The Power of Silence
Since completing my 200 Hour Yoga Teacher Certificate, I have had time to think over the experience and give gratitude for all the experience I was fortunate to have in an open, supportive environment and all the material I learned through the six-month training. Yoga is more than a way to destress, work out, become flexible, and what you do on a retreat to unplug from work. While it IS all those things, at its core yoga is finding unity in what has been separated and coming home to ourselves to take stock of our inner world.
The most interesting concept that I learned through my training is the idea of Pratyahara, one of the eight limbs of Patanjali’s Ashtanga yoga (this guy compiled the Yoga Sutra in case you were left scratching your head). Pratyahara is sensory withdrawal – similar to a turtle pulling all its limbs into its shell. Some monks go into caves to meditate and achieve full pratyahara but I would like to explain this concept in a way that is accessible to all of us who live modern lives.
In today’s world, we are always consuming. Food and drinks, yes, but also social media, news, television, clothing, words, visual clutter, flashing lights, and the list goes on.
Look around you right now and take a moment to notice how many things your eyes can see.
Close your eyes and listen to what you can hear.
Our brains are always gathering data on our surroundings in excess and we often don’t realize it until it all stops. We’ve become so accustomed to the background noise and clutter that it feels quite peculiar without it.
In a world like this, moments of pause and silence are rare, few and far between – when the house is organized, when we find some quiet in nature, or at the end of a yoga class when we embrace doing absolutely nothing in savasana, corpse pose – and if you take a moment to simmer in those moments, you will eventually start to notice your inner being.
When we connect with silence and nothingness, we leave a space wide open for our true selves to come through, for our deeper wisdom to speak to us and answer our questions we’ve been asking.
In this space of pure focus and connection, we can start ask ourselves two important questions.
“Who am I?”
“What do I want?”
