From where I sit, the wind is turning the sunlight on the ocean into rippling, silver streamers. Waves closer to the shore lap lightly, while the streamers flicker and swish. The evergreen and rock of Mouse Island on the horizon is an anchor, a landing, in this moving sea of light. All the ingredients are here for contentment, joy, even bliss. There is nowhere else to be, nothing else to do.
Rachael Naomi Remen, the pediatrician-turned-therapist and author wrote: “Our bodies hold us to our integrity.” She knew this personally, as someone who was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease as a teenager and still completed the rigorous demands of medical school, including sleep-deprived residencies. Over subsequent decades, Remen navigated multiple surgeries and medications that often resulted in further complications as she aged. Thankfully, her overall experience with Crohn’s appeared to become more manageable.
As a teacher of general and therapeutic yoga, I have experienced professionally and personally how our bodies, our somatic experiences, hold us to our integrity. We know on a sensory level things it can take minutes or years to acknowledge, repair, or integrate on a cognitive or rational level. Some of what we know lives deep in our bones and/or tissues, below or beyond words. It is an embodied wisdom, a wholeness, that is always accessible to us.
Yoga, as a mindfulness practice, helps us to listen deeply to the nuance and the obvious; it connects us to our physical narratives. The consistent practice of mindfulness, of returning to body, breath, and the present moment, aids us in becoming evermore attuned to the experiences arising in our whole being, enhancing our capacities for self-soothing, self-awareness, and compassion. The deepening of these skills will also serve us off the yoga mat or meditation cushion, whether we are meeting adversity, nurturing relationships, or connecting with the simple joy and beauty of the natural world. This is the integrity, the homecoming, the freedom of embodied presence.
