Yoga Is A System Of Awe; “Playlist Yoga” May Exclude Awe States
Part Five: Yoga’s eight-part manual for awe.
As we have seen in this 6-part series, awe states can transform many mental illnesses. One common theme is awe causes a shift in world and self-view — awe shows you that you are a part of the grandeur of the universe. After this shift, some awe-finders could not take their illnesses and life-issues seriously.
In short, yoga can reliably produce awe states, but some popular offerings may limit awe experiences by excluding its key practices.
Patanjali gave us a manual; an eight-part pathway-to-awe.
Acknowledging the soaring physical and mental health issues we face, one practice — yoga — could make a meaningful difference. Yoga is widely available, without stigma, and free of pharmaceuticals. Of all the means-to-awe described in this series, from psychedelics to near-death experiences, yoga is legal, safe and available today. But some popular yoga forms leave out the very practices known to ease anxiety and depression, namely meditation and breath-work. These practices may be minimized or missing from classes, and the addition of music may obscure the effectiveness of all eight practices except perhaps asana (poses). As for the importance of the asana, in the entirety of the sutras Patanjali allocates eight words to asana.
While there are many excellent teachers and studios teaching all eight limbs, yoga is often taught in a rudimentary form of postures-to-music, and saying “inhale/exhale.” This formula represents only a fragment of Patanjali’s eight practices. Even this rudimentary expression can be helpful by providing beneficial exercise and community — both of which are known to improve health. But this derivative fraction of Patanjali’s manual for awe is not likely to produce a serious awe state.
We don’t often think of yoga as a means to awe; we don’t put it in the same category as psychedelics for example. Despite that yoga may support a range and depth of benefits beyond psychedelics, many practitioners may be skimming along on yoga’s physical surface, unaware of the possibility of blissful awe and resilient mental health revealed by going deeper.
Playlist Yoga
Is there enough “yoga” present in modern yoga classes to increase student experiences of transformative awe? Do practitioners and teachers realize the healing potential of teaching all eight-limbs of Patanjali’s yoga? Or is awe excluded from the many who need it because the majority of studios/teachers think the asana-to-music formula is enough? I suspect many teachers feel trapped in the confines of ”Playlist Yoga.”
“Playlist Yoga” is high on entertainment, but very low on badly-needed, healing yogic content. Music interferes with the key meditative and breathing practices that make up the vast majority of Patanjali’s manual for awe. Many students suffer addiction under the spell of constant entertainment. Music in yoga class feeds the addiction. Exposing students to silence, and to breathing and meditative practices is vastly more valuable to students who are already overwhelmed by constant entertainment and social media.
We are not proposing adding esoteric, doubtful practices. We are suggesting adding forms of meditation and breathing already with outstanding scientific support — practices known to lower anxiety and other illnesses. Beyond healing illnesses, Patanjali’s eight practices can lead to awe-states of human flourishing. In our dire health situation, we have seen that students are now more open to meditation and yogic breathing than ever before.
Patanjali’s System of Awe
Patanjali’s yoga sutras are a practical eight-part manual for awe. The final practice, samadhi, indeed produces awe states. As I have pointed-out, minimized (or no ego) appears to consistently trigger awe experiences and ego dissolution is explicitly a mechanism-to-awe in yoga. In his exhaustive book on the yoga sutras, scholar Edwin Bryant connects yoga’s ancient history to modern science:
“…ego delimits awareness, which is potentially omnipresent.”
The first half of Bryant’s quote, “ego delimits awareness,” means ego puts boundaries around what we are able to experience and perceive. The phrase “ego delimits awareness” could have come directly out of several recent scientific papers on psychedelics — rather than from Bryant, an expert on yoga’s ancient commentaries. While the remainder of the above quote, “[awareness] is potentially omnipresent,” would likely make scientists uncomfortable, it could find a consensus with people who have experienced awe and experienced its presence. Below, I will discuss specific ways yoga can free our awareness by turning the tables on the limiting ego.
Instead of the ego “delimiting” our awareness, we will show how yoga increases our awe-potential by “delimiting” the ego. This turn-around results in expanding awareness, health, well-being and awe states.
If you are serious about the awe state, practice with a teacher who focuses on yoga’s eight limbs — they work together. In addition, this teacher will encourage you to develop a home practice with significant breathing and meditation.
How yoga’s eight elements can diminish ego
Limbs one and two/ Yoga’s CBT-like guidelines- Yamas & Niyamas
The first two limbs are yoga’s “do’s and don’ts,” the yamas and niyamas — 25% of the curriculum.
Think of these “rules” as guardrails on your behavior and, most importantly, as methodical, meditative, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Start by questioning your relationship to truth and kindness, how they can fail without each other and how they work when combined.
Regular reflection on these ten “threads” of yogic insights can help you question egoic distortions and selfish behaviors, bringing you closer to the border of egoless awe.
