Observing Mind

I'm talking with my yoga classes about observing mind versus thinking mind.  Cultivating observing mind is a key yoga practice.

The observing mind is the mind that takes in the continuous stream of present reality.  It's the mind that sees, hears, smells, touches, and generally delights in the world, without analysis or judgement.

In contrast, thinking mind is the judge, the analyst, the story teller, the mind that makes a narrative to try to make sense of the world, but which so often runs amok, ruminating on the past, spinning in anxiety about the future, creating suffering out of thin air.

We need the thinking mind.  It isn't inherently bad.  Yet, bringing more balance between the two, by cultivating observing mind and spending more time in the stream of the present moment, is a very worthwhile endeavor.

Perhaps an early step on the path is to recognize that thinking mind is not the only mind, and that the observing mind is real, and different.  At the end of one class today, a student said it was a new concept to her, and relayed that as I spoke about it she felt as if the right side of her brain became active, as it began to think about what she was hearing.  I don't know about the perception of thinking in one side of the brain - but it seems as if, in being aware that she was beginning to think, she was also aware that her mind had just been occupied in a different, non-thinking way.