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Mind Body...is something missing?

By Meredith Narissi

We talk about mind body now as if we all understand what it means. I was wondering how long we have separated the two. Since the dawn of history, we have wondered what goes on inside the human form. We have drawings of the body in detail, every inner organ and muscle, like a Michelangelo who studied corpses to see what was inside, we explore with x-ray, MRI, and Doppler. We have weighed, measured dissected, compared, and finally, sculptured images to express our ideal of beauty. We even sculpt our physical forms to fit the latest trend in beauty (i.e.: body building and cosmetic surgery).

We have adorned and adored the body. And why not celebrate such a wondrous thing! There always remains the mystery of what we really are, how we got here, and what we are to do with ourselves. When the wondering gets to be too much, we can always come back to the body. It is our grounding presence. Many of us who enjoy sports, dance, physical fitness, and all sorts of physical delights, have perhaps learned more about our inner selves for having paid attention to our bodies.

Artists have long celebrated the body, and its image is found in art more often than any other image. Museums and art history books abound with the nude as a great topic of fascination. Our inquiry to know ourselves begins with the body. So how do we get mind/body as a coined phrase? We cannot look at the body without the mind. We seem to love to categorize and organize as an attempt to understand our experience. Any separation of mind/body is quite fictitious.

We talk in terms of unique entities and separations, while more and more, it is the lack of separation that we require; in order to heal.as in whole, as in holy. We are aware of a kind of ecstatic experience that seems to transcend just our mental or physical experience. Perhaps as we allow the mind to enter the body, we find our Soul. Mind/body then becomes mind/body/soul. Our indigenous ancestors were not shy about this.

Do our technologically advanced selves think of this as child's play? Are we too smart and advanced to include the soul? That would put us into the unknown again! Yet, we are dabbling in it, as always. Just ask any yoga teacher, ask a sports enthusiast who gets into flow state, or ask any dancer who forgets her physical form altogether as she performs.

What kind of mind/body experience is this? It is the mind/body that takes us into deeper realms, where true health is found; a healthy understanding of the body that transcends just the physical, and places us into higher states of joy. So what is mind/body if not integration?...the joining of the two in order to find Soul.

Meredith Narissi is a mind/body teacher in Long Island, NY.