John’s Sunday Blog

Made in the Image

Yoga in it’s origins, is an aesthetic practice. It is when we focus our mind, energies and movements to more fully align with life’s origins. To unite with the original.

Now beyond any metaphysical or existential ideas let’s look at yoga, (and its principle of joining with the origin) in direct contact with nature.

I will use youth as an example of yoga returning one more towards the feeling and mentality of having youth. Aside from congenital limitations, or accident or inflicted traumas, we all can use our memories to think back. Back to a time in our life when our mind was more focused on the present and our bodies responded easily to things like breaking into a run! One might remember bounding over the terrain with little or no thought to our steps. Just sailing our body over the terrain with an open view and open heart.

So how does yoga work in regards to uniting us more with our original? As we all know, movement is key to keeping a body in a healthy state. What you eat and drink, what you think, and how you sleep, are major factors as well. Yet, let’s look at the wisdom of full body movement in regard to this post.

The body is very conservative. If one sits in a chair 8-10 hours or more a day without any more movement than walking a little here or there for decades, how does the body respond? It adapts one to the chair! The extensor muscles on the back of our body become elongated and rigid. It is good to know that elongated muscle is generally in a relaxed state. Why is it rigid? The head weighs about as much as a bowling ball. When leaning forward, or back, the torque it puts on the opposite side of the body can exceed 40 lbs! Thus freezing those muscles to hold that head forward. Let us now focus now on the effect on the front of the body. In a chair all our flexor muscles are in a flexed position, but soft, growing weaker over the years.

Just like nature, what happens when rain does not fall on the forest? The land returns to just dirt. And what if the sun seldom shines on a land? Frozen. Full body movement makes the rain fall in the body, moving fluids to move waste and bring nutrients. Full body movement makes the sun shine in the body, bringing warmth and strength and new growth to the stagnant areas. In the labs, people in their 90s have grown muscle and thickened tendons in consistent workout routines.

For what is the body, but a piece of nature!

Notice your lungs. They are the wind that move the waters in the body.

Your blood runs in rivers and brings life to all the terrain within you.

Your muscles the hills valley and mountains sculpting the landscape

Your bones, the bedrock on which it all stands.

Could your mind be like the sun, that which moves the waters and winds?

And your heart the moon restoring through sleep and deep belonging.

Notice how our lungs, viens, arteries and nerves emulate trees and the rivers and creeks upon the landscape all pulsing together symphony of life. We are literally an image of that which originally we came.

Can you see the fingerprint in this sand?

And the trees reminiscent of your microvilli of your gut cells, you decide.