Archive for April 11th, 2009

By Paul Jerard, E-RYT 500

Whether you are a Yoga teacher, or a student, personal development is a result of your practice.  If you are already teaching Yoga classes, you have seen your personal growth jump light years ahead since your foundational training.

Yet, students often have problems, and it is easy to become sidetracked by their life struggles.  You may invest time in your physical practice, but are you focusing on your own mental, emotional, and spiritual growth?

Let’s look at a way to continue our personal growth during the course of an average week.  Are you investing time in reading, watching, or listening to bad news?  It is impossible to completely avoid the sensational stories of violence, terror, and crime, but we can sensor the amount of horrible stories that we take in during the week.

Some of the most balanced people I know choose what they listen to in their spare time, by listening to educational CDs, reading useful information, and watching educational television.  This is not to imply that we should ignore current events, but we have “the final say” over how much bad news we want to listen to.

The human mind has its limits, when considering how much bad information can be absorbed.  This is much similar to downloading viruses into your computer.  Within a short period of time, a computer filled with viruses, will not work, or someone will be remotely controlling it.  In Yoga, we learn to establish control over our own mind.

This is not good for those who would like to control us remotely.  Stalin and Hitler built empires, based upon controlling people, remotely, through propaganda, misinformation, and dogma.  We cannot accuse the media of mind control, but enough negative news can create a pessimistic mindset.

Over the centuries, the media has learned that people would rather pay for bad news.  Therefore, the media provides a service, for which there is a demand.  However, no one can afford to be manipulated into negative thinking.

Listen to speakers and how they motivate or manipulate.  Is the message one of hope or of fear?  How does the energy of the audience flow with the message?  Either way, outside information is an influence on each of us, until we establish a balanced and trained mind.

After years of practicing Yoga and meditation, one learns to see the answers within.  This does not mean Yoga practitioners bury their heads in the sand, but we should never be swept up into a message of hate, anger, and intolerance.

© Copyright 2009 – Paul Jerard / Aura Publications

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