How Does Ashtanga Yoga Cultivate Mindfulness?
This article is your guide on the different ways in which Ashtanga yoga cultivates mindfulness.
Ashtanga yoga also called the Ashtanga Vinyasa yoga, integrates flow (vinyasas) with the breath.
The foundation of Ashtanga yoga is nothing but breath control. It is the link between body and mind.
You begin the practice of Ashtanga yoga with inhalation and conclude it with an exhalation. Breath initiates movement, shapes it, and guides it.
Staying connected to the breath at all times during Ashtanga practice is what leads to its quality of cultivating mindfulness. During practice, one is aware of each in-breath and out-breath.
Ashtanga yoga cultivates mindfulness by promoting a conscious connection to one’s breath. A particular quality of the Ashtanga yoga breath is that it creates a sound. This sound becomes the object of mindfulness because every time the mind wanders, it is gently brought back to the sound of the breath, and to the breath itself. The practice of Ashtanga is rooted in mindfulness.
This article is your guide on the different ways in which Ashtanga yoga cultivates mindfulness.
Read on!
1. Preserves peacefulness while working on strength and stability
Ashtanga yoga is physically demanding.
An incredible amount of attention and mindfulness is needed to ensure that the technique of the posture is right, along with its form, it’s coming into and coming out of.
At the same time, there is an effortlessness, a looseness, of the body and mind that is necessary to avoid any tension and stress when in the practice.
This balance of meticulousness with ease, of concentration with flexibility, is what renders Ashtanga yoga its quality to cultivate mindfulness of the body, mind, breath, movement, and the present moment, while being comfortable and serene.
2. Utilizes the equal breathing technique to increase focus and attention
The breathing in Ashtanga yoga is equal, which means that inhalations and exhalations are of the same duration.
If you inhale for the count of six, you would exhale for the count of six.
This breath is maintained all throughout the duration of Ashtanga practice.
While there are many benefits to this breathing technique, like purifying the lungs, improving alignment, and finding stability in asanas, it also works on the nervous system by calming it.
With the calming of the nervous system, the mind becomes relaxed.
As a result, it becomes easier to stay mindful and present, attentive, and aware.
“The full ashtanga system practiced with devotion leads to freedom within one’s heart.” – Sri Krishna Pattabhi Jois
3. By focusing the eyes, keeps the other senses from wandering
The eyes play a vital role in Ashtanga practice.
There is a prescription for the gaze, or dristi, in every posture, which prevents the eyes from wandering around.
They will be fixed at one of the nine places that Ashtanga yoga lays down for each and every posture and movement.
Because they are gazing, the eyes are still.
This stillness produces an effect on the other four senses and in the mind.
There is nowhere to run.
The mind becomes still as the eyes.
All other distractions, which often arrive in the form of sounds, smells, and thoughts, are subdued.
There arises mindfulness of what is.
4. Helps identify any external and internal changes
The practice of Ashtanga yoga needs one’s complete attention because there is so much to take care of.
Because of this need for constant and careful attention, if any subtle changes arise in the body, mind, or emotions, they become visible.
If the mind is scattered, if there is a lack of balance, if there are ruffled emotions, one’s practice on the mat will make all of that apparent.
Such careful attention to the inside and the form of the outer self renders Ashtanga yoga a vital quality that cultivates mindfulness.
5. Reverses the flow of habit-energy to create space for the new
Habits can possess the quality of carelessness.
Our posture is a habit. When we lean forward to talk to a friend at the dinner table, we aren’t really aware of that movement.
We spend most of the day bending forward, whether to pick things up, be available to people, work on the laptop, or cook in the kitchen.
Ashtanga yoga employs deep backward bending asanas, reversing all the postural energy-habits we engage in.
Working through deep backward bends needs not just perseverance and patience, but also mental focus and control.
This awareness translates off the mat when we become mindful of our posture, every time we make ourselves smaller, or tighter, or stiffer.
6. Sets the stage for a meditation practice
The purpose of asana, as described in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, is to prepare the body for meditation.
Those who have practiced Ashtanga yoga can vouch that there can hardly be a better way to prepare the body for meditation than Ashtanga practice.
Ashtanga practice, by putting so many checkpoints for a posture and movement to be how it should be, tames the restless mind.
It’s very physically demanding practice, not only opens, softens, and strengthens the body and mind for long-duration sittings, but also enables the cultivation of the single-pointed concentration that Ashtanga yoga talks about in its eight limbs.
Whether one is prepared for it or not, Ashtanga’s practice creates space for the possibility of stillness within oneself.
7. Creates an acute awareness of each and every moment
When practicing Ashtanga yoga, one becomes aware of the whole body.
At the same instant, in the same moment, there is awareness of one’s breath and of one’s movement.
Three things come together within the practice – body, breath, and movement.
This is one of the most potent ways to cultivate mindfulness and stay in mindfulness. Being conscious of what is.
If you want to learn more about this, you should read 👉 How can I live mindfully?
8. Helps notice the unnoticeable and the seemingly ordinary
In Ashtanga yoga, you notice everything, right down to the minutest details.
Sensations in the body feel magnified.
You can feel the slight tremor in your arms when trying to maintain balance.
You can feel exactly where there is more pressure within the ambit of the soles of your feet.
You notice if your breath was slightly shorter, or rushed, or uneven.
You notice how you sweat, how you feel, how you think.
You become aware of your traits; if you are being restless or fidgety, or closed.
And this awareness is what grows in you.
This mindful awareness is what enables you to notice how you sweat, how you feel, how you think, in the life that exists outside of your mat.
It makes you aware of the present moment, no matter how insignificant it might seem.
9. Allows us to take a break from the noise and find stillness
In the early years of my Ashtanga practice, the only time my mind was off from my life, its vagaries, and the misfortunes of the world, was when I was on the mat…
Ashtanga yoga helps create that withdrawal for the mind.
It opens up new space for the mind to find stillness and relaxation.
The Hatha Yoga Pradipika, links the breath and mind by saying that if the breath is uneven, the mind is restless. Conversely, if the breath is calm, the mind is still.
In order to control the mind, one must be able to control one’s breath, something that Ashtanga yoga helps us cultivate and achieve.
By pulling us out of the noise of daily life, evening out the breath, and keeping our attention focused on all that is happening on the mat and around it, Ashtanga yoga helps the mind become still.
Closing thoughts
Ashtanga yoga is a lifelong practice that becomes a way of life.
For practitioners, their relationship with Ashtanga yoga goes through ups and downs, like any other long-term, committed relationship.
Over time, the mindfulness that Ashtanga yoga builds does not stay limited to the mat but transcends into all other areas of life, which opens up an entirely new perspective of the world.
Curious to see what an Ashtanga yoga class looks like? Here is a video of a class led by Sri K. Pattabhi Jois himself.
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