Awareness of the Body

The Bible describes the human body as the “temple of the Holy Spirit” but we often treat our bodies as a beasts of burden, as slaving mine donkeys. We pay little attention to our bodies for as long as they slog along quietly carrying the burdens of our busy lives. We rush on, obsessed with goals and pursuits, carrying along stress and tension that punishes our bodies with a heavy load. We ignore the knot in our stomach and the tension in our neck until we finally collapse into bed at the end of the day. Even then we hardly take a minute to be aware of what is going on in our bodies unless some pain or discomfort has started shouting loudly enough at us to grab our attention. If it does, we’ll probably grab a headache tablet or drink a beer as the quickest solution and then distract ourselves with a movie, social media or a glance at our stock portfolios before we finally fall asleep exhausted so we can do it again tomorrow. This doesn’t seem like a recipe for health does it?

When last did you take a few minutes to feel your body?

The truth is that our bodies are a lot more real that much of the mental activity that has been spinning around in our heads all day. We’ve been reliving the past and nurturing regrets and maybe shame. We’ve been thinking intensely about some future event and these all unlock emotions of anticipation and perhaps fear and anger. This mental activity is like a movie or a dream and takes our attention away from our bodies.

God is the Ultimate Reality, the most Real of all that is real. And one path out of the movie-theatre of our racing minds is to re-connect with something else that is real: our bodies. When we spend time feeling the life in our limbs, experiencing the energy in our bellies, noticing the beating of our hearts, and enjoying the entrance of a deep breath into our chests, a peace descends on us and we are reconnecting with what is real. We are taking a step closer to God.

More precisely, we are entering the temple of God, and the Presence of God begins to rise up within us as we tune into our bodies.

In his book “Sadhana, A Way to God”, the catholic priest Anthony De Mello explains that awareness practices such as notices our body sensations are important to prayer because they move us from our minds to our hearts.

“The head is not a very good place for prayer. It is not a bad place for starting your prayer. But if your prayer stays there too long and doesn’t move into the heart, it will gradually dry up and prove tiresome and frustrating. You must learn to move out of the area of thinking and talking and move into the area of feeling, sensing, loving, intuiting. That is the area where contemplation is born and prayer becomes a transforming power and a source of never-ending delight and peace.”

He prescribes this practice as a way of moving to the heart:

To succeed in prayer it is essential to develop the ability to make contact with the present and to stay there. And there is no better method I know of for staying in the present than getting out of your head and returning to your senses. Feel the heat or cold of the atmosphere around you. Feel the breeze as it caresses your body. Feel the heat of the sun making contact with your skin. Feel the texture and temperature of the object you are touching … and see what a difference it makes. See how you come alive by coming to the present. Once you have mastered this technique of sense awareness you will be surprised to see what it does to you if you are the type that frequently worries about the future or feels guilty about the past.

Listen along to this session from our weekly meditation group.