Yoga, Health, and Wellness Articles + Recipes

When you meditate, I want you to be hopeless. It may sound strange, but I simply want you to lose that need to drive forward that we all have. Instead of focusing on expectations and outcomes, I want you to witness what’s going on in your mind at this moment.

The main goal of what we do in yoga is to reach a state called Samadhi. Samadhi is the very state of yoga, and it is a very difficult thing to describe. The only description is “nothing.” That’s a very hard thing to explain – how this nothing can be so good for you. In our lives we’re born with five senses and our five senses are given to us to explore and to survive, all as part of evolution. But the senses aren’t really designed at all for us to look inside; they are designed for us to be in the world, to survive and do stuff out there, and to be busy with life. And that’s the problem.

We all have different personalities. All day we put on the various masks we’ve learned to develop since when we were babies. The more we put on these masks, the more they become who we think we are. So, how do we integrate these different personalities? One of the most amazing experiences in yoga that helps us achieve this is Pratyahara, or drawing the senses inward. We want to bring ourselves to a neutral place so we can focus our senses in, but this is one of the hardest lessons in yoga. The difficulty is most evident when we look at our emotions, our personalities. Heightened emotions happen in life, and it’s hard to say, “Oh, I’m just being silly. Let it go.” Instead, the ego wants to come out.