The Temple
It's very strange - most of the time, we don't remember that we have a body. We sail through life like balloons on a string, aware, for the most part, only of our dreams, our hopes, our desires, our worries and regrets, hooked by the manic firing of the mind.
Siddhartha Gautama - the Buddha - along with countless other teachers, stressed the profound importance of offering attention to the body. Just like the breath, the body is an amazing friend whose being we should remember as often as we are able. Just as it is with a human or an animal friend, the relationship requires time spent together.
The more time we spend simply experiencing the body, experiencing it as we sit, as we stand, as we walk and eat and play, the more centered and workable the mind becomes.
Mindfulness of the body can be practiced on the wings of the breath. We can guide our attention along with simple phrases spoken silently. We may say, "Breathing in, I am aware of my body. Breathing out, I send gratitude to my body."
As we move through our days, we can bring attention to different parts of the body - the feet, ankles and calves, the muscles of the jaw and those around the eyes, the shoulders, arms and wrists and hands. We can see if there is tension anywhere, experiencing it fully on the in-breath and allowing it to soften on the out-breath.
When we notice that there is tension anywhere in the body, we can hold it with great care in the arms of awareness. We can bring this care even if the burden is heavy and we desperately desire to numb out.
"Breathing in, I experience the painful tension in my shoulder-blades.
Breathing out, I send compassion."
At times, the pain the tension is holding can unfold, and we may experience insight connected to that pain as flashes of memory, images or films in the mind that help us see our lives more clearly and see the sources of our suffering, allowing us to transform those sources.
Just as we practice mindfulness of the body during the ordinary flow of our days, it's wonderful to also practice it when we climb the mountain of vision, guided by our plant allies.
As the senses of the spirit take flight and behold mystery and teaching, a part of our awareness can recollect the body and check in with that friend of ours, lying or sitting on the earth.
At times, the intensity of the flight will make the body suffer. Perhaps it's a bit like how astronauts feel during lift-off.
We may feel nauseous or pressed down or simply very strange. Breathing and practicing mindfulness of the body is the equivalent of taking a child's hand when the child is scared. We can feel the discomfort, experience the fear and send the body the light of kindness, the honey of our love. Our awareness, breathing in and out, can cover the body with the cozy and tender quilt of compassion while never denying the body’s troubles or its hardships. This helps us bear the often painful labor of the path.
Relaxing the body in this way seems to also assist with the experiencing, unlocking, opening and releasing of emotional wounds and hurts held in the tissues of the body as unprocessed and unresolved memory. Experiencing both the joys and the difficulties of the body allows us to surrender fully to nature as we sail on, and allows nature to complete the movement towards wholeness which seems to be her ever-present will.
At times, this unlocking, opening and release may be experienced as a kind of trembling, a quivering, a quaking, a vibration of the tissues and muscles and fascia - a shaking of our being coming from within. We can bring our attention to this process and allow it to fully unfold, trusting the wisdom of the body as it releases tensions requiring release.
The journey itself teaches us how to care for the body with our actions and our attention when we return from the mountaintop to the valley of our lives. Informed by the visionary skyway, and developing ever greater mindfulness of the body, we come to breathe more fully, becoming ever more alive and experiencing more and more the magic of this precious human form.
Walking this good and ancient road, our daily practice supports our visionary flight and the flight of our vision nourishes, inspires, vitalizes and strengthens our daily practice.