Golder you hit on something that also shows up from another, different, science perspective. And ye, I’m talking about a science that’s 5000 years old.. far older than western science, but both talk about the same things.
“So why do we think that all our thinking and knowing takes place in the head? Oversimplification and old, outdated, incomplete science.[emphasis AK].What science is now telling us is that the overwhelming majority of information (over 95% of data) that we receive is processed in our bodies. Unfortunately, as a culture, we’ve largely stopped paying attention to what that data and our associated experiences are telling us.”
We as humans used to understand a wealth of information that arrived through our senses, touch, taste, hearing, sound, intuition (i.e. our gut feeling), all of these added up to us being able to navigate the world in some amazing ways. They also allowed us to connect with other huns in meaningful ways- ays that created community and collaboration. Ways that included rather than excluded or conquered other people.
I’m not saying that people never tried to beat out someone else, but I’m saying that the culture that arose in many places where the traditional science of Hatha Yoga was practiced and taught, were more inclined towards a collaborative and embodied culture than the one we currently live in, whether in the west or even in many parts of the east today.
Back to what I was getting at- There is a much older science that has existed for 5000 years which taught that the body, as a whole, was the receptor of information and was a way that taught people how to understand and use the information that was available to them through all the senses.
When we look at traditional Hatha Yoga science texts, (As opposed to current forms of physical “yoga” which are practiced in much of the western world), it becomes obvious very quickly that Yoga was teaching people how to pay attention to ALL the information that entered the body.
We still have the capacity to make use of this for ourselves by stopping every once in a while to pay attention to what we are experiencing in a particular moment. (The rise of Mindfulness practice is one way that people have tried to reintroduce this awareness back into our culture).
When you take 1 minute every hour to notice what you are experiencing, you can radically increase the information you have to work with, and the more you notice, the more you will move towards making better, healthier and saner choices about how to live.
Don’t believe me?
Try these 5-steps and see what happens:
- Stop moving for 60 seconds.
2. Make a quick mental note of what you are physically experiencing. Not what you think about what’s going on, but what sensations are you physically aware of for 1 minute?
3. Notice what emotions are present in you for this minute.
4. Notice what events are occurring directly around you. You might notice traffic sounds, birds, people moving around, conversations,etc…
5. Actively choose what physical action you will take next.
The more we encourage ourselves to use all the information available to us in our bodies, the more we start to make useful choices that lead us towards happiness and thriving. When we stop running-on-auto even for a few minutes a day, we create space for conscious choices rather than knee-jerk reactions driven by unconscious habitual patterns of behaviour. The more we create space for choice of action, the more we generally choose the things that make our bodies feel good over the long-term.
Between the two sciences, Traditional and Western, we have a wealth of information and practices that can help us live happier, healthier and more in collaboration with our environment.
