Where does your body exist within space? That may depend upon what you mean by your body.
Most of us are familiar with the physical body. We may thank proprioception, which provides the body’s awareness of itself in space. We can sense where our feet are, where our hands are, whether we are upright, leaning, reaching, resting. The physical body has dimension and location. It exists here, in a particular place, in a particular posture, at this particular moment.
But what of the emotional body? Can you sense that it, too, has a kind of shape or reach? Does it remain neatly within the boundaries of your skin, or does it sometimes seem to extend beyond you? And what of the mental body? Thoughts move so quickly, so freely. A thought can travel across a room, across time, and across worlds. We speak of “reading the room,” of sensing another’s mood, of feeling someone’s presence before a word is spoken. Perhaps the mind and emotions live in less separate ways and spaces than we imagine.
And then there is the spiritual body—that subtle sense of being that can be difficult to define, but no less real. Can you imagine its outline? Can you sense its breadth? Are you more than muscle and bone, more than thought and reaction? Where does the human spirit reside? Is there something of you that feels spacious? Something aware? Something connected?
As we come to know our own requirements for comfort and well-being, appropriate free-flowing emotions, a clear mind, and an accessible spirit, we move toward proper Asana—not only posture in the physical sense, but posture in a fuller sense. A way of being with and in our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual bodies.
It begins with listening. Noticing when something feels off and allowing a small adjustment. A softening in the body. A befriending of emotions. A clearing in the mind. A willingness to be here as we are.
We may sit down thinking we are arranging the body for meditation, and somewhere along the way we realize that we are also being arranged by it—gently brought into relationship with breath, with awareness, with life itself.
Happy meditating.