Posts Tagged ‘yoga asana present meditation focus brain neural practice’
What Does it Mean to “Be Present” During Your Practice?
I’ve had a number of breakthroughs thus far during my time in the Advanced Studies program. Among the most fundamental is learning what a difference focus makes in my practice. Not just taking a physical pose, or asana, but actually thinking about what my body is doing in the pose. Having a little conversation with all the various muscle groups involved in a particular pose – making sure the proper ones are engaging and the proper ones relaxing – has changed the relationship I have with my body. We used to speak in strained whispers but now we have an active dialogue. All this has come from being present and focused while on my mat.
I read an article recently that talked about how the brain behaves when you repeat activities. When you do something over and over, the brain tends to use neural pathways in the same area each time. And if you’ve done something many times, you can do it without giving much focus to the activity. That allows you to multitask. Like how you can walk and talk on the phone at the same time. At one point in your life, you needed to apply tremendous focus in order to walk. Then after a while, you stopped focusing on it. Since then, you’ve taken millions of steps. And if you’ve done something over a million times, wouldn’t you think you’d be an expert at it? Wrong. We trip, stumble, and fall all the time. Why aren’t we all flawless walking experts at this point? Because when you don’t focus on an activity, you will never do it as well as you can do it and you will not improve.
But when you focus on what we are doing, you get better each time. The brain PHYSICALLY changes the neural pathways that control the activity. This is how “muscle memories” are built. So when your instructor tells you to “be present,” that’s what they mean. By being present you engage the brain. And when you engage the brain, you improve not only your practice at the moment, but your future practice as well.
