A YOGI CHA BLOG
INTIMACY WITH THE BODY
Hi, I’m Charlotte (Yogi Cha). I’m a yoga teacher with a degree in clinical psychology. When not teaching, I enjoy learning and writing (my blog) about both eastern and western approaches to body-mind union.
Something clicked in me today when I heard the words “be intimate with your body, it is not an object”
My whole life I have struggled with the physical part of myself, the gross, the manifested part of me. I would punish myself in the most obvious part, the physical. Because the body is the representation of the being, we get so scared that it will not do us justice. That it will limit us from the greatness.
What does it mean to be intimate with your body? It means to not treat it as an external object. When I hurt the body, I hurt me. When I close the body, I close me. That’s why there’s something so magical in the Asana practice.
When I put my body in kurmasana, when I make it into a pretzel, I make myself into a knot physically and mentally. And when I come out of the pose, it is not just the physical opening up…
When two bodies connect it isn’t physical, it is you and I connecting. Touching another body means touching you. Not an object but a spiritual being. In the most intimate of relationships between two bodies, we are completely open. Two spiritual beings are allowing themselves to connect, to interlace, to become one for a brief moment.
Everything inside of me is connecting to everything inside of you: our hearts, our breath, our blood.
And the most magical of all is that the whole being that you are, is reacting to the whole being that is me.