All our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling. -- Blaise Pascal

Yoga offers an opportunity to get in touch with your feeling. To get in touch with your feelings you must be willing to get quiet and still. When the mind is swarming inside and the outside world is pulsating with noise it is very difficult to get close to the quietude of your soul. Your soul is the source of your instincts, hunches, and intuition.

It is interesting to watch some students in a yoga class squirm and run away from stillness and quietude. Then there are others who strive to find that quiet place within. When we move into ourselves we void out the world. I think the fear is often times that we will miss something. In the deep moments of quietude one realizes there is nothing to miss.

Feelings or emotions are far different than thought. Thought is an intellectual process that clearly states a position. Emotions and feelings then enter into the mind and the thought becomes charged with energy. For example we may decide to do something and tell ourselves,” I can do this.” Then we attach an emotion such as,”I am afraid I may fail at this.” These two mind states are contra-currents that cause us conflict. It is much like having a love-hate relationship with something or someone. Balancing these mind states brings about the removal of attachment, ego, and conceit. When these are removed the mind is no longer distracted. When distractions are removed the mind becomes balanced and centered and one is capable of moving into a state of quietude. This quietude brings self awareness.

Quietude of mind brings purity to our attitudes and perceptions. Without this quietude the mind becomes scattered and life energy is dissipated. We experience stress, chaos, and negativity.

In yoga there are three “gates of anguish”, which destroy self awareness. They are greed, anger, and craving. If the intellectual self is enslaved by any of these the mind will also be enslaved. It is the nature of the mind to run towards objects and thus outward and away from self awareness. It is through quietude that the mind is able to withdraw from the outside world and move back into inner awareness. This is the path of yoga.

This brings us back to feelings and emotions. If we can train the mind to step back from the rampant running of feelings and emotions, we can connect with the reasoning mind. Reasoning allows us to find balance and balance is the key to establishing inner peace and serenity.

It is not that we should never feel or express emotions. The goal is to become detached from the emotion and feeling so that we can find inner peace. Inner peace is quietude and stillness. In quietude and stillness we can become aware of our feelings and emotions from a place of balance and often times realize (reason) that feelings harnessed inward find their ability to reason.

Doctor Lynn
www.doctorlynn.com