Body, mind, ego, Self
Three times a week I walk through the door to a corporate studio space with a sign for the ‘Body & Mind Rooms’. Here, the assumption is that there’s an offering of practices for the body; strength, circuits, pilates. And a separate selection of practices for the mind; meditation, mindfulness, sound baths (although, I will say none of these things are regularly on the schedule!)
Where does a yoga practice sit within this dual distinction?
When asked to provide a definition for yoga in my very first teacher training, mine and most of my other classmates’ definitions were something along the lines of: “a practice to find connection between body and mind” or perhaps a “moving meditation”. We often talk about body and mind like they are two separate experiences, one or the other. We invite ourselves and our students to listen to the body, as if we sit outside of it somehow. It’s a well intentioned guidance that becomes a barrier to direct experience.
My perspective on this is informed from Phillip Shepherd’s book Radical Wholeness. Reading this on training with Paula Andreewitch honestly rocked my world! He describes embodiment as:
“a state in which your entire intelligence is experienced as a coherent unity attuned to the world.”
Our practice in these terms is not about quietening the mind in order to observe the sensations of the body, instead it becomes a practice of integrating the intelligence of the head with the wisdom of the body. It is a remembering that these things were never separate so as to allow ourselves to feel from the whole of our being. Game changer.
The issue is, we do spend a whole lot of time in our heads, the jobs we do, the ways we spend our time … we live in a culture that has forgotten our wholeness through our obsession with what the mind thinks.
“Living in our heads, we feel separate from the body - and so we similarly feel separate from the world. We experience the world in a duality - one that estranges us from our environment and obliterates the companionship of the Present. And just as this duality is created when the centre of our awareness is located in the head, it disappears if that centre comes to rest in the body.”
In the Mundaka Upanishad the relationship between the ego and the Self is described as two birds dwelling in the same body:
Like two golden birds perched on the selfsame tree,
Intimate friends the ego and the Self
Dwell in the same body.
As long as we think we are the ego,
We feel attached and fall into sorrow.
But realise that you are the Self, the Lord of Life, and you will be freed from sorrow.
When you realise that you are the Self,
Supreme source of light, supreme source of love,
You transcend the duality of life
And enter into the unitive state.
For me, this is yoga. A unitive, integrative state. A place where we can move with intention, become present to sensation and feel life unfolding from a place of fullness. The language we use as teachers to create the conditions to feel this is powerful.