Body

This life force is known by many names. The yogis call it prana and activate it through breath and postures. Acupuncturist call it qi and balance its movement through a network of pathways.

It’s common for trauma to get caught in body memories. This occurs unconsciously and is what makes survivors jumpy, dysregulated, or numbed out in ways they can’t explain. Mindfulness-based, embodied therapy involves tracking body memories as they reemerge in treatment.

The body conserves energy on an ongoing basis. Habits start out as intentional actions that are practiced enough times that they become automatic. Habituated actions consume very little energy. Whereas consciousness is consumes an extraordinary amount of energy. In other words, it’s metabolically expensive.

When we are disembodied, we live removed from the power and wisdom that comes from the body. Energy stagnates. Joints get sore and muscles turn slack from lack of use. The best to free ourselves from this trap is to engage our body and mind.

Nature balances growth with decay. Though the signals aren’t strong, they are there in our DNA waiting to take action. For the first three to four decades of our life, the growth phase dominates. But somewhere around our late forties and fifties the free ride of youth is over.

The more I practice, the more I realize yoga is quite possible the best therapy there is. Why? Because yoga works at both the subtle and the gross level, allowing the body and mind to soften. Additionally, yoga quiets the daily chatter of the mind.

When choosing a medication, you should not only consider the immediate effect of it on anxiety, but also whether the medication has the ability to change the brain in ways that will help it become resistant to anxiety.

Yoga studios are crawling with raving lunatics. I should know. I was one of them and looked every bit the part: a rail-thin-rubber-bandy-raw-vegan-meditating-twice-a-day-yogi. While I could twist myself into a pretzel, it was only after tumbling off my mat that I began to embody what yoga truly means.

Discontent with our changing bodies is a rich source of suffering. The feeling is intensified as we age due to marketing and the cultural obsession with youthfulness. This leads many people to fight aging by any means necessary, often going to extraordinary lengths to hide it.

Up until this moment, I viewed sugar as my lover and nemesis, torturer and savior but never my teacher. Yet here I am learning more about myself and health than all my cumulative years of study.