If planning to live in your body for hundreds or thousands of years, it’s a great idea to get to know it and embrace it to its fullest extent. Use these practices to get you there.

One of the first things people notice when taking Immortality is extra energy, and joints that are less creaky. There is also a renewed interest in exercise. This is an amazing time to get to know your body, embrace it, use it and truly inhabit it. Especially if planning to live in it for hundreds or thousands of years. Use these practices to get you there.

Bizarre as it may seem, many of us walk around in bodies we are completely unaware of. For instance, do you know whether your right or left foot takes a bigger step than the other, or whether your shoulders tilt one way or another, or if you crumple your forehead when you are thinking? Have you sat down with your body and spoken to your ankles, your little finger, or tried to locate the back of your head with the feeling part of yourself? Can you uncrumple your ears? Gabriella Roth, American movement therapist lauds the benefits of decoding the body’s language, connecting with the body’s wisdom and consciously nourishing it to grow. “If you want to give birth to your true self, you are going to have to dig deep down into that body of yours and let your soul howl”.

Moving with a silent motor, the body is filled with intelligence and magnificent design.

It is unfortunate that most of the time, we live almost as though outside our bodies, distracted by external impulses. We think of ‘having’ a body instead of ‘being’ a body. It is only when ill we are forced to pay attention to parts of the body and that’s because they hurt. The more in touch with your body you are; the more you know who you are and what you feel. A strong sense of self is intimately linked with an awareness of the body.

Osho, Indian guru and teacher says: “If you have a certain idea about how the body should be, you will be in misery. The body is as it should be. When you start loving your body, you will care about it, and care implies everything.”

When you fall in love with your body it becomes beautiful. Just as someone who loves and is loved in return looks beautiful, so too does the body become beautiful when it is loved.

He believes; it is not the body that creates the problem, it is the mind. Animals, for instance, don’t ever have problems with the way their bodies look.

Start by connecting with one part at a time.

THE HEAD

With the head, it seems to be more a case of disconnecting rather than connecting. Our educational bias is towards the intellect making us live mainly in our heads. Somehow, we are conditioned to see the body as something to be tamed and controlled by the mind in some cases regarding identification with the body as an obstacle to spiritual development. This means we evolve our minds at the expense of our bodies. Amiyo Ruhnke, author of Body Wisdom (Newleaf) remarks that the head tends to take over more than its share of our lives.

“The head is quite useful if it doesn’t interfere in activities that are really none of its business.”

Heads are always arguing with you. Osho suggests becoming ‘headless’ as a way to get into your body:

The Practice: Walk around as though you don’t have a head. Keep remembering that the head is not there. Have a picture of yourself enlarged without your head. Cover the top of your mirrors so you don’t see above your neck. While ‘headless’; experiment watching the body. Change your operating system from your head to your heart or your belly. Remember the soul is most present when body and spirit are one. Do this for at least 5 minutes a day over a period of a week or do it for one whole day.

INNER ORGANS

Start exploring your inner landscapes of bone, blood, cells, organs and tissue – relate them to dreams and desires. Take an inventory of your inner organs. Find out what’s actually in there. Stop at each organ and have a chat. Check out your liver; do you ever feel livid? Put your attention on your pancreas, your bladder and colon, visit the inside of your third toe. Roth says let your body parts speak to you, acknowledging and releasing their comments and complaints, moving toward that inspired state of being where there is nothing left of you but your soul. “If you aren’t fascinated with yourself, no one else will be.”

The Practice: Even if you have to get hold of an anatomy diagram, identify everything that is in your body. Start from bones, go to blood, then the organs, the tissues, the cells and make acquaintance with everything that is you, everything that contributes to your body functioning. You may want to do this over a few sessions.

THE FLESH

The myth goes that thousands of years ago, some men got together and, in the name of God, separated all matters having to do with the spirit from the flesh. Flesh was denigrated and the body became the enemy, its energies, passions, instincts, whims, and impulses suddenly suspect. “In the divorce of spirit from flesh”, says Roth, “we lost respect for the body and eventually forgot that it was part of our sacredness.”

