Hi everyone, I’m Max. I’m a 200-hour certified yoga teacher who has been practicing regularly since 2012. Although I do have a decade of experience practicing yoga, I want to start out by saying that I am a student, and I just want to share what I’ve been learning.

Today I want to talk about citta, which is the heart-mind field of consciousness. This is an important concept in yoga philosophy.

“Our heart-mind sits between the ever-changing outside world and an inner light of awareness.” (Quoted from Nicolai Bachman’s “The Path of the Yoga Sutras”.)

Yoga says that we are not our bodies or minds. We are the pure awareness inside. Think about it…who is aware of your thoughts and emotions? Your thoughts and emotions fluctuate all the time. Yet you remain inside, observing them.

In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says:

“Those who know this truth, whose consciousness is unified, think always ‘I am not the doer.’ While seeing or hearing, touching or smelling, eating, moving about, or sleeping; breathing or speaking, letting go or holding on, even opening or closing the eyes, they understand that these are only the movements of the senses among sense objects. (5:8-9) (Quoted from Eknath Easwaran’s translation)

So yoga establishes that we are the inner soul, and the citta is the medium through which we experience the outer world.

Your citta is like the window through which you view the world. If the window of your heart-mind is dirty, you won’t see things accurately. Yoga is the process of cleaning that window so that you can view things objectively. What an empowering concept….you can choose to clean the window.

How does this jive with your reality? Do you find this helpful? Do you have any questions about it?

Let me know! Feel free to send me an email or leave a comment on YouTube or Instagram.

About Max:

Max Baker is a certified Yoga Teacher based in Raleigh, NC whose passion is helping people find the tools and the confidence to reconnect with the most authentic version of themselves. He does this through his website, online courses, memberships, and in-person classes.