Demystifying Yoga -Part 3

The Path of Yoga: for an enriching life

In my first two articles on yoga, I have explained what yoga is and how we should approach yoga to live an enriching life. Human beings act out of their inner desires and thoughts. Yoga helps control these desires and thoughts so that you can live a better life — materially as well as spiritually. In other words, it helps build the attitude of Renunciation in life (explained in Demystifying Yoga -Part 2, Approach to Yoga and its Foundation)

What does yoga achieve — the three milestones

1. The first milestone of yoga is to make you realize that you are different from your desires/thoughts. You can control your desires, instead of your desires controlling you. This gives you the power to shape your thoughts and desires to build a better life for yourself.
2. The second milestone is moving your thought process and desires to a higher purpose such that selfish desires and worldly distractions no longer drive you. Human is the only specie which has the freedom of choice and can change. Animals act out of their fixed inner personalities (inherent nature). A Tiger can spend a lifetime with Buddha, but will still kill! You, on the other hand, have a free choice to choose and transform your inherent nature (inner personality or character) to be aligned to a higher purpose in life.
3. The third milestone is severing your attachment, even to this higher purpose, while working towards it with full vigor. What it means is, you ardently work towards the purpose but have no attachment to the outcome, no desire for a specific output. Be a complete witness (Sakshi) in the play of life; focus entirely on the action. Doing this, you eventually rise above all desires and start living with a detached attachment or dispassionate passion, enjoying the present moment.

What is the process of yoga — the 3-steps

1. Analyze your inner personality/ character,
2. Assess your learning path (four types of yoga disciplines) based on your personality type,
3. Practice compatible yoga disciplines — proactively, diligently, and consistently.

Each step is discussed briefly

Analyze your inner personality/ character — 4 personality types

Everyone has heard of personality assessment tools like Myers- Briggs Type Indicator® or NEO PI-R assessment model. MBTI assesses a person’s preferences, where you prefer to give most of your attention and where you get the energy to do activities. Others like NEO PI-R determines personality based on the Five-Factor Model (FFM): Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness.

Similarly, yoga assesses the relative strength of the mind (seat of emotions) and the intellect (seat of logic) and classifies people as either emotional, intellectual, active, or indolent (lazy). It further acknowledges that no one is entirely emotional or intellectual; everyone will have a percentage distribution of each personality trait.

1. The one who belongs predominantly to the Emotional personality type has the mind more pronounced than the intellect. His heart predominates over his head. He is more impulsive, emotional, and less rational and contemplative. His mind/emotions rule his personality.
2. The second type is the Intellectual whose intellect is more developed than the mind. His head predominates over his heart. He is more rational and analytical. Less impulsive and emotional. His intellect controls his emotions/mind, and he is logical in his approach to life.
3. The third type classified as Active possesses a mind and intellect, more or less equally developed. He could sometimes be very logical but, at other times, very emotional.
4. The last category is the Indolent. Such a person lacks a well-developed mind or intellect, is lazy.

Assess your learning path — four types of yoga disciplines

There are four disciplines (Yoga types) designed to suit the four specific personality types, classified as follows.

1. Bhakti Yoga — Path of Devotion
2. Gnana Yoga — Path of Knowledge
3. Karma Yoga — Path of Action
4. Hatha Yoga — Path of Compulsion

Aim of all these four disciplines is to move the practitioner to the state of Renunciation. There is a recommended discipline for each personality type

Bhakti Yoga (the path of Devotion), recommended for Emotional personality type

It encourages the practitioner to have a personal faith, to focus his emotions on. This personal faith can be the higher consciousness, God, Universe, or a belief that is higher than himself, more important than his personal desires and selfish needs. Consequently, the mind gets focused on the higher desire, and the person is freed from the lower level, selfish desires. His actions are focused on a higher purpose.

It is important to note that this is the most misunderstood yoga discipline, which over a period of time, has deteriorated to mean devotion to rituals and superstitious beliefs. Bhakti Yoga is not a fanatic attachment to your God or your Guru and exclusion of all other Gods (or beliefs), neither is it a form of worship or prayer aimed at gaining material benefit or peace.

Real devotion is faith in good rather than faith in God. True devotion is love for all rather than love for a select few. It is a feeling of oneness.

Love and devotion is not a preferential attachment to some beings. Love means identification with others; it means empathy and compassion wherein you see your self reflected in others. There is no distinction or demarcation.

As you practice Bhakti yoga, the selfish feeling of love, which is attachment to a few, is replaced by love for all, and eventually, your selfish desires are all shun.

Gyana Yoga (the path of Knowledge), recommended for the Intellectual personality type.

It encourages the practitioner’s intellect to focus on contemplation of the higher truths of Reality, transcendental versus transient. Following this path, the intellect of the person gets so engrossed in the higher realities of life, that the selfish, mundane desires drop off.

