Integrating Mind and Body: Be Present, Reduce Stress

Published on March 8, 2011 by admin   ·   No Comments

by Sam Russell/TinyBuddha.com

“Don’t let your mind bully your body into believing it must carry the burden of its worries.” ~Astrid Alauda

I don’t believe in the mind/body divide. I can see the gap between them, the one that we put there, but I have little faith in it. In the past month, I’ve learned that in order to live fully, I need to overcome that self-imposed gap.

We all have different mental, emotional, and physical capacities. You could probably run a 5k race, but I’d struggle to even walk it. I know I can work through some of the most difficult decisions, like knowing when to end my pets’ suffering, but you might find that extremely hard to come to terms with.

The thing that we have in common, though, is that we all work at different levels, and whether we choose to believe it or not, our minds and bodies sit together, with each of us.

I took up yoga last month, and I love it. The benefits of getting out for an hour to relax are endless, and I’ve started taking the practice home with me to reap these benefits throughout my week.

I’m headstrong, so I push myself a bit further than I should. Sometimes I go too far and I exhaust myself, or I stretch beyond what my body can manage and end up with extra painful muscles for days.

What’s going on here? It’s that gap between my mind and body.

My mind drags my body places it doesn’t want to go, and I feel sorry for it having to suffer that.

I’ve been practicing a shoulder stand for a few weeks now. At first, it was nearly impossible to get my legs close to my chest without the posture collapsing, or should I say, me collapsing into a heap.

I’d visualize the posture all the time in my head so I should have been able to pull it off, no problem, but I couldn’t. Why?

My body, my back specifically, isn’t strong enough yet to straighten and hold that posture. I can barely sit or stand up straight in my everyday life for long periods of time without getting fatigued. The muscles are underdeveloped, the ligaments and tendons not substantial enough to hold my bones steady.

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