Look for energy, tone and colour in other people’s bodies. See what the flesh is saying. Lucy Lidell, author of The Sensual Body (Fireside) maintains the parts of the body that people are aware of are warmer and more alive, while those parts from which he or she are cut off feel, by contrast, cooler, sadder, and more toneless.

The Practice: Do an audit of each part of your flesh, see which parts you don’t like and invite them back. Re-unite with the parts you have banished or scolded. You will see how appreciative they are and you will notice a huge difference in your body relationship. Often this practice can be emotional when we really notice how grisly we have been to the parts of the body we have judged.  

THE HEART

Mind and body should be equal partners but when the head dominates, you are in thinking mode, when the heart dominates you will be in feeling mode. Roth says, “Think of your body as a begging bowl for spirit. When spirit is removed from the body, it is no longer inspired. And since the spirit is the catalyst that keeps all things moving, the body without it falls into a deep state of inertia. Emotions no longer move fluidly, neither do thoughts or muscles. Everything is constipated.” This whole process of connecting with the spirit, the soul, and then with feelings and emotions leads to a connection with the body – all this happens by opening up the heart. Wake up your body through your heart, rigidity in your body is rigidity in your mind, cutting off your life force.

The Practice: Start by emptying your heart of everything that is painful. This is best done in combination with movement. Find a session of sun salutations and each time you do a new heart opening pose say to yourself, “open your heart, let something go”. You will be amazed at how much flows out of your heart. It may not be obvious what it is that’s leaving but you will feel incredibly light and empowered, if not fairly emotional before it clears. You may need to do this multiple times before you are able to operate in a heart based mode.

THE BELLY

Many of our emotions get thrown into the belly. Locate the belly from a feelings point of view and then listen to it. In ancient Japan, if you asked someone where his thinking was located, he would point to the belly. Use a meditation to increase awareness of the belly or ‘contemplate your navel’ as the saying goes. At the innermost core of ourselves a certain tension will always persist. Try and relax from your circumference. Persuade your belly to relax, speak to it lovingly. Our thoughts, joys and fears are all mirrored in our bodies, we see this as we age. The way bodies curve and shift, directly reflects our thoughts.

The Practice: Sit comfortably and feel into your belly, visualize it as a big round ball. Breathe a few breaths into it making it expand and contract. Then see what you may have put in there. Anxiety, tension, frustration, disappointment, hurry, fear. Light a cauldron in the belly, make it into a huge fire and burn away all the negative emotions. Know that as you do this, you increase the digestive ability of the belly. The ability to digest not only food but emotions as well. Breath out all the ashes.

THE FEET

What part of your foot do you walk on? Do you have a no-nonsense straight up and down walk, a sensual slow walk, high-heel, tight-shoe walk?  Go barefoot, plant your feet firmly on the earth and find unity with the ground. Walk very slowly and surprise yourself at the new quality of awareness it brings. Every movement we make communicates so much about ourselves. Think of your movement in terms of patterns and rhythms. In affluent urban cultures, few people seem at ease in their bodies or display grace or fluidity in their movements. In rural areas people often have more of a connection with earth. Stiffness and awkwardness are acquired, not innate.

Alexander Lowen, American psychotherapist comments,

“The feeling of identity stems from a feeling of contact with the body. To know who one is, an individual must be aware of what he feels. He should know the expression on his face, how he holds himself, and the way he moves. Without this awareness of bodily feeling and attitude, a person becomes split into a disembodied spirit and a disenchanted body.”

The Practice: Get someone to film your walk or use a mirror to observe yourself walking. See where you put your weight, whether you lean forward or backwards, how you place your feet. Examine all aspects of your walk. Then walk a different way, correcting the imbalances. Remove your shoes, walk outside and as you do, imagine connecting completely with the earth. Remember Khalil Gibran’s words; forget not, the earth delights to feel your bare feet…Feel the energy from the earth come up to meet your feet.