The Yoga of Conscious Movement

What Is Conscious Movement?

Conscious movement is performing an action or physical gesture with greater than normal awareness, reverence, and presence. Frequently the physical movement is slowed down in order to allow more time to really inhabit it and savor it. Often the movement is repeated in order to give the opportunity to taste it more deeply.

The physical postures known as yoga asanas are intended to be an example of conscious movement. Likewise systems of Chinese physical exercises, such as chi kung (qijong) or tai chi (taiji) and others are examples of conscious movement. In Tibetan Buddhism the corresponding systems are known as trulkhor and kum nye.

In the Western hemisphere the methods developed by Joseph Pilates, F. Matthias Alexander, and Moshe Feldenkrais are examples of conscious movement.

Even if we are not familiar with any of these systems, we can practice conscious movement by taking any common physical movement, slowing it down, repeating it with love and reverence, and mingling it with awareness and presence.

In my weekly meditation classes I teach a number of simple conscious movement exercises. One of the most basic, and an easy one to describe here, is relaxing the neck by turning the head.

Typically we are taught to stretch the muscles of the neck by turning the head so one is looking over the shoulder, doing these on each side, turning the head and twisting the neck muscles as far to each side as possible. Generally, this is done fairly quickly.

In conscious movement we turn the head very slowly. Although we try to go through the full range of movement, from side to side, we don't strain to stretch excessively. Furthermore we are not goal-focused on turning from one side, then to the other. Rather, we are focused on the journey as we turn the head from one side. We try to experience each degree of movement as fully as possible, noticing the movment of each tendon and muscle. Then we repeat a second time, moving twice as slowly as before.

Our attitude is one of enjoying the movement, just as we would enjoy a piece of music. When listening to music, you are not in a hurry to get to the end of the piece. You don't consider getting to the end of the music to be the goal. Likewise here we try to experience the movement for its own sake, and not simply as a "stretch" which we want to hurry and complete!

Other ways of describing this are "moving with intention," "moving with presence and dignity,"  "committing fully to the movement," and "inhabiting the movement."  Note that when we take away the "ve" from the last phrase we have "inhabiting the moment."  When we are fully in the movement we are also in the moment.

Why Do We Do Conscious Movement Exercises?

What we call "the body" and what we call "the mind" interpenetrate one another. The "feelings" that we experience affect the body, and what happens in the body affects our feelings. Even something as simple as the meditative hand postures, known as mudras, create various resonances in the body-mind.

Think of our non-meditative "mudra" of folding our crossed arms over our chest, when we feel defensive. What is the effect of this unconscious "mudra" on our state of awareness?

Meditation involves exquisite awareness of our body-mind, and its interface.

When we move consciously we are "mingling awareness with movement," so to speak. We focus on sensing what the movement feels like, inhabiting the physical movement with as much presence as possible. At the same time, we become intimately aware of how the physical gesture affects our sense of presence. Each posture and its quality of movement, has a flavor that we can sense deeply with our intutition, and it takes us more deeply into the innermost essence of our hearts.

Moving consciously, with presence and awareness, is like making love with life. Making love nurtures the soul. We tend to think of making love exclusively as something we do with another person. But we can make love to all of life. We can make love with our food, with our breath, with the sunlight, etc.

Here "making love" is another way of saying, "enterring into intimate communion with." We can be in intimate communion with the breath, and with the movements of our heart. One could object that "intimate communion" is too formal or poetic a term for something that is fundamentally ordinary. And yet, at the same time, we can experience the breath with a sense of reverence and care. We can experience both -- the ordinariness of the breath, and also the mysterious fact that it is our moment-to-moment connection with being alive.

Movement too is a manifestation of the mysterious fact of being alive. When we mix breath, and awareness, and movement, and stay centered in the depth of the heart, we have meditation.

Such disciplines as Yoga and Qijong are not just a series of physical postures. Each is a form of meditation in itself, as well as a way of preparing the body and mind for silent meditation. When we do conscious movement exercises, we are expressing the essence of yoga itself, which involves getting in touch with the flow of energies in the body.

For more information go to www.subtle-energy-exchange.com or www.leominster-meditation.com