On the yogic path of awakening, the body emerges as the reference point to which we attend. There are a million and one things that the mind could attend to in any given moment. Yogis choose the body. The body is your best, most reliable ally on the path. Your body is grounded in Reality. It is HERE - present to the current time and the unfolding moment of NOW. It is not in next week, playing out a fictional scenario of the family dinner that is on your calendar. It is not in that fight with your friend that you two had a few years ago. Conditioned mind’s function is the playing of stories. This function occurs with Mind: luminous, unconditioned conscious awareness When we let the stories go and return to the body, it naturally relaxes, well being manifests and we enjoy the rhythmic breath of our existence.
But here’s the rub.
Because body and mind are one, the conditioned mind will color, shade or condition the experience of the body with whatever story it’s playing. When you plug into and go with that memory of the fight, your body relives the fight - in that moment, right then and there. The gut clench, the tight jaw, the anger and rage, the sorrow. That experience is relived. Re living the story leaves a karmic rut in the brain, a neural pathway that the current will most likely flow down again. By repetition the rut gets a little bit deeper, denser, more entrenched. You could call this process habit or karma or conditioning. Whatever label you put on it, you can say “bye bye” to peace, well being and relaxation.
Catching onto karma’s habitual nature and the effect it has on you, the inhabitant of the body, it makes sense why the sage’s guided us to unplug from the stories and get in the body. By doing so we wind up in the NOW, the HERE, the present time grounded in “reality”. This is where we have the best shot at attaining ease and peace because we are dealing with what is so, not what might happen or rehashing what has happened. We don’t have immediate agency over the past and the future. We do have power NOW to influence and create as best a situation for ourselves HERE as we can. In doing so we make skillful choices for a better future and we understand our past with compassion thereby healing it.
Practice: Sit comfortably on the floor or in a chair. Close you eyes, let your abdomen go soft and relax your shoulder. Take a few deep easy breaths, noticing the breath fill the body and exit the body. Starting at your ankles, breathing easily, bring your mind from joint to joint: from ankles, to knees, to hips up to the crown of your head. Start again at your feet. Bring the mind to the feet, hands, forearms, calfs, upper arms, thighs, buttocks and hips, shoulders and chest, belly and head. Then again, breathing easily explore your body as skeleton. Notice the bony structures that support you uprightness. Then explore your body as a system of muscles. Then feel your body as pulsing, coursing fluids continuously pumped and channelled. Feel you body as a system of nerves, electrochemical reactions setting off more reactions, stimulating feelings and memory. Finally experience your body as pure energy, free flowing Breath, the inherent body intelligence that supports you.
