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Trust the Wisdom of your Animal Body
Just as we cannot see the force of magnetism, we do not always understand on a cognitive level the pull to our practice. A deeper intelligence is being stirred and stoked as we consciously move and breathe together. This is the wisdom of your body.
The physical practice of yoga awakens our innate intelligence and helps us to remember a deep truth that lives in each cell of our bodies. We start getting rearranged and re-patterned, and to our postmodern consciousness, this seems mysterious. But like butter to a warm pancake, we are drawn to it and soon our roots start to grow in the fertile garden of our practice. We meet new people, seekers, like us who know there is more available in this human experience and are hungering to access it. Trust the pull to your mat, to the community, to the quiet, to your inner landscape.
A long-time Tibetan Tantric teacher, Reggie Ray, describes the wisdom of the body this way: "It's not mental. You can't put it into words. You can't put labels on it. You can't conceptualize it. You can't think logically about it. It's almost as if the body itself speaks in a language that does not translate into our thinking mind… According to the Tibetal tantric tradition, the body speaks through what I would call 'somatic intuition' - a felt sense."
It's like when our heart is telling us the opposite of what our mind is thinking. Or when you have a gut feeling about something. Your body tells you quite clearly after a good yoga class that this is nourishing, healing and calming. But what exactly is happening on the mat? Why do you feel so good? Why should you trust your somatic intuition? On the physiological level our body, mind and nervous systems are beginning to communicate, connect and flow together at the same tempo. We are literally rewiring how our brain and nervous systems are functioning with every practice; you become more grounded, your sleep improves, patience is a possibility and some aches and pains just vanish. Also, old wounds or tensions, difficult lessons learned that are still living in your tissues may surface, meaning it might be time to work with them and learn what they have to teach you so that you can release them and be free.
Your logical brain might be saying, "I don't have time to go to class," while simultaneously you can feel the deep yearning from your body for the sacred space of your asana practice and all that it provides: slowing down, going within, connecting to your breath, being in kind community, opening and strengthening your body, mind and spirit. Trust that wisdom impulse. It is informed by the same intelligence that made the mountains, the oceans, the turtles and the trees, and it lives in every cell of your body.
Be well, Ellie
