I’m new to this blogging thing and thought I would use these first three posts to talk about the mind, body, and spirit. I find most Traditions tend to have an emphasis on one of these. To me all three have to be treated with respect and held in equal value. This second post is about my process for the body and how I use it.
I mentioned my connection with the world of martial arts in my last post. This one will pull heavily from that experience as well because my journey around embodiment and my physical being has been so intertwined with my journey through martial arts.
The world of martial arts, especially the secular one, is driven by a connection to the physical. That much is probably obvious. What took me longer to figure out was realizing what the physical practice was doing for my soul. What was less obvious is the depth of the connection between meditation or physical discipline and my spirit. I found a connection between my spirit and the world of our aches and pains, of our urgings and our joy. Learning to read and trust my body has been the primary expression of this piece of my spiritual life.
My journey was spurred by an instructor I had who was dedicated to developing her students as people, not just as martial artists. She would talk a lot about how her body would tell her something was wrong long before her mind or soul could react to the world. She strove to teach us trust in ourselves and belief in our ability to change the world. This idea became a building block in my embodiment practice, and how I interacted with my own body.
It was in that gym with other fighters that I learned how to trust my body as I trust my mind and my spirit. There I learned how to read whether the impulse running through me was insight or vengeance.
It was in the heat of competition that I learned to rely on all the things I was taught, to rely on the things my body could do. But most importantly, I learned that my body could tell me things that my mind had no time or no information to address. I learned to rely on that intuition. I learned that my body is always communicating with me. Over time, I’ve started to learn the language of my body -the way it tells me I’m getting upset, the way it tells me I should be aware of someone because they might be trouble, or the way it tells me that someone is worth trusting in that moment when everything could change.
My experience ran counter to what so often in strict faith environments is the portrayal of the body: the enemy, the thing to deny in order to be holy. It is representative of sin and indulgence. But this is only one side of what the body is capable of. Without an understanding of what the place of the physical in the Holy is, we can never live life completely.
We are so often told that we need to shutdown the yearnings and whims of the body, that it can’t be trusted and that the best thing to do is to suffer in silence. Perhaps one may talk to the pastor.
In my experience of more relaxed faith communities, the narrative is different in many ways. It is often closer to a healthy relationship with embodiment. However, there is still a hovering cloud that keeps people away from the topics of sex, adiction, and intuition. It’s been my experience that this can lead to equally dangerous situations.
I believe that the most direct way that the Almighty or the Unknowable communicates with me is physically. Directly through my physical sense and perception. In my life, I have grown to rely on a physical intuition, that I feel is fed by both my mind and soul. It is an intuition honed and developed by my time in martial arts but applied everywhere. This intuition is almost entirely derived from a practice of monitoring my own physical state. As my body shifts and changes, I try my best to monitor myself and to look for things that I’ve learned are precursors to or warnings of trouble.
In fact, no healthy spiritual life can exist without addressing the questions of embodiment and what to do with these wonderfully imperfect vessels we are all moving through this life with. Yet in all my time walking with different faiths, this fear of any conversation about the body’s connection to the holly has been prevalent.
I can’t express the value that learning to interact with my intuition has added to my life. Just as with the internal voice I spoke about last week, this understanding has provided me with a feeling of clarity in the moments I’ve been most lost. This does not mean that this has always lead me to the best possible outcome or that I’ve always made good decisions.
There is something to the conservative warnings about the dangers of following impulse to destruction. The truth is that only by exploring can you know the difference between the trap of self indulgence and the freedom of self reliance. The lack of an understanding of this distinction is the biggest problem I see in people’s lives when things are out of whack with their physical being. People will stay in unhealthy situations or overindulge themselves when no one is looking. Avoiding these conversations about what it means to be a physical being in this world always leads to trouble.
The physical is an unavoidable piece of what it is to be a spiritual being. We need to talk about sex and talk about addictions and about our yearnings, our abuses as well our exultations. Without an understanding of these things I wasn’t able to find my spirit; it is the body that links me to my spirit. The intuition is simply the easiest way to reach the Holy and feel it speaking back. It’s been through the physical that I often begin to feel the joy of true spiritual connection.
Physicality is connected to our whole lives -ignoring that serves no one.
Ian Pirkey