Moving in harmony
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Moving in harmony
As long as we are alive, we will be moving. Breathing is a movement of the body, so is the heartbeat and the flowing of the blood. We move our limbs as a baby without thinking, and in time those limbs know how to crawl, how to stand and how to walk, how to move as we speak.
The body learns all those movements as it grows without us consciously knowing how to do this with our heads. It is only later, when our body has mastered the basics, that we start to control the body’s movements by willing it to do something in this or that way, and our body obediently follows the orders from our head, puts one foot in front of the other faster or slower, picks up the cup of tea or the pen, writes, sits down where and when we want to, eats what we want to and so on. And in all that, no matter what we demand from it, it will strive to do it in balance and harmony or if it can’t do that, it will let us know: how absolutely amazing is our body?
Do we ever consider the great intelligence that must be in every cell of our body, that knows exactly how to do everything, how to respond to the nerve signals, move the muscles and coordinate them?
Or do we take our body for granted, expect that it will always function the way we want to, that we can use its amazing ability to move and achieve as our head demands? I certainly have done that for most of my life, and then complained about aches and pains after moving in a hasty or disharmonious way for long enough; or feeling heavy and unwell after eating too much or eating obviously unhealthy food. And the older we get, the more we feel the overload of moving in disharmony to and disregard of the body’s natural needs and state.
We all love to be fit and healthy, feel at ease in our body and be able to move without restrictions or aches and pains. And it’s actually possible to have that all the time, we just have to learn, or rather re-learn, to move in harmony with the body. Our body is more than flesh and bones, blood and nerves. There is an energy and a quality that can be felt throughout the whole body.
We might feel that as the natural untainted flow of life or a vibration or simply as the space that fills the body. That space that my body contains and is, has a certain quality and I have been aware of that on and off. Sometimes it feels warm and radiant, sometimes cool and spacious, sometimes very still, unless I have been engaged in my head too much and not been aware of my body. Then I might have tensed up or put myself in an excited or hyperactive state, and I have been moving my body in a disharmonious, often jerky way and then its natural quality of ease and harmony is kind of covered over by the energy I have been in.
By observing my movements and how my mental activities influence them, I have discovered that I can choose to detach myself from those mental activities that make me tense more and more simply by feeling my body and making a few consciously gentle movements. Then it’s easier to let go of whatever was the issue and I can connect to my body again and feel its natural, harmonious quality or vibration, because it is always there underneath any tension, heaviness or pain.
Once I had consciously registered my body’s natural state of ease and harmony, I had a marker that I could always come back to. How amazing and enriching that we have a body that has an intelligence and a natural quality of being that is always there to connect to.
How would it be if we felt our body with every movement? Is it possible to live like that throughout the day? It’s not easy, as we drift off into the mind so quickly, but the more we practise being aware of the body and how we move it, the more often we get reminded by our own awareness that we have built.
To feel the whole body as a vessel that is filled with the quality of the pure life that we are, and then make every movement in and with that quality and really feel it in every cell, feels absolutely delicious, enriching and fulfilling. Lifting and dropping the fingers to type and feeling how they touch the keyboard with ease is a whole new joyful experience when we are connected to our whole body.
Whenever we can be with the quality of the space or vibration in our body and its movements, it fills us with who we truly are, our essence. Through our body we can experience being in harmony with ourselves and our surroundings. When we are truly with our body it has a great influence on our emotional and mental state, so that our whole being moves in ease and harmony.
And this is truly living medicine for the body and the being.
Filed under
Awareness, Fitness, Harmony, Intelligence, Well-being
