You Don’t Have to Believe Every Thought You Think

The human mind is a funny thing. Someone can take a little longer than usual to reply to a message, and before we’ve even realised we’re doing it, we’ve worked out that they’re annoyed with us, replayed our last conversation and identified the exact thing we probably shouldn’t have said. By the time they reply with “Sorry, busy morning,” we’ve lived through an entire disagreement they knew nothing about. It’s funny when you catch it. A little less funny when you realise how often you might be doing some version of it.

This is one of the things I find so interesting about yoga philosophy. Long before phones, social media or the pressure to present a carefully edited version of ourselves to the world, people in India were looking closely at the mind and asking questions that still feel very relevant. How do we know whether what we think is true? Why do certain experiences stay with us and shape what we expect next? And how does a passing thought become something we believe about who we are?

When we talk about yoga today, we often begin with the body. We think about flexibility, strength, breathing and maybe having an hour where nobody needs anything from us. All worthwhile things. But reading the philosophy takes us into a much deeper conversation about how we experience being alive, and how much of that experience is shaped by what our mind brings to it.

On of the go-to books of yoga, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra, outlines different kinds of mind patterns and lists them as valid knowledge, mistaken understanding, conceptual construction, sleep and memory. That might sound a little academic at first, but there’s something very practical in it: knowing something, remembering something and imagining something are different activities, even when they feel equally convincing. Classical Yoga also describes how the mind leaves impressions that can influence future experience. Put bluntly, we almost live our lives through our minds. This knowledge is why lose something if we reduce all of yoga to a modern relaxation technique,.

Think about walking into a room where you don’t know many people (maybe a yoga class). If you’ve had experiences of feeling excluded, you might already be looking for signs that you don’t belong. Someone glances away, two people carry on talking, nobody immediately comes over, and your mind begins joining the dots. Another person might enter the same room and assume everyone is simply busy. The room is the same, but the experience can be very different because each person has brought a history into it.

Of course, sometimes we really are being excluded. Sometimes our reading of a situation is accurate. The interesting question is whether we can recognise the difference between what we’ve observed and the explanation we’ve supplied. “Nobody has spoken to me yet” describes what has happened. “Nobody wants me here” adds a conclusion. It may feel completely true, particularly if it touches something painful, but it still deserves a little examination before we let it decide the rest of our evening.

We do something similar with our identities. We might say we’re awkward, impatient, bad at exercise or simply “not that kind of person.” After a while, those descriptions can become so familiar that we stop questioning them. We make choices around them, avoid situations that might challenge them, and gradually build a life that seems to confirm what we already believed. If I decide I’m no good at something and never give myself the chance to learn, I’m unlikely to discover otherwise.

There’s a connection here with what I’ve written before about food and belonging. Sometimes we choose a way of eating partly because of the person we want to be, or the group we want to belong to. We can do the same with being the healthy one, the strong one, the calm one or the person who always has everything together. Those identities can be comforting, but they can also become demanding. If you’re “the calm one,” what happens when you’re overwhelmed? If you’re “the strong one,” are you still allowed to ask for help? It’s worth noticing when a description of ourselves starts becoming an obligation.

Recently I have been back studying and found modern psychology uses the term decentring for the ability to notice thoughts and feelings with less identification and automatic reaction. Now, ancient Yoga and modern psychology have different aims and assumptions, so I wouldn’t claim they’re saying exactly the same thing, but in practice they point to a similar way to approach life.

You can explore this quite easily on the mat. You’re standing in a balance, your foot comes down, and almost immediately there’s a commentary: your balance is terrible, everyone else seems fine, perhaps you should be better at this by now. Within a few seconds, a perfectly ordinary wobble has become evidence in a much larger story about your ability. Meanwhile, the practical response might be very simple. Put your foot down, use the wall, adjust your position and have another go. There’s something freeing about allowing a wobble to remain a wobble, without asking it to tell you what kind of person you are.

I think this is part of what makes practice valuable. We have an opportunity to see our reactions in a situation where we can pause and become curious about them. We might notice comparison, frustration or the urge to do more than feels appropriate because somebody nearby is doing it. Once we can see that happening, we have more choice about what comes next. Perhaps we keep going, perhaps we change the pose, or perhaps we acknowledge that we’re tired and give ourselves a little less to do.

There is a trap, though, and it’s a very human one. We hear that we should observe our thoughts, then start judging ourselves for having them. We’ve been practising for years, so surely we should be calmer, less reactive, more “yogic” by now? Before we know it, awareness has become another standard we’re failing to meet. The “yogi” is another identity we can’t live up to. I’d rather we approached it with some kindness and steady shoulders.

Now with all this advice, I want to make sure I’m not preaching spiritual bypass or seem to be pretending theres a world “yogis” inhabit with no mind flips. We need to be sensible about what this means. A thought may be pointing towards a real problem that needs attention. If someone consistently treats you badly, examining your interpretation shouldn’t become an excuse to dismiss your own experience. You may need to have a difficult conversation, establish a boundary or ask for support. The purpose of creating a little space is to help us respond more clearly, including recognising when something needs to change.

What I love most about these teachings of yoga is that they are actually pretty ordinary. Theres no “close your eyes and angels appear to guide you,” or “do this and magical blue light will emit from you.” It’s things that are just simply day-to-day goings on of human life. And thats why its so important and valuable. Life is already magical enough, we dont need it to be any more that it already is. These super practical teachings are best because they are the ones that help each of us meet life more fully.

Thanks for being here,

Stuart

Follow my page on Instagram and YouTube for more reflections, videos, tutorials and classes.