‘A lot of our days are spent with just the hands and the face, and if we are not careful, this behavior becomes ingrained. In other words, we drop out of the felt sense of the rest of the body and become ‘just faces and hands’. This is happening more and more as we become so deeply immersed in a digital world which prioritizes eyes , ears and hands….It’s no wonder the world is becoming more and more heady and less and less body.’ Body Intelligent Meditation Ged Sumner.
Remember this guy?
Homunculus
This week’s class has been about bringing us back into our bodies as a whole, rather than the bits we are aware of most (see image above). I recommend reading Ged Sumner’s Body Intelligent Meditation book for a further understanding on embodiment and coming into the body as a whole, and for numerous meditation exercises on being present in the body.
Here‘s a nice article by Bo Forbes on the importance of embodiment and interoception (a sense of what’s happening inside our body) in yoga:
‘What’s the relevance of interoceptive awareness to our health and well-being? It turns out that many illnesses—anxiety, depression, gut disorders, eating disorders, and more—are diseases of disembodiment. In these illnesses, awareness becomes skewed. In chronic pain syndromes, for example, we tend to predict what we’ll encounter, and to remain there ruminating about it.’ Bo Forbes Interoception: Mindfulness in the Body. The Continuum of Embodiment