Discharge excess mental energy: Sturdy as a mountain yoga practice

When I lived in Portland, Oregon, on a clear day, you could see Mt Hood from different parts of the city. I could go about my business teaching yoga, running errands, or going for a walk, and continuously feel its presence – quiet, stable, and magnificent. It was beautiful and strangely calming. I miss it. As technology continues to infiltrate our lives, we seem to become more and more disconnected from the elements of nature and forget how much peacefulness and inspiration we can draw from mountains, trees, waterfalls, and so on. As images for meditation, they might seem trivial and predictable, but they tend to have almost universal appeal and are rarely controversial (as other meditation images can be). There is nothing wrong with using elements of nature to connect to universal ideas of stability, growth, cleansing, and so on.

The short yoga practice below uses the image of a mountain and the simple chant, “I am stable, I am at ease,” to help you discharge excess mental energy and become more grounded. It uses movement, breath awareness, and meditation to cultivate the feeling of stability and connection to the earth. It links two chakras – the root chakra and the third eye chakra – without explicitly talking about them. By doing that, it invites you to draw inspiration and stability both from your mind and your body. Give it a try and see if it works for you!

Fundamentally, yoga is about settling the vortex of the mind and eliminating some of that incessant mental noise. Only when the mind settles, says sage Patanjali in his Yoga Sutras, can you see yourself for who you are and the world around you for what it is.

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