We are used to thinking of information as words, texts, images, news, and knowledge. But that is only part of what I mean by information.
Everything that exists moves and interacts. Stars, atoms, cells, living organisms — every system has its own properties, rhythms, and ways of interacting with the world around it.
Within Informational Yoga, I look at information much more broadly: as an expression of a system's state, and as an inner structure that influences how it behaves next.
In other words, information has two sides. On one side, it reflects what already exists or has already happened. On the other, a state that has been retained can influence what happens next.
You can easily see this difference in yourself.
The conversation ended long ago, but you still feel the tension. The event is in the past, but your reaction to it is not. It affects your thoughts, your breathing, your posture, and even the way you perceive the next conversation.
So what you have lived through does not always disappear along with the event. It can leave a trace that goes on affecting us.
This is exactly the phenomenon I work with in Informational Yoga.
A string that runs through space and time
For many years I have used the image of a string to explain the nature of information.
Imagine the string of a musical instrument, pulled tight. How it sounds depends not only on how it was touched, but also on its length, how tightly it is strung, and its other properties. The conditions for the sound exist before the sound itself appears.
This example helps explain how I see information.
We are used to describing the physical world with four coordinates: three of space, and time. But to understand how a particular system shows itself, I suggest considering one more, a fifth coordinate — the informational one.
In my model, the fifth coordinate describes a system's inner state, its organization, and the properties that determine how it interacts with the world.
This is not a generally accepted fifth dimension of physical space, but a way of describing reality that I propose, one that grew out of many years of practice and observation.
Let me explain with a simple example.
Imagine a room where a heated argument has just taken place. The furniture is where it was, the walls have not changed, but the atmosphere between the people is different now. They may speak more guardedly, avoid each other's eyes, feel the tension.
The physical space has barely changed, yet the state of the people and of their relationships has changed a great deal.
I see this difference as an expression of an informational state.
You can see the same pattern in a single person. Outwardly they stay the same, but after a particular experience they react differently to familiar words, circumstances, or people.
So when I talk about information, I mean not only the signal that is transmitted, but also what determines how a person reacts to it.
Heavy and light information
Another important part of my approach is distinguishing information by its effect on the inner state.
I loosely call these two manifestations heavy and light.
This is not about physical mass, and not about a moral judgment. Heavy does not necessarily mean bad, and light does not mean good. It is a way of describing the quality of an experience and its effect on a person.
Recall two feelings you know well.
After an unpleasant conversation, it can be hard for you to breathe, your shoulders tense up, and your thoughts keep going back to what was said.
By contrast, after a sincere reconciliation, or after realizing something important, a sense of lightness appears. You breathe more freely, your muscles relax, and the need to replay the event over and over gradually fades.
In the language of Informational Yoga, I describe these processes this way:
Heavy information helps tension take hold and build up. Light information helps it ease and let go.
This does not mean there are two physically measured categories of vibration. I am talking about patterns I observe in my work with people's states.
What matters here is something else: accumulated tension can become lasting, and being freed from it can change a habitual reaction.
How information takes form
Now let's look at how an inner state can gradually take on a stable form.
Suppose someone said something hurtful to you. The conversation itself lasted a few seconds, but you keep going back to it in your mind.
Every time you recall the situation, you may feel the hurt all over again, clench your jaw, tense your shoulders, or hold your breath.
The event is already over, yet the reaction repeats.
If a mechanism like this takes hold, the tension can turn into a habitual bodily response. Sometimes a person even stops noticing it.
Here it is important to tell two things apart.
A muscle does not store a memory the way a computer stores a file. But the nervous system can learn repeated reactions, and an emotional state can affect muscle tone, breathing, and behavior.
In Informational Yoga I call such a lasting reaction an informational imprint.
It is not the event itself that goes on living in us, but the way we lived through it and learned to react to it.
This explains why it is sometimes not enough simply to understand the cause of your state.
Your mind already understands that there is no danger, but your body keeps reacting as though there were.
Over time, reactions like these can affect not only how you feel, but also how you behave.
A person used to expecting criticism may avoid frank conversations. Someone who is always tense may see neutral situations as threats. And a person who has failed many times sometimes stops acting before any real obstacle appears.
This is how a single reaction gradually turns into a fixed way of behaving.
In my terminology, this is the very process by which information takes form.
