. The phenomenal body becomes the field of direct experience of our world. As we practice our yoga postures, the feeling, sensations, thoughts and emotions that arise in our awareness become the centre of our practice and focus. We are drawn into a natural state of attention, observing and experiencing (witnessing) the ever changing patterns of energy shifts and other sensations of the pose. It is in a sense a first step into meditation, an integration of body and mind, an open awareness to whatever is.
This growing awareness leads to evaluation and adjustments and refinement of the postures over time. The practice is a process of unfolding and a deepening of the mind/body connection.
Breathing is another important and physical aspect of the yoga practice. It leads to an awareness of the more subtle Prana (universal energy) as it manifests in various patterns in the body. This merging process with the posture in its more physical and subtle dimensions, can lead to an experience of resonance with the core of the body that allows the mind to dissolve into the back-ground, leading to a more direct experience of the here and now.

Richard Freeman (page 26) states: "The physical practices become our means of watching the process of our own natural intelligence interfacing with reality; it drifts off one way before spiralling back and curling the other way, always orbiting, circling, coming closer and closer to the ideal of uniting opposite patterns within the field of our awareness, this form of intelligence lies at the heart of all the different yoga traditions…."

Watching the mind as a particular field of experience can be challenging. The function of the mind is to make sense of things, to organise, categorise, to understand and it is difficult to separate the mind-field observed from the observing mind itself. This means that the assumptions of the observing mind may go unnoticed. It is here that according to Richard Freeman the ego can become the trickster. The ego thrives on the process of mind, the space between consciousness and the content of consciousness, which he likens to a sky (consciousness) and a cloud (content/ego). Here ego arising truth are seen as knots (clouds), which are separate and mentally constructed aspects of the Self, and this mentally constructed Self is felt to be the true value and happiness of our being. The ego likes well defined boundaries, simple measurable facts. The function of the ego is to reduce everything and a need for certainty and control, so it also likes to contain and limit the experience of the self.
Even within a well intentioned yoga practice, the ego can easily surface if we transform any aspect of the posture into a formula we know. "I know it; have been there, done that. What next?" It likes to reduce truth and in this way reign supreme!
A healthy ego should give us a reference point from which to begin our observation and to maintain the health of the body and mind in relationship with the environment in an on-going dialogue. Our ego is that which separates us from our background, our surroundings, a reference point which should be allowed to step back in our practice, in order for a deeper natural intelligence to surface in open awareness.

The body is much more than the theories and the map that the ego and mind tend to make of it. We need to move beyond categorisation and not mistake the map (ego knowledge) for the territory it represents. In yoga we use some kind of map into a posture, we frame it and then need to reframe it. Stepping back we need to see that the practice is also the observation of what is arising. As we pay attention, this simple clear observation enables us to cut through our own layers of programming, preconception and habitual perception. It is a process of giving space to whatever arises in our consciousness. We cultivate the ability to observe clearly rather than ruling ourselves with an iron rod.
"Having habitual responses to things as they arise is a perfectly natural state of affairs, so the practice and the work become to watch these patterns as they arise and to foster within ourselves the ability to not react, project or overlay our preconceptions. Our very own body which is immediately available to us, becomes a laboratory of consciousness, a field of exploration into the truth of our own existence, so that, figuratively speaking our body becomes a temple for open awareness."(page 36)

It reminds me of two observations and points of views offered by Neil Walsh in one of his: "Conversations with God" books:
God is Absolute. (ego?)
God is a process.(Self?)
Thanks!
Marjolein (02 07 2013)

Reference:
Richard Freeman: The Mirror of Yoga. Awakening the intelligence of body and mind.
Shambala. 2012
Richard has been a student of yoga since 1968. He is a well known teacher and philosopher in America.

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