As one of the teachers with focus on body work at the HEALING SUMMIT – The Heart Retreat, I love to share some thoughts with you.
We all own a spirit, a mind and a body. As an Osteopath & Yoga practitioner, I’m interested in all three and especially how they interact in both health and disease.
Osteopaths describe the body as the ‘Primary Machinery of Life’ – the material vessel through which we interact with the world. Yogic knowledge has a similar understanding – and offers practices to keep the machinery healthy – from viewpoints physical, physiological & energetic. We need to tend to each with care.
Often we are so tied up in our daily lives that our bodily health is not our primary focus, but when the machinery isn’t working, it tells us. We might feel pain, strain or sense ‘something is wrong’. Unless we learn to listen for these messages, suffering can build until we need a mechanic (doctor or therapist) to help.
Everything is connected. Bodily discomfort, be it physical, physiological OR energetic, can end up challenging our mind in the form of fear, anxiety or worse. It’s a proven fact too that mental tension can affect the body – tension headaches, back pain, inflammation are all stress mediated. Whether in the body or the mind, pain and suffering divert us from our purpose.
The good news is that removing the blockages – of ignorance (how my body works), of awareness (what do I feel) and of physical knots and energetic restrictions – all take us toward FEELING better – in all of our precious domains from the tangible body to knowable mind to intangible spirit.
For me, a Yoga practice is this process – not acrobatics or gymnastics – but a full mind, body, breath, spirit practice that can help us find real health in the body we’ve been given.
I look forward to meeting you at The Heart Retreat.
