‘[w]e are somatic creatures, living in bodies, having emotions, bathed by sensations, at times bubbling and simmering, at times dawdling and eddying, hot and cold, nervous and calm, fearful and yearning, hungry and satiated.' Arnold Weinstein in 'A Scream Goes Through The House'.
'Consciousness is essentially a matter of having bodily sensations rather than of having higher level thoughts' Nicholas Humphrey in 'A History of Mind'.
Body is just slow mind.
Locating our awareness in our body requires slowing down and slowing down even more than is normally comfortable for the mind. Slowing to the pace at which we can know the sensations that underlie our thought process takes a lot of practise, or involuntary paralysis, or a near death experience. Best of all, the considerable good fortune of having grown up in a family and a culture that supports body awareness and a balanced brain.
That rules me and a lot of others out - so its practise, practise for most of us, and lots of it.
When asked to become aware of what is underneath their upset or distress, most people speed up and go into higher level thoughts. To slow down and become aware of the sensations underneath is initially uncomfortable. Yet it is relieving to slow down and just sit in the sensations underneath powerful emotions - almost like the centre of a cyclone.
When asked to meditate a busy, acquisitive mind seeking calm is likely to go out of body and become disembodied like kids watching TV, or dissociate entirely. Meditation cannot arise without a body. Disassociation happens without a body. When you're dissociated you're not associated with anything, not even with intimate knowledge of the self or of your beloved.
Break through or turning points in a previously stuck intimate relationship occur with embodiment of a sense or feeling. Likewise with a meditation entered through sensations and feeling. Mental experiences of beauty, awe and wonder are incomplete unless accompanied by the body.
So that's the good news.
The tough bit is that body is also a store house of unfinished experience. A junk yard of sorts.
Because body is slow minded, the mind can hide parts of itself in the little cracks and crevices of awareness. If the person is busy, the mind can know it won't have time to pause and examine those recesses. Hence, they are smart places to hide fragments of traumatic memory or parts of ourselves we deny. And a wrong headed reason to keep busy.
In the practices that lead to meditation, the mind gets a chance to notice hidden contents in those tender spots.
Mind is as vast as the imagination and the creativity that nurtures us. Consequently, being embodied means feeling physical and emotional pleasure and pain. The road to meditation leads through those places. The journey is eased without craving for relief or for delight.
Thoughts and dreams may arise as well as long forgotten memories or body sensations. Some of these are delightful full bodied recall of childhood wonders or the not so delightful lack of them. Being embodied in meditation requires a dispassionate witnessing of the unfolding process of body/mind as it grows toward balance. We cleave toward balance and harmony.
The paradox in the word 'cleave' resides in its meaning both to join together and to break apart.
'The body is not the ultimate truth and attachment to the body causes suffering .... yet if we inhabit our bodies with the finest degree of awareness, we experience the body as permeable, borderless, empty space...' from 'Being Bodies - buddhist women on the paradox of embodiment'. 'Being Bodies' is a collection of women's stories of the struggle to stay with the body and not leave it behind, even under the extremes of experience from birth to death. 'The absolute is here in each embodied moment - when we breathe, when we sweat, when we bleed, when we feel desire.'
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