Friday, June 19, 2009

Moving From The Center

Is the main purpose of your body to carry your head around?
If we answer no we should examine our experience a little closer. If we take a moment at any point during the day to examine our immediate, present experience, we will find that this may be closer to how we relate to our body's than we think. Funny how that last sentence ended, the key words (relate, body, think). You may be interested to find that how you relate your own body is very similar to how you relate to some external foreign object. Do we ever stop to feel a foreign object external to ourselves? Probably not, if anything we will give fleeting moments of thought. How often do we actually find ourselves living in the body?

The body has a located center, some names for this center are, the core, the hara, the dan tien, and so on. From the eastern perspective this center is located, but has little to do with the actual physical form of the body. It is perceived more as an energetic point from which the body's life force springs, and is harnessed. From a western perspective this is where the lower and upper halves of the body meet, ( the hip complex). Both perceptions are relevant to moving from the center.

Moving from the center could also be defined as "Moving toward wholeness, from Wholeness". People exhibit this when they are "in the flow" or "in the zone". This is perceived as a centering of the mind in the body or as the body (where body and mind are one). In a sense "Moving from the center" is being in the flow, or just "being the flow". What is the "flow"? How can we find the center, move from it, and be in the flow?

Our whole life in this one pointed "now" moment is the flow. Whatever is now is the flow which is the constant unfolding of our life. So the center is this now moment, all of it. The center is the circumference of now. Makes sense that all these meditation techniques keep directing us to be present for this ever present now moment. The physical body is the vehicle to perceiving this now moment, which is why so many meditation techniques bring us back to the body. We can find the center and move from it by exploring through intuitive awareness our body.

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