The Journey from Asana to Awareness: A Mindful Transition

Weaving the Mind’s Path We understand almost instinctively that an asana practice is progressive. I am beginning to understand meditation in much the same way. Perhaps one of the greatest challenges for a beginning meditator is that we are often asked simply to be still and observe.

MEDITATIONENERGY AWARENESS

Majeeda Tatum-Anderson

9/6/20264 min read

Weaving the Mind’s Path

We understand almost instinctively that an asana practice is progressive.

We would not expect someone stepping onto a yoga mat for the first time to immediately have the strength, mobility, balance, and awareness required for a complex posture. We begin where we are. We learn the foundations. We practice. And over time, what once required tremendous concentration begins to feel increasingly natural.

I am beginning to understand meditation in much the same way.

Perhaps one of the greatest challenges for a beginning meditator is that we are often asked simply to be still and observe.

But stillness can be enormous.

When the mind is accustomed to following every thought that arises, simply sitting in awareness may feel far too spacious. There is nothing obvious for the mind to hold onto. Thoughts appear, and before we realize what has happened, we have followed one of them somewhere else.

This is where mantra can become such a beautiful foundation for practice.

Mantra gives the mind somewhere to rest

A mantra provides resonance.

There is sound. There is vibration. There is repetition. There is something the mind can return to again and again.

Rather than asking the mind not to think, mantra gives it a direction.

And that distinction feels important.

The mind is not being fought, silenced, or pushed away. It is being guided.

Each time attention wanders, we return to the mantra. Then we return again. And again.

Perhaps this is one of the earliest ways we begin learning our relationship with the mind.

We discover that a thought can arise without requiring us to follow it.

We can choose where attention rests.

Eventually, the mantra begins to soften

As meditation becomes more familiar, something interesting can happen.

The mantra that once required deliberate repetition may begin to become quieter.

We do not necessarily have to make it disappear.

It simply begins to fall away.

The spaces between repetitions become wider. Silence becomes less uncomfortable. Stillness no longer feels quite so empty.

And gradually, awareness begins to occupy the space that the mantra once held.

This may be one of the places where meditation reveals its progressive nature.

The mantra was never a failure of stillness. It was part of the pathway into stillness.

Just as we use foundational postures to prepare the body for increasingly subtle expressions of asana, mantra can prepare the mind for increasingly subtle experiences of awareness.

And then there is So Hum

So Hum has become particularly interesting to me because it seems to exist somewhere between mantra and simple awareness.

When I first began meditating, I could not connect with So Hum.

It felt too vast. Almost elusive.

There was not enough for my mind to grasp. I needed something more tangible, something with enough resonance to gather my attention and bring it inward.

Now I understand that experience differently.

Perhaps I was encountering a meditation practice for which I had not yet developed the necessary foundation.

With So Hum, the breath itself carries the mantra.

So with the inhale.

Hum with the exhale.

There is almost nothing to do.

And yet that simplicity contains tremendous subtlety.

Breath allows us to observe without necessarily directing where awareness must go. Mantra gives the mind a resonant pathway to follow. So Hum seems to bring those two experiences together.

The breath continues naturally.

The mantra remains barely present.

The mind has something subtle to rest upon without being given something so dominant that it occupies the entire field of awareness.

Perhaps that is why So Hum can become so instrumental as meditation deepens.

It does not require the disappearance of the mind.

It changes our relationship with it.

Becoming guide to the mind

The mind remains part of our embodied experience.

Thoughts still arise.

Memories still arise.

Sensations still arise.

But with practice, we begin recognizing that their appearance does not require our participation.

A thought can arise without becoming a pathway we must travel.

And this may be one of the most profound things meditation teaches us.

We become increasingly practiced at guiding the mind rather than automatically following it.

At first, this requires effort.

Return to the mantra.

Return to the breath.

Return to awareness.

But eventually, the returning itself becomes familiar.

Then subtler.

Then almost effortless.

This is not so different from what happens on the yoga mat. What initially requires conscious instruction eventually becomes embodied understanding.

Meditation is a practice

Perhaps we sometimes approach meditation with an expectation we would never place upon asana.

We sit down and expect ourselves to know how to be still.

And when thoughts continue moving, we assume we are somehow doing meditation incorrectly.

But perhaps the wandering mind is not evidence that meditation has failed.

Perhaps it is simply where the practice begins.

We begin with something we can hold.

We learn to return.

We become familiar with stillness.

The mantra gradually becomes more subtle.

Awareness becomes more spacious.

And somewhere along the way, we recognize that we are developing a completely different relationship with the mind.

We are no longer required to travel wherever thought leads us.

Awareness can become the guide.

And when the mind learns to follow awareness rather than awareness unconsciously following the mind, meditation begins to move beyond the time we spend sitting in practice.

It begins to enter the way we live.

Because perhaps learning to guide the mind is not merely learning how to meditate.

It is learning how to consciously participate in the direction of our lives.