Muting to Amplify

Last week on social media there was a powerful movement calling on us to ‘mute ourselves’, or halt our own content,  in order to amplify Black voices, allowing them to break through the noise and be heard. 

As humans, we inherently know that in order to bring something fully into our awareness, the forefront of our attention, something else has to recede, or fall into the background. 

For example, if you’re working on your computer and a baby starts crying, in order to soothe the baby, you must put the work aside and dedicate your attention fully to them. 

Or how as the sun recedes towards the horizon, the moon slowly becomes visible. Only when the sun has set does the moon shine forth in it’s brightest, most visible form. 

In the practice of yoga asana, we allow the breath and the movement of the body in space to come into the forefront of our attention. And naturally, as a side effect of that, the chitta vrittis, the mind stuff-  the thoughts about the past and future, the fixed ideas about yourself and the world,  fall into the background. 

They move off to the side, out of the spotlight. 

They become more remote, muted almost, you could say. 

At least for a moment. 

In these brief moments, an internal silence arises from which our innate knowledge, our innate wisdom, our innate ability to listen, makes itself known.

It is able to shine forth. To reveal itself to us. 

It’s like how in the asana practice, you can be doing a pose you’ve done hundreds of times when suddenly, you have a revelation, you uncover some aspect of the pose that changes the way you practice it. Or even when you’re practicing and the teacher gives an alignment suggestion which you’ve heard 10, 20 30 times, and yet this time, it clicks. Something shifts. When the mind settles, the body is able to reveal itself.

Like that, when we create space in our lives for these pockets of presence, the teaching are able to seep in. They make more sense. We feel them. We see when we’ve been wrong. What we’ve been ignoring. What we need to do.

By putting the distractions to the side, we can amplify that which is most important. We can create subtle shifts that lead to lasting change. 

art by Ivory Ink Studio