An exploration of the merits of a wandering mind versus the pursuit of stillness and mindfulness.
I tried a yoga app for the first time recently, several years behind everyone else’s lockdown fervour. It confirmed my suspicion that my mind is now far more agile than my body. I can barely balance, my foot stutters, my arms windmill. On my tiny phone screen, I struggled to follow the equally tiny woman who moved like plasticine, elongating into one pose before bending into another. My husband thrust the app on me because he’s now a proselytiser of yogic arts.
Every morning he pops in some AirPods and salutes the sun, folds into a lotus pose and balances (damn him) on a single big toe. Well, almost. He’d like me to experience the benefits of focused intentionality, that wondrous alignment of mind and body. But I resist. As a society, we celebrate the supple body and the stilled mind. But I worry that the stilled mind, emptied of its dancing thoughts, comes perilously close to the blank mind. I worry about becoming marooned in a kind of stupefied torpor, a state which, to me, encompasses everything from wordless wonder to the genial numbness of watching crap TV. I worry that the apotheosis of mindfulness is dumb vacancy. See that Buddhist monk, crossed-legged on his mat, his brow unfurrowed, saffron robes smoothed, his smile benignant? Peer inside his head and you’ll likely see . . . nothing. Just a handful of dust motes milling in the void. Far better is the chattering, restless mind, hopping and skipping to its own beat, surprising you with its twists and turns, surreptitiously sliding you thoughts you never knew you had. This is the unbidden mind. It is like having another self within yourself, something half known that discloses its textures and proclivities with a sporadic impulsiveness. Most experts now believe that the restless mind is the brain’s default setting. It gets overwritten whenever we focus on something, intent on achieving a near goal. Only when we drop our guard and loosen our attentional focus does it make its presence fel
Psychology Philosophy Mindfulness Yoga Restless Mind Cognitive Science Meditation
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