By: Allison English, Certified Forrest Yoga Instructor
At least a few times per week (sometimes per day) I am asked – “ How can I do what you are asking when my mind is racing a mile a minute with other tasks?” This same question could come from your employee, from your friend, or from your spouse. For me, this question comes from my students – my yoga students – and it is an apt one for what we are practicing. Everyone wants to know how to turn his or her thoughts off and get to the yoga poses…the only problem being that if you are alive, your mind is thinking.
Consider it this way, just as a closet is meant to house clothing and a file cabinet your organized information, the mind supposed to think. That is its job – its very nature. This next part may come as a surprise. I’m suggesting that rather than trying to stop your mind from thinking and creating a whole lot of internal resistance, make a shift along the following lines. The same way you would clean out your closet, donate old clothing or reorganize your shelving (or better yet have M2O do it for you!), you have to maintain your mind. It’s not the thoughts that are the problem, it’s the attachment to those thoughts that gets you caught in their web. So in the same way you need to get rid of that old sweater gathering dust balls in the back of the closet, it’s time to go through the mind and teach it how to refocus with clarity on a single task at hand. Yoga and meditation are two amazing ways to do just this: they create an environment for thoughts to arise and for a new behavior pattern of single focus to be practiced.
Try the following simple yoga and meditation exercises on for size to clean out your Mental Closet:
The beauty of taking a yoga class or practicing a guided meditation is that you are training your mind every single moment of the class every time you do it. You must train the mind muscle as much as the abdominal muscles! These simple exercises get you going on the path of that training. And when you need some back up, call on one of my yoga classes to help you with a tune-up! I’ll see you on the mat soon.
is a certified Forrest Yoga Instructor
and a Faculty Teacher Trainer at Pure Yoga.
She has completed over 1000 hours of training through the Foundation
and Advanced Forrest Yoga Teacher Certification Programs.
She was voted “Best Yoga Instructor – Chicago” in 2008 and has regularly appeared in publications, blogs, and fundraising events as a leading yoga instructor in the Chicago community.
This article was written by Mission 2 Organize
3 comments:
I love this idea of cleaning out our minds like we do closets, brilliant!! thanks for the tips Allison!
Cathy
Such a brilliant idea! Thanks for the info…we can all use this. Two thumbs up.
[…] your mind and your surroundings so you can sit quietly and enjoy the butterflies of happiness! Blog this! […]