Liberate the Mind

Explore meditative practices and breathwork to release mental clutter and find mental freedom.

Last month’s theme, harmony with nature, encouraged us to reflect on how we relate with our external environment. This July, we invite you to go inwards and to understand how freedom affects your mind, body, joy, and ultimately, your creativity. To begin, we will focus on mental clarity and stress relief, exploring meditative practices and breathwork to release mental clutter and find mental freedom. 

Just like how New York City holds everything from gardens to busy throughways, museums full of treasure to abandoned lots, the mental space is also multifaceted. If you’re anything like me, sometimes this space can look like Times Square or a double-parked bike lane, when I would much rather have it resemble the quiet of Battery Park in the early morning. Thankfully, there are many ways to take care of our mental space through meditation and physical practices such as yoga. 

What is the mind?

But first, a little about the mind. There are many ways to understand the mind: through neurology and psychiatry, through the lens of gut health and the enteric nervous system, and also through yogic philosophy. In my library at home, I have a 1960s edition of The Complete Illustrated Book of Yoga by Swami Vishnudevananda that belonged to my grandmother during her time in English as a second language class. As I turned its yellowed yet still-crisp pages, I learned about one way of mapping the mind: through the three planes of the subconscious, conscious, and superconscious. 

A map of the mind from The Complete Illustrated Book of Yoga by Swami  Vishnudevananda.

Understanding triggers through the concept of the subconscious

The earliest evolutionary form of the mind, the subconscious, or “chitha” in Sanskrit, is the focus of this exploration of mental clarity. The subconscious is present in the plant and animal kingdoms and is defined by instinct and automatic functioning. For example, the fight or flight instinct, the urge to hibernate, or the act of walking. The subconscious is the home of our habits. This plane cannot reason and is obedient to the intellectual mind, faithfully carrying out any notions that come from the more conscious planes. We are likely to experience these kinds of instincts in moments like waking up right before your alarm when you have an early flight to catch or automatically feeling triggered when you make a mistake. Vishnudevananda writes (emphasis is his own): 

The subconscious mind does not carry out only good instructions from the intellect, but also wrong instructions; so unnecessary fears, anxieties, and worries created during our daily activities are taken on by the subconscious mind and later on projected to the conscious mind. A shock or fear in childhood will torment a person even when he is old, unless he is helped by counter suggestions.

For these reasons, you might act on limiting beliefs and fears without even knowing it. 

The Complete Illustrated Book of Yoga goes on to describe the potential therapeutic benefits of a hypnotist. Vishnudevananda adds the important addendum that hypnotic suggestion may help the individual if done by an unselfish person, but such a thing is rare. Thus, it is rarely advisable to surrender one’s own will to another person’s will. Luckily for the Sui Yoga community, there is a Yogic method for developing the higher mind that involves grounding practices like meditation and breathwork.

The subconscious as an ally

On the flip side, the subconscious can be a transformative agent for channeling better, more constructive experiences into our lives. Vishnudevananda also suggests that the subconscious is the holding place of innate talents or skills from a past life. Just like how there are multiple ways of understanding how your mind works, there are also different methods to project mental function onto the subconscious plane. Vishnudevananda writes further about using kundalini and chakra meditations to both control the lower mind and train the upper mind. Within the field of meditation there is walking meditation, sitting meditation, mantra, and more. Breathwork has also been scientifically proven to increase comfort, relaxation, and alertness while reducing symptoms of anxiety, depression, anger, and confusion. 

Our talented teachers at Sui can guide you through the process of liberating the mind through yoga and breathwork. We hope to see you in the studio soon!