By Swami Nirmalananda Saraswati

Sometimes people need help but don’t know they need it.  When it’s gone to an extreme, an intervention might be called for.  Interventions are designed to help then see how bad it is as well as show them they have other options to choose from and people who will help.  It’s a gut-wrenching, heart-opening experience whether you’re intervening or being targeted with such love.  Yoga is much the same.

The ancient sage Patanjali defined yoga as an intervention for your mind.  His second sutra is a “definition sutra,” yoga is the quieting of your mind.  All of yoga’s practices are for the purpose of quieting your mind, including poses, breathing practices, chanting, study, devotions and more.  As an intervention, yoga is supremely effective.  Do a little yoga and your mind is more peaceful.  Do more yoga and your mind settles into a deeper dimension.  It’s a doorway to meditation.

Hopefully you catch yourself before you’re lost in the extremes of what your mind can do to you.  The mind’s capacity to harass you is already proven.  Taken to an extreme, a true intervention might be called for.  But yoga pulls you back from the self-created precipice, providing not only health and beauty, but a new perspective on life that gives you sanity.  The most powerful of yoga’s tools for this purpose are things you do to work with your mind directly, the meditative practices.

To understand the importance of yoga’s intervention, simply try to meditate after a busy day.  Your mind keeps going even though your body has come to a halt, seated in your meditation pose.  Buddhist meditative systems have you watch your mind or breath.  Yogic systems have you intervene with your mind and direct its attention inward. 

It’s mystical, seeing how easily this works, especially when you’re doing it with someone who has been trained and authorized to move you through the process.  I learned from a great Meditation Master from India.  He trained me how to help you get past your mind to the deeper dimension within.  He also authorized me to share this ancient system with you, so you don’t get trapped in your mind any more.