Truth in the Body

The body often signals to us that there is a lack of alignment between what we want to do and why we want to do it. ….We may be able to rationalize our behavior in our minds, but the sinking feeling or tension in the body will give the truth away. 

Joan Halifax, Edge States

Truths lie in the body, the bones, and muscles, blood, fascia, and organs.  Yoga by sensitizing us to how the body feels, can awaken our awareness to a deep inner wisdom through felt experiences.  Knowing through the body goes beyond words and can serve us when we face decisions that have no rational answers.  The thinking mind can take us only so far in such situations.  Yoga by removing tension, opening the heart, relaxing the mind helps us to access this knowing.

Over ten years ago when my father lay hooked to a ventilator after a massive stroke, my mother and I had to decide what to do.  If they removed the ventilator, the doctors didn’t know if my father would live or if he lived whether he would gain cognition, the use of his body, his mind.  The ventilator would keep him alive but life on a ventilator would be terribly compromised.  It was clear to me (and my mother) that we needed to remove him from the ventilator.  We had to let him go.  For me, it was a decision that came from deep inside my gut not my thinking mind.  The part inside who was held in the palm of his hand when I was born, that knew the particular and unique tenor of his voice, that knew how he moved in the world, This part knew that he would not want to live such a compromised life.  I knew from that deep place what gave my father his aliveness and how he would not have wanted to live in the world without that. 

This place inside can feel to me like the movements of the waves pouring in and pulling out helping me to let go what is not mine to hold onto any longer making way for an embrace of what is coming.  This rhythm holds my loss and contains my joy. 

Yoga opens us up to receiving the wisdom of the body that cannot be known by only the thinking mind especially when there is no clear path forward or easy resolution.  Sometimes there isn’t any kind of choice to be made that will make things better.  By tuning into the physical sensations of confusion, anxiety, or grief, giving the feelings our attention, we might sense how the body holds and heals us through our awareness. The sensations we find are changing and flowing and moving through the body more easily than thoughts and story lines which can get stuck.  We can follow the flows and changes of energy to decide next steps whether that means doing nothing, praying, taking a hot bath, weeping, or singing.