How to Stop Thinking

The stress that saturates the brain is decreased through asana (yoga poses) and pranayama (breath), so the brain is rested, and there is a release from strain....Not only do they (asana and pranayama) prepare our bodies, spine, and breath for the challenge of inner serenity....they bestow the firmness to live with equanimity in the vicissitudes of the world's hurly-burly. from Light on Life, BKS Iyengar

That the body needs preparation for serenity is a new idea for me. For most of my life, in contrast, I have attempted to use my mind to sooth my anxieties, worries, fears. I have sought comfort, pleasure, and the avoidance of pain through thought, endless ruminations, doing rather than being, and failed attempts to figure things out.

Pema Chodron writes that, "Wanting to find a place where everything's okay is just what keeps us miserable." But this is what my mind has craved; ease, rest, serenity.

What I am finding new through asana and pranayama are just these things; ease, rest, serenity, but through the body not the mind. The mind is quieted as my lungs are irrigated with deep breath, the spine loosened from thick plack, the hips and throat oxygenated with fresh blood. The body in this way prepares the mind to rest, to let go of doing, to rest in the full heart. Dualities of pain/pleasure, ease/struggle, calm/confusion dissolve into just what is; an ache in the chest, a tightness in the jaw, the release of heat in the sore hamstring. In this way, the body prepares the mind to find respite in paradox, unknowing, humility, compassion.