Emma Lovell Yoga

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The long body

Posted on October 15, 2015 1:00 pm by Emma

‘The long body is a Native American term which refers to the individual body plus the life support systems around it. It is a much bigger conception of the human body than we have in western culture, and considers the body continuous with the larger environment.’

I’ve been working my way through the excellent Liberated Body podcasts.  This is one of my favourites so far- Frank Forencich talks about the importance of slowing down, getting outside, and putting down the phone.  Here’s the podcast and here’s Frank’s article Habitat is Tissue.




Posted on September 16, 2015 3:11 pm by Emma

‘ It is not until you become physically aware of how your own health is entirely reliant on the health of the great web of life, that ideas such as deep ecology absorb themselves into your arteries, sinews and bones.

If the air that filled my lungs became polluted, if the nutrients in the soil that produced my food became depleted, or if the spring water which made up 60% of my body became poisoned, my own health would suffer accordingly. This seems like common sense, but you wouldn’t think so by observing the way we treat the natural world today. Over time, even the boundaries of what I considered to be “I” became less and less clear.’   taken from ‘Living without money: What I learned’ by Mark Boyle, aka ‘the Moneyless Man’.  Full article here




Posted on May 8, 2015 2:57 pm by Emma

‘Unfortunately, the extensive moralizing within the ecological movement has given the public the false impression that they are being asked to make a sacrifice- to show more responsibility, more concern, and a nicer moral standard.  But all that would flow naturally and easily if the self were widened and deepened so that the protection of nature was felt and perceived as protection of our very selves.’  Arne Naess

 




Posted on May 4, 2015 12:35 pm by Emma

‘The environmental crisis has deep attitudinal roots.  To restore our environment we need to heal our relationship with it, and that means healing the split in the psyche that cuts us off from the material world.  It means revisioning the relation of mind and matter.  The bulldozing of nature and the abuse of our own bodies reveal the depth of this separation, the fear it engenders, and the need to control… Matter itself, if we attend to it mindfully and gracefully, can help liberate us from delusion; for it is mind, not matter, that is in bondage.’  Joanna Macy, World as Lover, World as Self




Posted on April 30, 2015 2:46 pm by Emma

Sensing your own body is more complicated than you realize

Proprioception

‘Close your eyes and touch your nose. If everything is working properly, this should be easy because your brain can sense your body, as well as its position and movement through space. This is called proprioception.’  Full article here

Interoception“Proprioception is when you hold your arms out, close your eyes, and you can touch your nose. If you just hold your arm out and close your eyes, how do you know you have an arm? The internal subjective experience of an arm: that’s interoception. It generally goes along slower pathways.“ Source

Interoception

‘Proprioception is when you hold your arms out, close your eyes, and you can touch your nose. If you just hold your arm out and close your eyes, how do you know you have an arm? The internal subjective experience of an arm: that’s interoception. It generally goes along slower pathways.

Interoception connects differently in the brain, it’s much more associated with consciousness.’  From here

Dissociation

‘There’s a real skill to be in the body and it’s really hard work and it’s often our mind likes to do things quickly and there’s this quick default assumption that our body is there, and often it’s not often there as much as it could be.’

Click here to listen to the full podcast with Steve Haines.




Disconnection

Posted on November 3, 2014 12:00 pm by Emma

‘Disconnection from the body is a cultural epidemic. We are taught to control the body by way of the mind, which is considered far superior. But the body has an intelligence whose mysteries the mind has yet to fathom. We read in books how to eat, how to make love, how much sleep to get, and impose these practices on the body rather than listening from within. Without the body as a unifying figure of existence, we become fragmented. We repress our aliveness and become machine-like, easily manipulated. We lose our testing ground for truth.’

Anodea Judith Eastern Body Western Mind.