Previously I maintained a daily hatha yoga practice that has now evolved into a few yoga stretches I do at the conclusion of my three-times-weekly gym workout. I really appreciated Matthews’s perspective on yoga as a moving meditation instructing how to be of this earth...
I practiced whirling when I lived in India. Every day at noon, the erotic, evocative music would enliven the meditation hall where the regulars and the beginners like me would gather. There was no formal instruction, and no one cared about doing it the “right”...
I’m sure like everyone I had a variety of responses while reading this week’s materials: excitement, disbelief, curiosity, and not-good-enough because I’ll never achieve a rainbow body or any other sort of incredible death. Intellectually, it is invigorating to imagine that a technology for Jesus’s...
As I have been practicing the hum sah meditation shared by Tara Judelle, and as I’m practicing it right now as I’m writing, I notice the in-breath is invigorating, and the exhale is relaxing and centering. This is undoubtedly true without the mantra, but the...
I was really struck this week by the idea that Eastern philosophy treats mind/body unity as an achievement, that it is not a given and requires disciplined practice. While I don’t agree with this in theory (it’s already one and therefore nothing needs to be...
This week we examined some very colorful, erotic, fully-embodied traditions more identified with the community and nature than most. Antoinette Santos Reyes spoke eloquently about her Philipina heritage and how she had experienced an “explosion of imagination” (I loved that!) when talking with elders about...
I had the great fortune once to witness a Hopi dance ceremony in person. The authenticity and reverence were awe-inspiring. I watched the noble carriage of the body, an erect posture rarely seen in white culture, proud but not arrogant. There was rhythm from the...
Watching the Gurdjieff movement videos, I found them fascinating and strange, and strangely disembodied. The staccato of the movements was a little off-putting. The body is being used to represent expanded consciousness or cosmic laws, so is symbolizing anything other than interoception. The body is...
In the three forms of Buddhism presented this week, both Mahayana and Theravada share a worldview that the body is more than just an impediment on the spiritual path, it is foul, polluted and disgusting. In Theravada, the goal is to root out and eliminate...
When I was in a bookstore in the 70s and first encountered a book on tantra and the concept that sex was spiritual, it stopped me dead in my tracks. “Of course,” I said out loud, under my breath, “what else could it be?” I...