Don’t tell your body to shut up

A PERSON practicing yoga tells me that books tell him that he must experience pain before he progresses; he must have injuries before he can be adept.

We are taught from childhood that we are heroes if we ignore our body; if we push it beyond its limits. We are taught to tell our bodies to shut up if they complain. Ignore pain if you want it to go away, we are told. If you wish for the pain to go away, focus on the pain. When you pay attention to the pain, the body part that has the pain, it leaves you.

Descartes said: I think, therefore I am. Vedanta says: When you stop thinking, You ARE. Descartes could not reconcile the mind body connection. There is no mind and no body; it is mindbody; it is one. Scientists now know that intelligence resides at the cellular level; not in our brains. Every single cell of our body is gifted with intelligence to carry out its own functions and to coordinate with the functions of related cells. DNA, carrier of our genetic code, is embedded with our memories and emotions, imprinting not merely physical but mental, emotional and psychic characteristics as well. As our DNA is, so is our perception of the world!

Our mind and body interact very closely and influence each other in amazing ways. Over 85% of our physical ailments are influenced by the mind and are psychosomatic. The mind has the power to both cause and cure diseases. In a path-breaking experiment in Japan on allergies it was found that patients reacted even when plants to which they had no allergies were placed on their skin and they were told that these were the allergy causing substances. Even more amazingly, when the allergy causing plant leaves were placed on their skin and they were given the name of a nonallergy causing plant, they had no allergic reaction.

Make peace with your body. Body and mind are not separate entities. They are fully integrated. Become aware of your body and you can then sense what the body needs. Your body tells you what it needs and you then have the intelligence to listen to it. Drop the idea of controlling your body. Do not tie yourself up in knots causing yourself pain when your body cries out to you to stop torturing it. Trust in your body wisdom. Only through meditation you will learn to understand your body, with clarity and compassion. You would then be able to find a way to go beyond it.