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One of my Yoga teachers one day told me that the primary objective of Yoga is to help us become a witness. I had heard this teaching of being the witness in the past but did not quite understand it. I had thought it meant adopting a detached attitude in relation to the external world around me. And to me, that was impossible and in disagreement with my core belief of being connected to everything around me. That day, however, it hit me: what we are encouraged to experiment with in Yoga is to adopt a detached attitude in relation to our own internal world, our emotions, our mental imprints, and our physical habitual patterns.

From the point of view of yogic psychology, what we experience as ourselves is unconscious conditioning. With the yogic practices, we are called out, especially in the intense moments when we are thrown out of our comfort zone, to look directly at what’s showing up, mentally, emotionally and physically, in other words, we are exhorted to become aware.

Our first impulse on the yoga mat when the practice gets intense is to resist the pose, we tense up, we hold our breath; then our minds are screaming at us: “I can’t”, “I’m exhausted”, “I’m afraid”, and we want to get out of the pose; finally the emotions swell up: “I’m not good enough”, “I’ll never succeed”, “I suck”, “might as well give up”, “I’m too weak”, “I’m too old”, “I’m too fat”, “I’m always in pain”, “I’m pissed”, and we get sucked into these emotions, the self-judgment and criticism.

These are the unconscious conditionings, the ‘citta vrittis’ Yoga talks about, the automatic reactions that we fall into, not realizing that they are thinking and behavioral programs, and believing them to be true, to be part of who we are.

When our attitude is one of a witness, it is less likely that we become entangled in the stories we tell ourselves, in our programs and conditionings.

When we are asked to connect with our breath and let go of our resistance; when we are asked to step up to our courageousness on the yoga mat, we are being taught how to become a witness. As we master being the witness on the yoga mat, we train ourselves to be the witness on the meditation pillow.

As the patterns come up and we systematically release them one by one by not chasing after them, slowly the layers of conditioning, from gross to subtle, from conscious to unconscious, are being peeled.

Finally, one day, what is left is the core of who we are, the unbounded, infinite-possibilities, supra-conscious, eternal, luminous self.

“A burning lamp cannot radiate its full illumination if its glass is covered with soot. It is only when the glass is cleaned that the lamp shines most brightly. Similarly, the light or the power of the soul is within us, but it does not manifest itself in our daily lives because of the hindrance of thinking principles, the vagaries of the mind, dissipations and distractions. Meditation helps one to annihilate the sense-consciousness and awaken self-awareness. It removes the impurities of the mind.” Paramahamsa Satyananda Saraswati

Daya Laure Carter is a Hatha Yoga teacher, Forrest style, at Off The Grid Yoga in Delray Beach. She also hosts a series of webinars on Yoga philosophy. For more information, go to www.offthegridyoga.com