Yoga mindfulness and transdisciplinarity
One of the most beautiful keys to understand yoga is given by Philippe Filliot who describes it as “ a mental education through the gesture”(Une education du mental par le geste)[1]. The art of yoga, count at least five thousand years, of work on us for ourselves and for one another, helping ourselves through a gesture training to reach a better knowledge and control of our own minds and emotions.
This art has several points in common with the transdisciplinary scientific research.
The research in the transdisciplinary field takes place, in between, through and beyond the disciplines, and the aim of these scientific
Dialogue is to reach UNESCO education purpose for our century: learning to be.
There is a huge difference in between representing an authority because we pretend to know everything in our discipline or because we learn our discipline from a longer amount of time than our students, in one hand our knowledge is limited in the other hand, in the context of a learning society, our knowledge is open to mutual discovery and infinite search, in a real scientifically spirit.
In the Yoga field the “guru” the one who shares the light, who shows and spread the light what is a metaphor to say that he helps his students to acquire a better knowledge of their own minds, is very near a negative theology position, someone who is open to a beginners mind, who knows the mystery of human nature, and knows also all he don’t know about himself and the universe, and is therefore always open minded to learn more with others.
For this reason Yoga as the scientific research call us to humility in front of our ignorance, despite all scientific and technological progress : we have a lack of control of our emotions, we seem to have little aptitudes on mutual understanding, and we are very far to a peaceful condition on earth towards our mutual evolution.
That is to say that yoga below Shiva protection, the dance god,
Has a beginner’s mind function that addresses to all disciplines.
Yoga is a space for authenticity and mutual care, a space of a difficult freedom, as is the transdisciplinary attitude, an attitude of respect, tolerance and exigency.
MT.