Estuaries of the Body

 

 

 

 

It is said that before entering the sea

a river trembles with fear. 

Kalil Gibran

 

"A life without inner contradiction is only half a life."

Carl Jung

 

 

Those places inside where we come up against contradictions are ripe areas for growth.  We may want to be kind but find ourselves lashing out in anger towards those we love, want to go on a pilgrimage but are afraid of being alone, we desire intimacy but fear relationships.  We all embody contradictions but their particularity, what specifically pulls and tugs in us, is unique and only something we can know for ourselves.  What is a contradiction for you may not be a contradiction for me.  Going into the center of the tugging brings us closer to the soul. It is where we find out about the different parts of ourselves and how to use the energy of opposing actions to grow. 

 

We can practice working with contradictions in asana. Bodily inflection points in asana where one part moves up and another down are rich sources of transformation and power.  It takes skilled action and discernment to feel them and good concentration, courage and strength to work with them. We use the push and pull of skin, flesh, muscles, and bone to invigorate what is dull and pacify what is overworking. Through this movement of opposites, we create space in the body and in that spaciousness, what was disparate become integrated. To me, these places are like estuaries where the fresh water meets the saltwater.  They team with energy and variation and vibrancy.  They are not one thing but two things coming together to make something different.  

 

Just like in a salt marsh, the estuaries of the body and mind are places where we find resources for growth and creativity.  These are the spaces where we are unfolding to ourselves.  Often a contradiction in the body houses a contradiction of the mind.  Working with the contradictions in the body we feel physical sensations that can reveal emotional contradiction like joy and pain, longing and fear. These contradictions are deeply intimate and subjective experiences.  They are not meant to be resolved but tended to.  In tending to them in the body, we tend to them in the mind.

 

As much as we might hope, we are never static or completed but always becoming and becoming known to ourselves. The inner contradictions reveal the soul’s longing to grow, where the husk of life’s habits and closed-mindedness has become too tight. Following the contradiction's rhythmic push and pull will guide us into a new truth, the next threshold, the next horizon.