For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice. T.S. Eliot “Four Quartets”
The body has a language all its own. In our hurried daily life, our long-held habitual movements, and so often the fears that we have associated with certain physical sensations, we have tuned out to what our body is saying. Or perhaps, we’ve never needed to bring the body’s language fully into consciousness. However, there is a shared connection in the physical language between all beings that can open us up to a deeper experience of compassion.
Regardless of gender, age, occupation, or specific life experiences, we are all connected by a shared language that our bodies speak if only we can soften into listening. It’s this listening that brings us closer to compassion, to true love, and to all that is divine in us and in the world. Matthew Sanford, a renowned yoga teacher who has been paralyzed from the waist down since he was 13, says that we cannot spend time with our body—both its weaknesses and its strengths—and not grow more compassionate for all beings. Yes, the more we come to know these places in ourselves, the more we discover they are shared experiences and feelings that all humans traverse physically. So the physical experience of trauma, stress, anxiety and fear I hold in my body is an experience that my students, my family members, the people I see in the grocery store, likely have as well. Perhaps the cause of the physical sensations is different, but everyone experiences stress, fear, anxiety, etc, on a physical level. Just as everyone experiences joy and love on a physical level. And, too, everyone experiences aging, illness, weakness, and the silence that accompanies these in the body. As I soften into listening to the language my body speaks within these experiences, I manage to expand my ability to connect more deeply to myself, but also more deeply to all those I encounter. Aren’t we all scared on some level to age? To experience pain and weakness? Don’t we all push back against feelings of stress in some way? We can choose to listen to the messages, the language, of the body or we can ignore and fight against these conversations. As listeners, if we soften to what we receive, we gain one of the best gifts of all—that of compassion.
Listening to this new language may feel new and a little bumpy. It requires a kind of attention to silence and the presence necessary to walk into darkness. We must be willing to stay present for and seek more intimately within our own physical experiences. I think starting on the yoga mat, allowing ourselves to become familiar with sensations as they arise, with feelings the sensations create, and with habits we create around these sensations and feelings, is a fine place to connect with and get to know our body more profoundly. Sanford describes this journey into the body’s language as what we experience when we’re in a dark room. You know that feeling of stepping into a dark space? Perhaps you meet that experience with anxiety and panic. “I must find the light.” “Hurry, where is the switch.” “I should turn around and get out of here.” Maybe none of those thoughts register consciously, but rather they may register in your quick, instinctual motions. What if instead you stopped hurrying, softened into stillness, and remained aware of all that’s a part of this dark room experience? Perhaps you’d become more aware of your breath and of the physical sensations that rise up to meet the emotional and mental experience of being in the dark. It’s likely your other senses would become heightened and you may hear, smell, or sense something else along with the dark. Eventually your sight may adjust to the dimness and you may perceive more through your eyes than the first moments allow. Because you slowed and stayed, going against what you may habitually do, you gain a new perspective, a new language and understanding that provide you with a deeper understanding of yourself and your surroundings. That’s the kind of wisdom that can initiate compassion for the whole world.
I began yoga to find a superficial physical appearance. But in the course of almost 20 years of both comfortable and not so comfortable practice, I’ve learned and relearned my body in ways I never knew possible before I journeyed onto my mat and into a conversation with my physical self. I’ve gained through this presence with my physical body a softer conversation with my mind. I keep relearning all that I can do when the physical practice is limited or non-existent, and in realizing this I come closer to connecting to the part of me and of existence that is more meaningful and true than the fleeting sensations of the body. As I connect to this place in me, I am able to see that same place in all of the beings around me. And so from a superficial physical place my yoga practice has grown in me a connection rooted deeply in love.
I think discovering this connection starts with a perspective shift. It can be difficult to deeply listen and connect to our quiet spaces if we don’t allow ourselves to try a different way, a way that can wake us up and slow us down.Hope brings the possibility, the opportunity, for a new perspective. This newness may not be comfortable at all. You may feel like you’re walking into a very dark room. There may be missteps. But if you feel the momentum toward something new, toward that shine of hope that you glimpse in the year ahead, go ahead—let yourself experience the quiet language that has been there all along.