We start with an aversive or attractive response to the body or body part, and quickly an emotional attitude arises that fixates upon the appearance; a story is formed, an opinion is held, and our body is made into something it never was. To love the whole of the body requires an intentional reversal of stepping out of those perceptual fixations and embracing the pleasant and unpleasant components in totality.
Exploration of ardent energy (atapa), clear comprehension (sampajanna), "having put away covetousness and discontent for the world (vineyya loke abhijjha domanassam), mindfulness.
Once we have accepted the fact that we cannot control the dharma, our practice opens up to the full catastrophe of living. We open first by backing away from our egoic demands and then by infusing our actions with the wisdom of the body.
Movement integrates our insights into living reality rather than theoretical assumptions. When the insights become part of the living tissue of our body, a natural spontaneity arises.
We continually misrepresent the body by forcing it to be governed, controlled, and defined by the mind. When we set the body free from imposed boundaries we find a natural and intelligent life energy that knows its way.
The body is a residing stranger to most of us. We think we know what it is, but we have not given ourselves to it thoroughly so that it reveals its secrets.
Mindfulness is at the heart of the Buddha's teaching, but few people understand how it evolves from the simple practice of being mindful into a mature, full-embodied awareness.
It is important to learn the meditation technique, but to adhere too strictly to the form of the practice can mask self-doubt. Risking doing it wrong begins the "art" of practice, and insight develops within the art of quiet observation free from the pressure of failure.
