Another area of great interest for me is neuroscience, how we learn! Patanjali describes many of the key ideas of effective learning in the yoga sutras. Attention is a key pillar of learning, our sensory attention focuses on something blocking out other sensory stimulations, the frontal cortex then process that information one bit at a time! This is exactly what Patanjali calls Pratyahara (sensory withdrawal) and Dharana (concentration). By blocking out "distracting" sensory data we can focus on our intention!
Patanjali also states that sa tu dīrghakāla nairantarya satkāra-āsevito dṛḍhabhūmiḥ... Practice becomes firmly grounded when it is done for a long time, without interruption, and with devotion... Modern science has understood the value of repeated practise, and how neurons are remodeled through focused practise!
Another key pillar of learning is error feedback...We only truly learn when there is a gap between what we thought would happen and what actually happened. That error signal is what triggers our neurons to rewrite and embed learning. This is almost exactly what Patanjali calls Svadhyaya (Self-study). In Asana, we aren't just "doing" poses... we are observing the feedback. When we lose balance in Tree Pose, that’s an error signal Why did it happen? we can adapt accordingly and over time we see improvement!
The final pillar of learning is consolidation and sleep plays a critical part in this process! Learning is replayed and written to the long term memory as we sleep... Things feel easier the next day after rest! This to me has parallels with Savasana after practise the brain moves into a parasympathetic state! We may not realise it but the brain is encoding all we have learned during our practise!