The Joy of Having a Body

Social media these days are full of people with beautiful, athletic and strong bodies doing the most impressive yoga poses. As I was stuck in bed for the past two months (and one more month to go at least) with an injury, it was a great reminder to me that yoga is not about how acrobatic you can be. In fact, the past months I might have learned more about yoga than during all those years of practice without injury. Yoga was very much what kept me going during this time of inconvenience.

"What do you mean?" I hear you think, "How can you practice yoga with a broken foot?" Well, you perfectly can, I found out. I still had a body, that I could move around, maybe with some limitation. However, it became an exploration to see how I could move my body with the limits I had, and how I could - in doing so - bring ease and comfort to body and mind. And isn't that what yoga is all about?

Practicing yoga with a broken foot

Yoga to me is about being embodied, about the joy of having a body and taking care of it. In the Western society, I grew up in, there is a long cultural tradition of dualism, of separation of body and mind, where the mind is seen as 'higher' or 'more evolved' and the body as 'crude', 'lazy' or full of 'passions' that need to be disciplined. These assumptions have deep roots in our (Christian) religion, which took it over from antiquity (stoicism, gnosticism, platonism etc.). As far back as Aristotle, we find this idea that the mind is what separates us from (and places us above) animals. The mind needs to control the body.

Culturally, enjoyment of bodily pleasures is seen as base and lowly, and as a lack of self-restraint. We need to control our appetite for tasty food, sleep, sex, etc. The bodies that are praised and looked up to in our society are the ones that are most disciplined and well trained. The ideal is that of the athlete, who - through much pain and effort - foregoes sensual pleasure, keeps a strict diet and training regime and keeps their body in perfect shape. Even yoga, in the way it has been acculturated in the West, can carriy many of these presuppositions

Is yoga just about looking fit and athletic?
Photo: Mr. Yoga, CC 4.0

Yoga, for me however, is the exact opposite. Yoga is about feeling my body, being at home in my body - my body, with all its imperfections and peculiarities, not the idealized body of some highly trained (often somewhat sexualized) athlete. It does not matter how it can move, what limitations it has, how flexible or strong it is. What matters is, that it can move the way it does, and that is in itself a great wonder to be enjoyed. As my teacher would say: 'The miracle is not to walk on water, the miracle is just to walk on earth.' It is a great joy to have the body we have, which allows us to interact with the world as we do.

Our cultural biases are sometimes expressed - in science fiction - as if the ideal would be to just upload our minds to computers, and just leave our bodies behind and live forever. That sounds like a horrible torture to me. I love my body, I love having a body, and moving in it a way that brings comfort and joy and helps me take care of it. Life would be utterly senseless to me without a body, and I will enjoy moving, stretching and practicing it, just for the sake of doing so, as long as I can!