Ashtanga and the Mind

[Guest guest]

Has anyone experienced significant

psychological/spiritual change as a result of starting the practice of

ashtanga yoga? After only one week of practice, I really

feel like my mind and body is starting to come alive.

The subtle changes I am experiencing are increased

focus and creativity, and clearer thinking. This is

very exciting to me since I have Tourette's Syndome,

which in my case is manifested as ADD and OCD. Its not

noticable to friends or co-workers since I take medication.

Internally, however, I experience monkey mind big time. I was

recently starting to become depressed about the whole

thing since day to day living can be a challenge at

times. Things have started to change...little, but

significant changes. I was watching Richard Freeman's video

when all of a sudden the words "attention" and

"breath" came to mind. It was then that I realized that

ashtanga yoga could provide some relief. I have to

confess, I must have listened to Richard's short talk

about the bandhas, ujjayi breathing and the gaze about

10 different times, but I was hooked. I realized

that here was a tool...my own mind and body, the

source of my pain was also the source of the

healing...psychologically and spiritually. Such a simple, but extremely

significant message. So every other day I do 15 minutes of

sun salutations, briefly rest, close out my mind/body

workout with a brisk 2 mile walk. This stuff is powerful!

I would love to hear from others.

[Guest guest]

"Has anyone experienced significant

psychological/spiritual change as a result of starting the practice of

ashtanga yoga?"<br><br>Yes, definitely, absolutely. For me

it wasn't in my first week of practice, though, more

like my fourth year before I've really started to feel

big changes. <br><br>Yoga has taught me to accept

myself as whoever I am on any particular day. To try

hard and put dedicated effort into something without

being completely hung up on illusions of "success" or

"failure" or "achievement". <br><br>I came out of a

childhood and early adulthood of being very able and very

competitive academically, believing that I was only worth

anything if I was "very good" or "the best" at things I

did, regularly giving myself savage mental beatings if

I wasn't. It's such a relief to have

stopped!<br><br>I was also a very enthusiastic rock climber for

many years (despite giving myself a lot of mental

grief about not being "good enough" at it) and there

was a trap there which I'm trying to avoid with

astanga yoga. At times I definitely drifted towards the

illusion that climbing was the only thing worth doing and

climbers were the only people worth associating with. This

wasn't a healthy attitude to life, and I don't want to

fall down that hole again. Yoga has given me a lot,

including some good friends, but I'm very wary of becoming

obsessive about it or mixing with people who

are.<br><br>Obviously I can't know for sure how much of the change I

feel in myself is directly attributable to yoga and

how much is just me eventually growing up - there

isn't, as far as I'm aware, a control version of me out

there somewhere doing all the same things except the

yoga. But it feels to me like the largest part of it is

the yoga.