Three and four/ Asana and Pranayama
Yogic breathing (Pranayama) has many forms with scientifically supported benefits. Built into breath is present-moment awareness. It’s obvious when you manage your breath, you automatically become present. In terms of ego-dissolution, breath awareness works by consciously moving your focus away from the ego and onto your breath. You can experience your breath only now. Try it! Feel your breath very closely now and notice the shift in your attention away from thinking and into an experience of the present-moment.
Breath management is an incredibly valuable, always-open doorway to present-moment awareness, which allows you to witness thoughts, impulses and sensations objectively without judgement or reactivity.
When you deeply feel your breath, ego is left behind momentarily and you now exist in the pause >between< the stimulus of your thoughts, impulses and sensations, and your response to that stimulus. In that gap lives an egoless space that can bring you to total clarity.
The teacher that will lead you into awe will likely hold you accountable for verifiable, focused and sustained yogic breathing, often in concert with yoga poses (Asana). When the poses are animated by yogic breathing, an integration of mind and body can occur. This is a natural prerequisite for the rest of the eight limbs; without integration of body and mind, the student is stunted by the ego’s projection of how the pose perhaps once felt. The student will dread and resist the next step — meditation, with a great vigor. The integration that must occur is somewhat like present-moment “exposure therapy.”
A beginner’s repeated encounter with sensation in poses without yogic breath may feel like a confrontation to be endured. But when the sensation of the pose is exposed to presence-producing breathing, the experience changes substantially. The practitioner is aware of this instant of this pose,which exists separate and apart from the ego’s projection of “yesterday’s pose,” which likely provokes active resistance. Adding breath-management subtracts ego:
Poses without breath (full-ego projection of past poses):
“This will suck.” — “This sucks.” — “How much longer will this suck?”
Poses animated-by-breath (present-moment awareness free of ego projection):
Keeping your awareness on feeling your exhale while simultaneously feeling and looking at sensation in real time. No words; no concepts. Allowing reality to be as it is instant-by-instant.
“Frog” may identify the transition into meditation
The transition that occurs when teachers integrate breath into poses is more obvious in hyper-sensational poses like frog. If you are a practitioner who hated frog and now it’s no problem, you likely have completed the integration of breath and body. Now, with the internal mind/body battle over, you have a chance to progress and sit in meditation with no or minimal resistance. This new clarity of perception can carry the student forward into other aspects of yoga, and other aspects of their life.
Once you master being aware of your breath — and can sit still — you can master other less challenging targets like pizza — and other humans. You will learn to transfer feeling your breath now, to experiencing your pizza now. What you are really doing is unhooking ego’s delimiting projection of past pizza, with its blurry, dull reruns of pizzas gone by, into bites — one instant-at-a-time — alive, delicious, and, of course awe-some.
Five through eight/ Pratyahara, Concentration, Meditation, Samadhi
Limbs five through eight are all forms of meditation and make-up the other 50% of Patanjali’s prescription for awe. And of course, yogic breathing extends into these forms as well.
Withdrawal of the senses (pratyahara) happens in deep relaxation and intense concentration. When senses are withdrawn, you may be faintly aware of information — such as sounds and sensations. Still, you have no response to it. Judith Hanson Lasater, Ph.d., PT. explains:
“Most of us know this state; when you’re in it, you feel like you’re at the bottom of a well. You register the sounds that occur around you, for example, but these sounds do not create disturbance in your body or mind.”
Withdrawal of the senses is another form of pruning ego from the self; the ego relies on sensory stimulation which may distract and pull you backwards. Bryant, citing one sage, states: “When the mind is not controlled, it becomes inclined to follow the senses and is dragged into the sensual world.”
For beginners it’s helpful to start with concentration into meta-mind meditation. Concentration helps focus easily distracted minds and, when used prior to meditation, may give the beginner a jump-start by allowing them to enter meditation with a focused mind versus a scattered one.
Concentration’s focus helps us gain moments void of ego distraction. For a beginner, meta-mind meditation gives a big bang for ego dissolving practices. Together, these two practices help you quickly see that your thoughts are just thoughts. You do not have to give them any power. This discovery weakens the credibility of the busy ego-mind. Once you have cleaned-up the distraction of “thinking,” your meditation will transform into concentration, which leads to samadhi.
Samadhi is the highest stage of meditation, in which the practitioner is said to merge with the universe. Bryant describes the experience of the culling-away of the egoic mind-body as a “pure soul” experience of meditative absorption. His analysis of the original commentators reveals seven levels of samadhi (others count five or less) and, within that scale, revered, awe-like states play a role. The final stage (asamprajnata-samadhi) occurs when all the activities of the mind have been fully restrained into one-pointed concentration. Bryant:
“Pure objectless consciousness alone remains, conscious of its own internal nature rather than any external object. This state is, by definition, beyond the intellect, words and concepts.”
It appears that yoga checks all the boxes for awe — with a progressive limitation of ego leading into a pure soul experience of awe. Next we see if this pattern holds up as we investigate spirituality.
