Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Approaching Your Health, Weight (or Yoga Practice) From a Place of Wholeness

Perennial philosophy is the philosophical concept, which states that each of the world’s religious traditions share a single universal truth.

We are each an individualized consciousness that is the manifestation of a Divine Ground. As human beings we possess a double nature, an egoist self and an eternal Self, which is the spirit, the spark of divinity within the soul. A human’s life on earth has only one end purpose: to identify the egoist self with the eternal Self and so to come to the united knowledge of the Divine Ground.

Our religions share a similar story: a tale of how we started as a whole, connected to the divine, until something occurred to create separation. In the Old Testament we learn of the temptations within the Garden of Eden, the wounding and our fall from grace.

We start to believe that we are alone, separate from the divine. We forget about the internal glory of the divine and focus fully on external victories, out-winning “others”. Our approach of ‘self against else’ leads us to hatred, violence and destruction towards others or ourselves.

Many of us struggle with health, weight and body image issues. We can spend decades of our life resenting our bodies until we exhaust ourselves fighting these issues. We often need to reach exhaustion before we have an awakening. We realize that in a physical and psychological battle against ourselves there is no winner.

Having spent years resentful of our bodies, we get trapped in the limited belief that medical and nutritional ailments can only be healed by medical and nutritional strategies. As an example, we are taught that excess weight can only be lost by less food and more exercise or by the use of a drug.

While this holds some truth, it does not paint an entire picture. For many of us the issues are not nutritional, they are psychological. Every issue we face with the body is somehow linked with heart, mind and soul. Thoughts, feeling, and beliefs all affect nutrition, too. While we can heal ourselves by dietary means, we need to move deeper into ourselves if we want to create true healing.

We carry the divine spark within us; we are perfect as we are. Yet there is a journey and on this journey, we receive clues. Each of our symptoms hints towards the things that we do that is not an expression of our authentic self. When we learn to understand our symptoms, we learn what we need to let go of.

When we don’t listen to the mild symptoms, they get louder until they grab our attention. Rather than attack our symptoms or try to rapidly get rid of them, let’s listen and learn from them. As we authentically evolve, the symptoms will dissolve.

One of my clients recently shared how once she realized that each pound of her excess weight carried a divine message, she began to feel lighter in her body. The embodiment of lightness and sense of universal support has made it easy for her to embrace a healthy lifestyle and lose weight with no feeling of fight or depravation.

Our health challenges are doorways to deeper places in our lives that call for healing. The body lives downstream to the soul. Improved health or achieving a healthy weight is the result of our practice but it is not the practice itself. The practice is carrying out our authentic service to the world.

As we empower ourselves as individuals, our metabolic power and physical vitality increases. When we learn to step out of our own way, true healing can take place.

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