[livingmysore magazine] March '08 The Embodied Movement
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living mysore
Feb 29, 2008, 6:00:41 PM2/29/08
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A Personal Reflection on Learning
by Rachel Fiske-Cipriani
“I ask myself why we do not practice, just for those few moments of time that death has lent us our bodies.” ~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
One year ago, before I began practicing Ashtanga Yoga, I would not have been able to understand the following paragraph, much less apply it to my daily life:
“The third limb is asana. …As the Yoga Sutra explains, every thought, emotion, and experience leaves a subconscious imprint on the mind…This means that the body we have today is nothing but the accumulation of our past thoughts, emotions, and actions. In fact our body is the crystallized history of our past thoughts. This needs to be deeply understood and contemplated. It means that asana is the method that releases us from past conditioning stored in the body, to arrive in the present moment.”[1]
As I have been practicing Ashtanga Yoga consistently for a little less than a year now, my own conceptions about body and mind and what it means to be embodied, or to have a unified body/mind, have evolved. Before, I understood it in a limited, conceptual way: I could drink alcohol, and it would be consumed through my body, and it would affect my mind. If I exercised and ate healthy food, that would affect my overall feeling of well-being. But emotions within the body?
This was an abstract concept at best, and something I did not understand because I had never even heard of such a thing. To me, emotions belonged in the mind. And if I had continued to simply read about these ideas, from Carolyn Myss’ Anatomy of the Spirit to Ken Dychtwald’s Bodymind, I would have continued to understand these concepts in the same, limited way. I would have continued to parrot, “Your biology becomes your biography.” Instead, I began to practice Ashtanga Yoga.
Ashtanga Yoga offers a way to transform, rather than to translate. It offers a practice, rather than a new paradigm. As I diligently practice asana each day, I am continually surprised by what I discover about myself. And of course, it is always the crisis – the injury, or the pose that I just cannot perfect – which compels me to stop and examine and learn something about myself. Why did I injure my hip today? Is it because I am frightened about the future right now? What is my body trying to tell me? What protective mechanisms have I built up over the years that I am now – systematically – breaking down?
The significance of this learning method is of tantamount importance to the Western world, because it offers a holistic approach to learning, combining both the body and the mind in order to provide a concrete path toward self-knowledge. We have done ourselves much disservice in thinking that we could be anything but whole, embodied creatures. I do not think that we should blame ourselves for this unfortunate cultural misstep. Rather, I think that we have much to learn from an ancient civilization – much older than our own – about the practice of learning itself.
Rachel is currently located in New York City. For more on The Embodied Movement, please visit her Blog at http://embodiedmovement.blogspot.com. Her email address is rachel.fis...@gmail.com.
by Rachel Fiske-Cipriani
“I ask myself why we do not practice, just for those few moments of time that death has lent us our bodies.” ~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
One year ago, before I began practicing Ashtanga Yoga, I would not have been able to understand the following paragraph, much less apply it to my daily life:
“The third limb is asana. …As the Yoga Sutra explains, every thought, emotion, and experience leaves a subconscious imprint on the mind…This means that the body we have today is nothing but the accumulation of our past thoughts, emotions, and actions. In fact our body is the crystallized history of our past thoughts. This needs to be deeply understood and contemplated. It means that asana is the method that releases us from past conditioning stored in the body, to arrive in the present moment.”[1]
As I have been practicing Ashtanga Yoga consistently for a little less than a year now, my own conceptions about body and mind and what it means to be embodied, or to have a unified body/mind, have evolved. Before, I understood it in a limited, conceptual way: I could drink alcohol, and it would be consumed through my body, and it would affect my mind. If I exercised and ate healthy food, that would affect my overall feeling of well-being. But emotions within the body?
This was an abstract concept at best, and something I did not understand because I had never even heard of such a thing. To me, emotions belonged in the mind. And if I had continued to simply read about these ideas, from Carolyn Myss’ Anatomy of the Spirit to Ken Dychtwald’s Bodymind, I would have continued to understand these concepts in the same, limited way. I would have continued to parrot, “Your biology becomes your biography.” Instead, I began to practice Ashtanga Yoga.
Ashtanga Yoga offers a way to transform, rather than to translate. It offers a practice, rather than a new paradigm. As I diligently practice asana each day, I am continually surprised by what I discover about myself. And of course, it is always the crisis – the injury, or the pose that I just cannot perfect – which compels me to stop and examine and learn something about myself. Why did I injure my hip today? Is it because I am frightened about the future right now? What is my body trying to tell me? What protective mechanisms have I built up over the years that I am now – systematically – breaking down?
The significance of this learning method is of tantamount importance to the Western world, because it offers a holistic approach to learning, combining both the body and the mind in order to provide a concrete path toward self-knowledge. We have done ourselves much disservice in thinking that we could be anything but whole, embodied creatures. I do not think that we should blame ourselves for this unfortunate cultural misstep. Rather, I think that we have much to learn from an ancient civilization – much older than our own – about the practice of learning itself.
Rachel is currently located in New York City. For more on The Embodied Movement, please visit her Blog at http://embodiedmovement.blogspot.com. Her email address is rachel.fis...@gmail.com.
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Posted By living mysore to livingmysore magazine at 2/29/2008 12:09:00 PM
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