I've been putting off writing this post. I think its because the subject could get so bogged down in the history of Western thought. I mean, the splitting of the mind/soul/body has long roots in Western philosophy and culture. But I don't necessarily want to go there. Can we take that as read?
Of course that is an important part of my cultural training. What's a body? Who cares? It is just something to cart around your soul, which is the only part that matters to God, and houses your mind. Of course, the body can get you into all sorts of trouble, and is a source of sin, if anything. Sure, there are references in Christianity to the body being the temple of God, but except for its use in exhortations to quit (or never take up) smoking, avoid promiscuous sex, exercise restraint in use of alcohol - in short, don't allow the body to lead you into sin - I don't recall anyone ever taking the "body as temple" thing too seriously.
And then in my parents I had examples of downplaying or outright ignoring messages from the body. Dad thought orange juice ought to cure whatever ailed you. He is one of those people that just never gets sick; I think the first time I ever saw him with even a head cold he was in his fifties or sixties. Mom is a different story. She has had so many different kinds of pain - severe pain - that she developed her own methods for dealing with it. One never knows what is in another's head or heart, and I don't know for sure how she coped. But to me it seemed that she coped mainly by just powering through. The lesson I learned, whether it was what was intended or not, was definitely an overwhelming "IGNORE THE BODY - IT IS IRRELEVANT". If it gets in your way - if it is weak, or painful, or sick, or deficient, just ignore it. Push it away and pretend it isn't there. That's what I took away.
More - I saw Mom turn inward and "upward" - turn to God for assistance with her pain. So what it looked like was that one should kind of retreat from the body and ask God for help in dealing with it. The idea of making friends with the pain, or even with one's body was never introduced to me. To be fair - that could be because the notion is so obvious to both parents that it never occured to them to say outloud. But I never got that message.
So, between the deep philosophical divide provided by our culture, the religion and the socialization provided by my parents, there was a pretty strong foundation for pushing away unpleasantnesses of the flesh.
Then I was molested. And then I was raped and beaten. These events drove further wedges between my self and my body. For years afterword - more than a decade actually - I did not feel that I even lived in my body. It took a lot of work in therapy just to inhabit my skin, to know that gnawing pain in the belly meant hunger, or to notice that my arm or leg had been asleep for some time.
That killed any athleticism I might have had, too. I was going to say that I had never had any attraction to sports, or had not a single athletic bone in my body. But that isn't true. I reveled in the suppleness and strength of my body as a child. I loved riding horses and hiking and swimming. I was on the swim team, in fact. I roller-skated with passion. I loved to ride my bike; I mean loved. I remember the feeling of balance and speed and grace that both bikes and skates provided. But the development of breasts and the dark attraction of evil men stole that innocent pleasure away, and I never regained it. Pleasure in the body turned to deep, deep shame.
So really it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that I deal with pain by ignoring it, and that I do not feel like my head, soul, heart, mind, breath, body, identity and self are integrated into a complex and complete whole. It should not be shock to anyone that my search for wholeness took place almost totally in my head. Come to think of it, except for extremists, what role does Christianity have for the body? In Catholic ritual there is at least kneeling, but in Protestant worship services the closest one gets is standing and sitting. I do remember one of the 12-step groups I went to introduced me to the idea of kneeling, which I found very useful. But where has that idea gone in American Christianity? There is no prostrating oneself before the Lord in public or in private. Do any children still kneel by the bed to say their prayers? I was not taught to kneel; we said our prayers laying down. But I digress.
I came to Hinduism - or the Sanatana Dharma - in ways that are familiar to anyone who has been reading this blog. All through scripture and study and pondering and thinking. And there is room for that - that's fine. Plenty of respect for study of scripture in this religion, and a whole path - jnana yoga - dedicated to pondering (in the mind) the difference between the self and the Self. But somehow, I guess for all the reasons I've detailed here and maybe others I haven't figured out or spelled out, I kind of forgot, or just plain skipped over, this fact:
As I studied all of the different paths, karma, jnana, bhakti and raja, and tried to determine which was for me, or how best to combine them in ways that fit my self this life - I noted that all presuppose certain things, like adopting or practicing the yamas and niyamas. But I conveniently just didn't see or notice that all paths presuppose the practice of pranayama and asana, too. Of hatha yoga, in other words. How? Now that I can see it, it is so hard to understand how I could have NOT seen that!!
I had been going around for a month thinking about blind spots. Since Christmas I had been praying for God/brahman to show me whatever I needed to see about my self that I couldn't see. And there in late January, all of a sudden it hit me, and it was an epiphany, a revelation. Yoga! I am supposed to be doing yoga!
I guess that was even before I had surgery, because I had gone to the library and checked out a few books. And it was standing in the library looking through the selection that I realized another reason that I had avoided the conclusion that I should take up asana practice (asana = posture) as part of my overall spiritual development: there is a tremendous amount of junk out there.
I have to be really careful about being a spiritual snob; I realize that wisdom can come from the strangest and most unexpected places. For example, one of the best books I got first was written by a fashion model!!! Shock! I forced myself to give it a try just because my first instinct was to snort and boy did I get taught a big lesson. Christine Turlington has certainly done her homework and she knows a lot more about hatha yoga than I will for a long, long time. I wanted to be picky with her about some of the other parts of her book - like the history and scripture parts - but there wasn't that much to pick at, really. Moreover, I learned a lot about grace and humility; learning to love one's body for what it is, healing and peace.
That was an exception. There were so many books on the shelf about "power yoga" and "speed yoga" and "yoga for executives" and other titles that just struck me as oxymorons. Opening them, they were utterly stripped of everything meaningful. They were teaching yoga poses - marginally - if you stretch the term past its meaning - but nothing else about what yoga is. Is it yoga if your sole purpose is to lose weight or make money, and you have sped it up so that there is no time for reflection or contemplation? Why bother? Why not just stick to aerobics?
I guess the search for yoga lessons and teachers is a whole 'nother post.
What's relevant for now is that I had finally seen the light. I'd woken up and realized that there was a way, had always been a way right in front of me, interwoven into the very scriptures I read every day, to connect with my long-lost body, befriend it, and begin to be whole. That there might just be a path to true health for me, a way for mind, body and self to procede together rather than fighting against one another. It really did feel like coming home.
No comments:
Post a Comment