Body Awareness: An Occasional Tool

Clarification: body awareness is a tool to be reached for only if needed—not as a daily practice like meditation or yoga postures.

At a symposium at Queen's University in Ontario, 1972, Maharishi explained how it worked. He also pointed out that even if someone doesn’t learn to meditate, just understanding this one thing—you can deal with negative moods by feeling them in the body—can be profoundly helpful. Feel the stress and Get It Out. Otherwise, we’ll always be at the mercy of whims and impulses.

But back in 1968, at the Tahoe course where I first learned it, someone asked: Shouldn’t regular meditation take care of negativity? He agreed. So ideally, we wouldn’t even need body awareness, or we use it as an occasional intervention rather than an additional practice.

That’s my understanding: it’s a powerful now-and-then tool. And like an insurance policy or fire extinguisher, it’s nice to know it’s there. It’s sure helped me when the clouds got dark.

~ John