The path of knowledge doesn’t mean reading the scriptures or following the teachings of a Guru blindly; these are all means. This path encourages you to use your own intellect to reflect on the teachings of the scriptures (or your Guru), question them, and experiment to finally absorb this knowledge and apply it practically in your life.

The pursuit of knowledge gives you an understanding of what is real and what is transient. You learn to value the Reality and stop running after the transient, and thus your mind is freed from desires.

Karma Yoga (the path of Action), recommended for the Active personality type.

In Karma Yoga, both mind and intellect are engaged. This is well suited for people with mixed temperament. People following Karma Yoga are encouraged to work towards a higher cause which serves many, such that the practitioner’s mind (emotions) surrenders to the higher ideal, his body is busy in the act of serving others, and his intellect focuses on the contemplation of the difference between the Real and Unreal.

On this path, he eventually realizes the futility of his selfish desires and worldly thoughts and sheds them all.

Hatha Yoga (the path of compulsion or forceful discipline), recommended for the Indolent personality type.

For the Indolent category, both mind and intellect are not developed enough to take up any of the paths, so it is recommended he first disciplines his body, which will trigger his mind and intellect to start rationalizing his thought process. He will, thus, gradually grow to qualify for the other three practices.

Unfortunately, most of us today are in this fourth category. Modern living has made us physically lazy. Our mind is replete with likes and dislikes. It wants to obtain what we don’t have and possess what we have. It tends to slip into the past or future. We don’t know how to stay in the present; we constantly regret or worry about the past and are anxious about the future. Our Intellect is not resilient enough, robust enough to be able to keep a check on our mind and control the constant flow of negative thoughts in our mind.

Hatha Yoga is the path of compulsion. You forcibly build discipline through your physical body, to begin with. This draws out the practitioner from his indolence and slowly develops the mind and intellect to a level that it can take up the other three disciplines of yoga.

Since this is where a lot of people will finally find themselves to be, in the personality assessment, let me spend some more time on this discipline to explain based on modern research, how building a healthy body leads to better control of your mind and intellect. This applies as much to yoga as to any other form of exercise (like swimming, running, martial arts, Taiichi, etc.), which helps us build focus, flexibility, and the right breathing technique.

A healthy body leads to a positive psycho-physiological state. As you get into the flow, this one change in your lifestyle will change all other aspects of your life naturally. It leads to a more favorable pattern in our lifestyle.

A person’s positive emotion is accompanied by the arousal of the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) and activation of the Default mode network (DMN). The PNS is a subset of the autonomic nervous system that supports our ‘rest and digest’ functions, immune system, cardiovascular health, and the neuroendocrine system. PNS also triggers the release of some hormones, including oxytocin in women and vasopressin in men that is largely responsible for the health benefits commonly associated with positive emotions, including general wellbeing, improved immune system functioning, and lower risk of depression. The DMN is triggered when the brain is in the rest state and not focused on the outer world. It helps in better processing of data that the brain gets during the active state, leads to emotional self-awareness, social cognition, higher creativity, and openness to new ideas.

Practice compatible yoga disciplines — proactively, diligently, and consistently.

You have to practice the four disciplines of yoga in the same proportion as the percentage mix of the personality traits in you, which means if you are predominantly emotional and depend only 20% on your intellect for decision making, you should practice Bhakti Yoga 80% of your time and devote 20% to Gnana Yoga. If you possess a mind and intellect more or less equally developed, Karma Yoga should be practiced. As I said in the previous section, most of us today, fall in the indolent category and should start with Hatha Yoga and while continuing Hatha Yoga (or any other form of exercise that our body responds to) we should eventually begin to practice the other three yoga disciplines as well.

Yoga is a lifelong learning process. There will be situations in life where you will give in to your emotions/selfish desires. The key is to be aware. Keep reflecting on how you respond and how you can improve. Use your intellect to harness your mind/emotions and bring it back to rest on a higher purpose. The following tips will help.

1. Spend time with yourself,
2. Read — Read — Read,
3. Maintain a journal,
4. Practice Gratitude,
5. Practice Hatha Yoga or any other form of exercise which keeps your body fit and healthy,
6. Vedanta recommends the time between 4 am to 6 am for study and self-reflection. Waking up early also builds discipline, and just like Hatha Yoga, It also triggers the transformation of the indolent to a more active state.

As you keep practicing yoga, you will eventually develop a character that is free from selfish desires not because it has been forced but because it understands the ephemeral nature of these desires and is resilient to these desires, fixated on the higher purpose. This leads to ‘Mindfulness,’ the ability to be present and engaged fully with whatever you are doing at that particular moment.

“Yoga is the journey of the self, through the self, to the self.” — The Bhagavad Gita

In my next article, I will discuss the spiritual realm (what is higher consciousness? Why Meditation?) and the role of God in Yoga.