Body Awareness during Yoga and a dream aftermath

I am feeling compelled beyond myself to share two related experiences with you that occurred within the span of 2 days. A very brief background to both these experiences is that in the recent past (like the last 3 weeks), I have been practicing ‘inner body awareness’, as described by Eckhart Tolle in the book, ‘The Power of NOW’, pretty diligently. It has been quite an adventure, no doubt difficult to practice but with quite instant shifts in awareness. More on this later but now let me get to the two specific events I mentioned earlier.

The first experience was that I tried to become aware of my inner body during my yoga practice. I was doing very very simple stretches on Monday morning, and it was an amazing feeling that left me with a profound sense of peace and lightness. I merely shifted my focus from the bending and stretching of the muscles and physical body parts to the bending and stretching of the invisible body (which had quite a firm presence as a connected and single energy field in the shape of my physical body). I loved this experience, and maybe it is something that many of you might already be experiencing, but for me it was the first time, although I have been doing yoga for 15 years now. So I really really wanted to share the experience and encourage you to try to combine inner body awareness as a single field of energy with your yoga or physical exercise. It filled me with an extremely deep sense of peace and well being.
The second experience I’m going to narrate occurred in the early hours of this morning. I had a very vivid dream and in my dream I was interacting with a past lover. Now just the thought of this person, lets call him M, usually has a very intense effect on me although the last time I met him was in 2001, almost 10 years ago. It’s quite a an intense romantic drama that we have shared, and in the 5 years or so that we knew each other, we have never met even once without the encounter bursting into flames of passion (sometimes love and many other times anger, misunderstandings or even mild forms of violence). Just the intensity of being in each other’s presence was too much for either of us, and I have never been able to understand what would possess us or transform us thus, and why we could never hold on to the loving part of the relationship alone. We never formally proclaimed ourselves to be lovers, (we kept breaking up and then landing up dating again and then fighting), and it was a blurred but romantically intense dance of two big egos that could just not resist each. Eventually he dumped me and I was badly scarred by the episode, but of course I recovered :-). I stopped trying to make sense of the whole thing quite some years ago and each of us have moved on with our lives, so to say, and we have not been in touch at all. He has been making occasional appearances in my dreams, but it’s just one of those things that I have stopped trying to make sense of or thing about.

Anyway, in my last night’s dream this guy was there sitting next to me in a social gathering and after a bit of cat and mouse game of looking at and avoiding each other we finally sat next to each other and he held me in my embrace. The sparks flew, the starts twinkled, all life came alive and then he suddenly withdrew without reason (as he often used to do earlier as well). I was shocked and I plunged deep into a state of rejection and feeling stupid, all rolled into one, and then I suddenly awoke. Initially the emotional pain was unbearable, it was both wonderfully pleasurable (because of the feeling of being in his embrace again that I was still acutely aware of, but also intensely painful because of the ’rejection’ and being pushed away. Without my own realizing it I slipped into my inner body awareness (I think I did this because I have made such a regular habit of it), and WOW! My inner body felt intensely ALIVE and VIBRANT! There was no pain, no so called ‘pleasure’ either but just an infinite sense of joy and aliveness. My inner body was so so so alive that it was kicking and bursting with LIFE and I was just mesmerized at witnessing the grandeur of the feeling. I was acutely aware of being in a state of bliss with no strings and no questions attached, and being very INTENSELY ALIVE. Then a first thought came to my mind, and I literally witnessed how the moment my awareness shifted to my mind, the joy decreased and the emotional pain started to take over,….I felt like bursting out in tears, but before I actually started crying I pulled back my awareness to the single field of energy in my inner body. Emotional pain disappeared! –like magic, just like pressing a button. No tears,…..then another thought arose and before the thought even took complete shape, the emotional pain started….again close to tears…….again I pulled back the awareness to the inner body and the vibrant state of being alive came back, pain disappeared, no tears,….just the INTENSE aliveness. This oscillation happened (or I made it happen) 3 or 4 times till I was giggling inside with delight at the discovery of this amazing activity. Then I decided to ease myself out of it, and I took some deep breaths, shook myself out, and got out of bed.

The similarities in the two experiences are amazing,…how one activity that I normally find very calming and enjoyable was made infinitely more impactful by shifting to inner body awareness, and how another emotionally charged episode (such dreams usually leave me sobbing like a crazy child), transformed into one of amazing learning and discovery and enjoyment. There is a catch however. A little later in the morning, and this happened on both days, I sensed a more active pain body, and more frequent risings of negative mental chatter and irritation in myself triggered by various seemingly unrelated things. The good side to this catch however was that on both mornings I was pretty deft at catching these risings of negativity and irritation and nip them in the bud, simple by re-shifting to inner body awareness, and when that didn’t work, by sending a desperate prayer out to my source. The latter always works :-). So I sense that it is a path laden with tricks, and requires constant awareness, because the dysfunctions in the mind are only waiting to jump out again and again, when we land up ignoring it through inner body awareness. But it is an interesting path nevertheless and one I am thoroughly enjoying being on these days.

I do strongly recommend thought that before trying to shift into inner body awareness during intense moments, remember to remember to call out to God, or your source or the universe for help if you ever need to. It can get really tough and challenging to retain that focus on inner body when the mind is churning out its most devious reasons and tricks to throw you off rail and into a vicious cycle of fear and abandonment again.

And now a lil poem!

There was you and there was me
And there was the electrifying energy
But when I shifted within I saw
There was just a single ocean of charge

There was pleasure, there was pain
And there was passion that set us ablaze
But when I shifted within I saw
There was only bliss and infinite grace

There was connection, there was rejection
And there was a dance of hide and seek
But when I shifted within I saw
A vibrant and eternal, joyful presence.