It's pretty mind blowing for me to think about the amount of science and research we've cultivated over the years humankind has been on Earth. That, using language, we can convey meaning to each other and reach greater depths of understanding about the nature of the Universe, how our bodies work, and even begin to delve into the perplexing inner workings of our minds. Things like consciousness and where it comes from arise to the forefront of my curiosity, and what we can do with it. But today's post in going to be a little more practical. I hope.
We'll talk about the brain, and the body. They sort of appear separately from a conceptual standpoint, so let me break this down. I'll use a story.
The brain is the command center. It is separate from the battlefield (the environment) and protected by a fortress (the skull). It has millions of tiny fiber optic cables snaking their way out of the main headquarters, probing into the world to receive input from an array of (sensory) units. It needs the input from these sense units to know what sort of commands it needs to send out to its (motor) units that organize functional responses to the environment. These appear as divisions in the nervous system; our sensory cortex and our motor cortex divide regions in the brain that are necessary to carry out the input/output functions, which go down into and come back from the body.
Essentially, the body itself is just one big feeling, sensing unit. It has divisions of labor, pertaining to smell, taste, sight, hearing, touch, etc. But overall, its job is to be the instrument that receives information from the environment, pertaining to what the brain determines as necessary, while also being the instrument that carries out whichever tasks the brain also has determined as necessary. Somewhere up in the brain, and perhaps this is purely symbolic and conceptual, there sits a high commander who is calling the shots. Determining what to look for and perceive, probing the world with its senses, and consequently determining how it wants to respond to this information. These choices are all governed by an underlying force of survival. The primary role of the mind is to make sure we are doing the best we can as a living entity in a world that seems to need our attention. The question is -what are we putting our attention on? If you are following this conceptual model so far: what we place our attention on, will determine our behavior.
In yoga, we have a way define these two distinct dimensions of mind's function. The sensing mind, the part of us receiving the data from the world, is what we call the ida channel. Ida corresponds to the left side of our body, our right brain hemisphere, and receives. It is feminine and lunar by nature. The directing mind, the part of us sending out commands for our body to respond to the world, is what we call the pingala channel. Pingala corresponds to the right side of body, our left brain hemisphere, and it directs. It is masculine and solar by nature.
The essence of yoga is to balance these two aspects of us, so that our mind is equanimous in all moments. That we don't try too hard when we don't need to, and that we give forth the precise amount of effort when the time comes to act. A balanced mind is one in which we are feeling our environment completely and responding to all of the information available to us. We experience the frustrations of an imbalanced mind when we are too passive in the face of challenge, or we are too rigid in an environment requiring us to be flexible. What would life be like when we can effortlessly navigate between these two seemingly opposite forces of nature flowing through us?
We've all gotten a taste of what this is like. I believe that through practice we can cultivate longer and more sustained periods of this balance. I am thankful to have learned practices that are designed to bring in this balance and I love to share them with anyone interested in going into this work with me. I hope to see you soon and thank you for reading.