Four minute read
A regular mind-body practice like yoga, Tai Chi and Chi Gung, affords the practitioner very clear benefits that I never hear mentioned. It is as though it is a secret. I aim to be close with other like-minded yogis yet I feel there is something about our experience of yoga that is lacking clear articulation. Not just to our students, but even among senior level teachers of yoga.
What is it? I wonder if I can clearly describe what I deeply wish to convey.
My morning Tai Chi & Chi Gung in the park is directed by the body. This time is an hour of body lead, felt movement in which the mind is attentive, watching and following its bliss. I protect it as the source of life in my life.
I feel it is important to discern the subtle yet extraordinary difference between the mind’s direction and the body’s direction. To know when the mind has the reigns is useful. And to know when the body speaks louder and directs the action, is beautiful. It is a raw kind of intelligence that comes from a place of trust.
Stillness is a place where subtleness thrives and so this meditation video I made describes how the body can lead us into better alignment if we can be a little more still for a moment and let it be heard.
In the park among trees and sky, or in meditation, fully embodied, there is spontaneity: my movement is responding to what is actually felt, alive in me and happening right now. It is incredibly beautiful to witness ones own unraveling and re-emerging.
I would like to say there are no words to describe it, but my job is to find the words. For now, Vanda Scaravelli, Diane Long (Italy), Louise Simmons (Scotland) and Caroline Hutton (Bali) are teachers who I feel have found the words. I am so grateful to have spent time in their presence.
Is the mind seperate from the body?
Yes and No.
The body-mind is one interrelated vehicle of consciousness. Separating them has been a source of problems, particularly in a culture where the body is told to be subservient to the mind.
Our culture and societal norms have a part to play
A body forced to sit in chairs most of the day as required by work is then also required to sit upright again even at play: at restaurants, at the movies and during visits to friends houses. This is a body without agency, without voice. Without consciously realising it, the body is constantly supressed and neglected. Infact, misrepresented. Because how we use the body affects how it can be represented to the mind through fascia and the nervous system and therefore how we come to think of it. The body becomes an ignorant object like a sack we have to drag with us through life. This is a gross misrepresentation, because the body is radiant, round and rhythmic.
Without movement, it is unable to process past stress and traumas. It is not able to heal, renew and start fresh. And so the mind, the person, suffers from our restrictions on the body.
My daily hour of embodied practice in nature is a time when past patterns and social norms do not own me. At least not for that hour. And if I am brave, even places like work or a friends place or a bus stop can’t keep my body’s rights shut up.
My body is my own and I can shape it how I want. I can stand at a friend’s house, I can stretch at the bus stop and I can eat dinner in sukhasana at a low table on the floor. The rebel in me can shine a little in the name of good health and cultivating a society that will allow it.
For good or for bad
Many of the body’s urges can be labelled as unhelpful. Sometimes unwanted cravings, other times aversions to things we know we should do. So when listening to the body’s urges in a daily-life-setting it will, unlike Tai Chi in the park, include all the habits we have collected along the way: sugar, salt, pleasure or not pleasure, and other forms of immediate gratification or mortification.
When you think of a time you crave or avoid something do you see it as a mind directed thing or a body directed thing. It can be helpful to think of it as a bit of both.
Yoga understands that the mind has two levels: Buddhi and Manas. I think of Buddhi as the “Higher Mind” that is not limited to the body’s needs and preferences. Manas is the ““Lower Mind” and is inextricable linked to the body. The body or manas, the part of the mind that is inextricably connected to the body, can be listened to or it can be ignored.
A tight back of the neck and shoulders is a common thing people spend their day ignoring.
I am considering that actually, it is the culture of demonising the body’s messages that causes the real problem. Because if we listen to something respectfully, good things happen.
I think we are evolving away from centuries of our body-blaming past.
As a culture, and certainly through the contributions of the tantric streams of yoga, we are becoming nuanced enough to see the beauty and delights in these bodily desires, when managed well. A body with too much sugar & salt is an unhappy body and will crave the cleansing quality of water very quickly. So there is a natural intelligence when we allow the craving, meet the need and manage the outcome.
The body says ‘enough now’ and the mind follows, which then directs our behaviour / actions.
However, a repressed body, that is not readily listened to, will not be heard on time and its warnings will be under-resourced: like a tummy that was not listened to and now aches from gobbling too much chocolate, or a spine that was not listened to and now has worn discs and brittle bones.
Having listened in I now eat mejool dates instead of chocolate, almonds instead of biscuits and Kombucha instead of processed juice. For my spine, I fuss about with cushions and pillows to work at my computer desk, or watch a movie. I rush to my Chi Gung / Yoga practice as though rushing to a lover, and I breathe all the way from thighs to crown. The results are extraordinary levels of health and wellbeing.
I am not recommending this for others. I am simply sharing my body-mind experiences as I witness them. What I do recommend is listening-in with some depth and regularity and with great curiosity.
With the rise of yoga, well trained naturopaths, less processed food and creative working environments, our culture is fast evolving to bring the body back into our lives. But when it comes to yoga and teaching it and speaking about it, are the building blocks there? Are teachers equipped with the basic skills to discern body intelligence and to then reach out and teach it? Or is the language of the body still absent from current yoga teachings?
If you are a student in a yoga class, have you been encouraged to listen in and allowed to follow the spontaneous arisings? Does the class provide space for you to follow your own inner knowing, intuition? Is the locus of control with you or the teacher? Are you encouraged to be self-referencing?
Listening In
How deeply can you listen to your body? Is the spine happy right now? Right now, you may take a look. Move a little if it helps you feel more into the spine. Is the neck happy? Your shoulders? Your jaw, mouth and tongue?
I am an open invitation for us all to bring the body back into our life, into our felt, present experience of the now. Ask the body simple honest questions. Let it speak. It can know immeasurable freedoms. One’s yoga time is the place to practice body led awareness. It is not easy to teach, but there is an art and science to it.
Following along to a teacher’s instructions is mind leading the movement. Clients have many times shared with me how the yoga class forces them to override what is actually requested by the body. Even having a home practice based on a preset sequence, again, is mind enforcing its will on the body. This is why we must take yoga classes and strict yoga disciplines within the context of their limitations. They are experiences that do not inherently pass on the wisdom of yoga, the wisdom of your body-mind. They are the training ground, but not always the nectar.
So the secret of yoga of great interest to me is the ability to clearly feel and allow the positive direction movement wishes to take in us:
Yoga is
In the full flexion of the foot when pushing off
to take the next step,
and in the swing of the arms
that opens the lungs to a clearer breath
If my style of Yoga Therapy (and Womanly Yoga and Scaravelli Inspired Yoga) all keep body-led awareness at their core, then I am pleased to teach in that special way.
If there is a secret then we are the keepers.
Listen in. Be your yoga in your life. Be in your beautiful and intelligent body. All the messages are there. With a special kind of yoga and a keen interest, you will certainly be on a the path and you already know the way. If I can help, I will.
Thanks you, this was a big read and I hope your body got something out of it.
Katie