"Yoga and Concentration"

as appeared in the Luxembourg Wort, September 14th 2007

For a number of years, we have witnessed a surge of Yoga spreading in all layers of society, from the most humble to the richest, and it has become quite common today to read articles and information on Yoga in the media at large of whatever inclination.

Yoga is generally presented as a concentration and stress reduction discipline through two of its most common tools: physical exercises and breath control techniques, but it would be a grave error to consider that this science, born in India several millennia ago, is confined to just those two aspects. One of the great thinkers of Yoga, the philosopher Patanjali, believed by historians to have lived between 250 BC and 400 AD and sometimes described as the founder of modern Yoga, provided in his famous Yoga Sûtras treatise the definition of yoga still valid today: “ Yoga is the cessation of mental fluctuations.” A vast program, if ever there was one, asserting the existence of a state in which the individual, no longer subject to the disturbances of his thoughts, perceives a state of happiness and tranquility. Thus, Patanjali gave the priority to what he named the “Samyama”, a group of three exercises : “Dharana”(concentration), “Dhyana” (comtemplation), and “Samadhi” (the “In-Between”).

We know all too well that today’s lifestyle requires more and more concentration while producing more and more difficulties, making life a much more difficult process! What is this oft-spoken concentration? It is defined as the ability to maintain one’s thought stabilized on a defined point, the latter being an object or a concept, and to maintain one’s thought in the same direction without being distracted by all sorts of ideas unrelated to the object of concentration.

Studies conducted both in traditional yoga schools for centuries and more recently in research centers converge on the same results: concentration reduces stress and renders one calm. While it is no longer necessary to prove today that the physical exercises of yoga relax the body, the fact that the mental exercise of concentrating relieves the pressures of thinking is slowly becoming an obvious fact.

How does it work? Yoga, which has employed these practices for centuries, has described the process very precisely. Firstly, it brings to the fore the necessity to maintain the healthiest mental life possible by abstaining from disruptive unethical behavior and also by adopting a life as close as possible to our basic needs, by avoiding the creation of conflictual situations or situations far too contradictory to the norm. Just these modifications reduce our propensity to produce dark thoughts or worry unduly to a great extent.

The rest will consist mainly in working on one’s mind. A scattered thinking generates mental fatigue. A concentrated thinking brings peace and mental efficacy. The proposed exercises use at first simple supports, such as maintaining a steady gaze on a candle flame or listening to a natural stable sound such as the sound of a stream. The next phase consists in placing one’s concentration no longer on external but on internal supports (the batting of one’s eyelids, the heart’s pulse, breathing rhythms…). Next comes a more difficult phase consisting in lying quietly while evoquing feelings, then emotions. This part already requires good training to remain silent and aware at the same time. It is important as it slowly triggers modifications in our internal response modes when facing external stimuli, which previously could bring us into a deluge of contradictory forces and unresolved conflicts. The last practical phase is basically concerned with seeing one’s thoughts unfurl while remaining a simple silent witness to the process….

Finally, yoga offers to anchor one’s thoughts on phenomena that we rarely dwell upon, such as the very nature of our life, or the real meaning of love…

Why this progression? The answer is again very simple, even if difficult to achieve. By slowly training our faculty to observe the functioning of the individual and the world, a kind of tranquil state emerges which is no longer dependent - or at least much less so - on this functioning. Yoga asserts that this state generates both a feeling of compassion for the totality of life and also a hitherto unsuspected creative energy that facilitates the resolution of many questions in our daily lives.

It would be vain to believe that this is a panacea to lead a problem-free life. Yoga provides neither a miraculous remedy, nor ideas or concepts for dreamers in search of a solution. Rather, it proposes a serious investigative method, free of beliefs and embellishments, in which the individual will differentiate between what is true and what is false and will train himself to direct his attention toward his life, his immediate environment, and the world at large with an open point of view. It is an invitation to be fully responsible and act for the greater good of the majority. Concentration finds its limit there and opens on to the other two domains of the Samyama mentioned above.

André Riehl