It Is Important To Be In The Body

What is embodiment? And why is it important to be in one’s body? What does that even mean, “to be in one’s body?”

In the arc of my teaching career, I watch myself shift emphasis, cycling through periods of focus on one aspect of yoga to another. There was a time where it felt extremely important to impress upon others that yoga isn’t just a physical thing we do. It seemed to me that as yoga grew more visible and popular, and also as social media came into existence, we were seeing only the surface of things and it hurt my heart. It offended my sense of the depth and meaning that I know in this space. Even to look at a photo of my own self doing yogasana made my insides wrench awkwardly. All the years of presence, of quiet attention, of undoing through doing and undoing again, a life changed - it seemed invisible in the image and it hurt. 

The world turns. Holy moly, does life ever change. And perspectives evolve. In the last few years, I noticed a quiet question (quiet challenge?) emerging in my mind, “Amanda, how is yoga physical?” So, I’ve been thinking about that a lot, and letting that question evolve. I try to stay open and listen to others, and I quietly watch my own practice and that of my students. 

I know practicing yoga to be a way of balancing the dimensions of doing and being by bringing gentle attention to the sensations of the body, and by bringing gentle attention to breathing (that magical thing that can quiet all things). 

From where I stand right now, being in one’s body seems of the utmost importance because in the body, we are human and we know our humanity. In the body, we know both our pleasures and disappointments. We know our family. We know our tenderness. Our violence. Our longings. Our impermanence. And if you stay with all of that, you recognise that very same thing in all other beings. 

I was absolutely lit up with resonance this past week when I listened to Krista Tippet’s 2006 interview with Matthew Sanford. (BTW, I highly recommend you listen to this one - just do it!). Matthew believes that it is impossible to live more deeply in your body without becoming more compassionate towards all of life. All I can say is yes.

And we need this, especially now. Many people are finding the events of the world these past couple weeks painful. And they are painful. And if there is pain, I think we should feel the pain. Not cut off from it. An alternative could be to get lost in thinking, in the mind. This is really dangerous. So easily, humans become consumed with stories, ideas, histories - sometimes crazy ones. Ideas can almost be like an infection of the mind. In the worst cases, humans are so lost in mind, and so cut off from their humanity (and that of others), that we can do great violences. When we are lost in the mind, cut off from our own bodies and our own humanity, we are also cut off from the world. 

I don’t want this for us. I really don’t want this for our young people. It is important to be in the body. It is important to feel, even the painful things. It is important to be an integrated being and align your actions with the wisdom of this wholeness. 

Your next opportunity to work on this, is simply your next conscious breath. That just means using your attention to track the flow of your breath as it moves into and out of your body. ;)