Reverb 10 Prompt (from Patrick Reynolds): This year, when did you feel the most integrated with your body? Did you have a moment where there wasn’t mind and body, but simply a cohesive YOU, alive and present?
Hmmm… Well, the thing is I already covered a lot of this ground when describing my most alive moment. And besides, body-mind integration is like, my thing. I’m like, Mr. Body-Mind Integration. I studied it in graduate school, wrote a master’s thesis and a book chapter about it, read a ton of books on the subject, attended several professional integrative trainings, created a website dedicated to better understanding it, blogged about it incessantly, and I’ve worked toward personally realizing it through a variety of practices for the past fifteen years. So yeah, I got this. Yeah. Got this bull by the horns, yo.
Alright, so the truth is my posture sucks, I spend most of the day in my head engaged in imaginary conversations, I fell down recently and separated my shoulder while running (just fell the fuck down onto the ground, like a toddler), and I write/talk about my body-centered practices more than I actually do them these days. So maybe I’m like, Mr. Wannabe Body-Mind Integration. Yo.
But I did have that “Most Alive Moment of 2010” and a few others when I experienced the integrity of my whole being to a relatively remarkable degree. Many of them were downstairs in my living room, where I might spend five, six, seven hours even, just me and my acoustic guitar (and maybe a couple of beers or glasses of wine), serenading the ceiling. However hard I’ve tried over the years to crack the code, I’ve not yet found a way to make these experiences happen. Sometimes I’ll pick up my guitar, run through a few tunes, then move on to something else, mind and body in their familiar compartments. But every now and again I find myself slipping into the zone, that elusive sweet spot where all sense of effort drops away, my mind opens, my body softens, and the constraints of clock-time give way to the freedom of pure flow. It’s a cliche, I know, but it’s like the music is coming through me, like I’m experiencing the nexus point between the transcendent and immanent aspects of my being.
When I was kid, I experienced this same sense of integration through athletics. All I wanted to do was play sports, all day, everyday. That was when I experienced the greatest sense of freedom, the absence of inner turmoil, a temporary respite from the complications of concepts and personalities. Once the whistle blew, there was no Bob. There was only playing. I just reacted, responded, lost myself in the game. My muscles just moved, my lungs breathed, and my brain made all the necessary calculations, all of their own accord, without “me” having to do anything at all.
My fascination with these types of peak experiences is what inspired me in my early twenties to pack up and move from Upstate New York to San Francisco in search of adventure and self-realization, to spend all those years studying, inquiring, discovering, and experimenting with how best to cultivate this integration, how to open myself as much as possible to the full depths of my humanity. The journey continues, of course, and the more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know. But I have learned a few things, and that’s a big reason why I’m working on the Integral Health Resources website — to share those insights with whoever might be interested. I’m also doing it to clarify my thinking, engage in dialogue, and to create some kind of context and structure for my scattered ideas and interests. Some day soon, probably in 2011 (assuming my wife lands an academic position somewhere), it will be time for me to finally step into a meaningful career of my own. I’ve been talking for years about stepping out of the box and doing my own thing, all the while staying in the box with my hundred-and-one excuses and ultimately doing jack.
But that’s another story altogether. I wonder if any of the remaining 19 prompts will force me to dig into that can of worms?