Does this principle apply beyond human beings?
Similar processes, in which things accumulate and stable structures form, can be observed at different levels of the world's organization.
In nature, crystals arise, complex structures form, and matter changes its state. In living organisms, adaptive mechanisms become established. In human communities, habits, rules, and traditions take shape.
Of course, the physical processes by which a crystal forms and the psychological mechanisms by which a habit forms are not the same thing. Each has its own causes and its own patterns.
Still, I see one feature they share: a certain organization of interactions can, over time, create a stable structure.
This is especially easy to see in organizations.
At first, one employee is afraid to give the manager unwelcome news. Then colleagues start avoiding candor too. Before long, meetings become a formality, and management gets reliable information less and less often.
What began as one person's fearful reaction has gradually become a feature of the whole organization.
Nobody decided to create this culture. It formed because a certain way of behaving was repeated again and again.
This is where I see the connection between information, repetition, and form.
Can this principle be extended to every level of matter? For me, it remains an important line of inquiry, not a proven universal law.
Why information not only holds the past but also influences the future
If information only reflected what had happened, we could think of it as a passive trace.
But human experience shows that what we have lived through before affects the decisions we make next.
Suppose you were once humiliated in public. Many years have passed, but in similar circumstances you feel the tension again, even when there is no real threat.
Your earlier experience influences where your attention goes, how you interpret other people's words, and how you choose to act.
In this sense, information does not simply store the past — it takes part in shaping the future.
This raises a question: can we change this pattern?
My experience suggests that we can.
When a person begins to notice their own reaction, to understand where it comes from, and to change their state deliberately, the way they interact with the world gradually changes too.
Their words begin to sound different. They read other people's actions differently. It becomes possible to act where fear used to arise, or to stay calm where conflict used to flare up automatically.
As a result, outer circumstances can change as well: the nature of relationships, decisions, opportunities, and other people's reactions.
This does not mean that we can control any event with our thoughts, or guarantee that unpleasant situations will never happen again.
We do not control the whole outside world. But we can change the part we play in it.
Sometimes that is enough for the familiar script to stop repeating itself.
Can we change information that has already become part of us?
If a reaction formed as a result of experience, the logical question is: can it be changed?
The practical side of Informational Yoga is built on exactly this.
We begin with what is open to direct observation: breathing, muscle tension, emotions, thoughts, and automatic reactions.
Gradually a person learns to see the connection between an event, their own perception, and the state that arose in response.
The next step is to learn not only to notice this mechanism, but to work with it deliberately.
At the School of Informational Yoga, we approach this work on three interconnected levels: physical, energetic, and mental.
The aim is not to erase the past, or to force yourself to feel nothing.
Quite the opposite — to learn to meet your own experience without the old reaction automatically playing out again.
You cannot change an event after the fact. But you can change what it means to you, how you respond to the memory of it, and how you behave in similar situations.
This is what I mean when I talk about changing an informational program.
Not everything changes quickly. Some reactions formed over years, so they take long and consistent work. And the result is not always the same.
Even so, simply being able to become aware of an automatic reaction already creates room for choice.
On the boundary between yoga and science
I do not see Informational Yoga as a religion, and I am not asking you to take my views on faith.
At the same time, I do not claim that all the principles I describe have already been proven by modern physics.
Science studies phenomena through measurement, models, and the testing of hypotheses. Yoga practice also centers on a person directly observing their own inner experience.
These approaches do not necessarily contradict each other, but they have different methods and different ways of checking them.
What interests me is the space where they overlap: how an inner state relates to the body, to perception, to behavior, and to the way we interact with the world around us.
This is where I continue my observations and keep developing Informational Yoga.
I am asking you not so much to believe in my model of the world as to start exploring what you can observe for yourself.
Where to begin
The next time an event sets off a strong reaction in you, try, for a moment, to turn your attention from the event itself to your own state.
What has changed in your body? Where has the tension appeared? How are you breathing? Which thoughts keep repeating? Is this feeling familiar from your past experience?
Don't rush to get rid of it or to explain it.
First, just observe.
Perhaps you will notice that the event is already over, but its effect is still at work inside you.
This is the first step toward working with information consciously: seeing not only what is happening to you, but also how what you have lived through goes on shaping your state.
And it is with this observation that the possibility of change begins.