When Thoughts Take Over. What the Yoga Sūtras Teach Us About the Mind

How the Yoga Sutras Help Us Work With the Mind: Part I!

Yoga Sutra I.4 Vrttisārūpyam itaratra

At other times, the self appears to take the form of the activities of the mind.

There is a particular kind of suffering that comes from identifying completely with our thoughts. We feel angry and we become anger. We feel anxious and anxiety is all we are. We believe the story the mind is telling without any distance, any witnessing, any space.

Patañjali names this directly in the fourth sūtra of the first chapter. When we are not in a state of yoga, the self appears to take on the form of the mind's activities. We forget who we are beneath the thinking.

TKV Desikachar often pointed to the way the mind functions at different levels, from scattered and agitated to increasingly clear and focused. The goal of yoga, as he taught it, is not to achieve a permanently quiet mind but to gradually move the mind toward greater clarity and single-pointed attention. That movement is itself the practice.

In the Viniyoga lineage, the understanding of saṁskāra is key here. Samskara refers to the patterns worn into the mind through repeated thought and experience. When we repeatedly think anxious thoughts, anxious thinking becomes easy to fall into. The mind follows the same channel again and again. But with practice, we can develop new grooves or patterns. A regular breath practice, for instance, introduces a new pattern into the nervous system. A consistent meditation practice links us with a bhāvana or experience that brings with it a set of feelings, thoughts, experiences and qualitites.

the Taittiriya Upaniṣad describes this beautifully with the model of the pañcamaya, the five aspects of our being. Our body, breath/prāṇa, thinking, behavior/personality, and our emotions are all interconnected. When we shift one layer through practice, all the others begin to shift as well. This is why a breathing practice can change the way we think. This is why moving the body can change our emotional state.

The fourth Yoga Sūtra reminds us of the problem. The second sūtra reminds us there is a path. Together they point us toward practice not as a luxury but as a genuine means of working with the mind so that we are not swept along by it.