The language of the body
We are taught from childhood to use words for our thoughts. But we can also use words not just for the thoughts we have, but for the sensations we have.
We can do this in an immersive way, not merely for a minute or a few seconds to label a particular sensation, but to live in the sensation, for a longer duration, so that the words that come to us, slowly, with pauses, are the language of our body.
You can do this now as you sit on your chair or lie in your bed. Simply bring your attention to your eyes as they focus on this text. What words would you use to describe the sensations in your eyes. It may take some time, but you can slowly find your unique words. As I write this, I sense my eyes to be slightly dry, wide awake, radiating energy, soft, somewhat sorrowful.
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Let us do an imaginative exercise.
Imagine that tomorrow morning, you walk out of your home and find the closest place that is quiet, and the ground beneath you is made of bare earth or grass. This exercise is not meant for walking on concrete, asphalt or tiles of any kind.
Walk with a gentle, soft attention on the sensations in the soles of your feet as they fall on the bare earth – or grass, which is an extension of that bare earth.
The soles of your feet, as they come in touch with the bare earth, feel sensations which are different from what they feel when walking on concrete or marble. The bare earth sends sensations into the body that are calm and grounded.
Calm sensations are those that help you let go of tense muscles and restless impulses, as you let yourself give in to the soft, soothing, slow feel of the earth.
Grounded sensations are those that help you move out of the feeling of being airy, unbounded, shaky and receive a sense of having gravity, solidity and rootedness.
Your attention may wander into thoughts about the next minute or the coming day or what happened yesterday. Do not suppress these thoughts, but when you remember that you have forgotten to attend to your feet, gently take your attention back to them. Continue to note the sensations you feel in them.
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As you walk for a few minutes, certain sensations will continually come into your feet from the bare earth. These may be, as I have written above, sensations of being calm and grounded. There could be other sensations that continually emerge in your experience, such as warmth or strength. Make a mental note of them.
After a while, you may notice that the sensations of calmness and groundedness are not limited to your feet, but from your feet, reach upwards to your legs, pelvic area, chest or head. Let this happen and simply take note of what you feel. Each person has a unique somatic experience, and each person will find different pathways in which these sensations travel.
If you spend half an hour or more walking with a gentle attention to the somatic relationship between yourself and the earth, as mediated through your feet, you are participating in a meditative experience. This experience is the field between you and the earth, it is an exchange of what the earth offers, and what you receive, as also what keeps you from receiving the earth in its fullness.
The language of the earth, like all nature, is somatic.
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The Taoists consider such a practice a way to cultivate a relationship with the earth, and through the earth, with all solid bodies in the cosmos that are similarly made of sensations such as calmness and groundedness. One is tapping into something universal that every human being who has been deeply attuned to the earth, today, or hundreds of thousands of years ago, has experienced and engaged with. For the Taoist, to experience a body that is continually in touch with such sensations, and attuned to them in a receptive, gentle relationship, is an expansion of our lives beyond the narrow confines of anxiety and grasping. It is to live in a relationship with the universe, and not with a little corner of it only.
If you have an animal friend who can accompany you in this practice, touch their body gently. You will sense that they, connected to the earth through their paws, also offer similar sensations as the earth itself – even if emotionally they may not necessarily be calm at that moment.
If there is a tree or a plant close by, gently touch it. You will sense that it too has these sensations to offer into your hands.
Touch an iron grill, or a cell phone, and you will see that the sensory experience is completely different.
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Our attention can exist on a spectrum between two ends, which we may call ‘examination attention’ and ‘ocean gazing attention’.
When you are in an examination hall and have to write answers to 20 questions in 60 minutes, you do not let your attention naturally wander to what you can see outside through the window, the colour of the sky or the sounds of the birds on the trees. You forcefully keep yourself focused on the object of your attention – the papers on your desk.
When you sit at the shore of the ocean, in contrast, and look at the rhythmic rising and falling of the waves, your attention is different. You observe how they rise and fall at the shore, flowing into the surface of the beach before receding.
You attend to the repeated sounds of the rise and fall of these waves, as they interact with the moon which determines their movements.
If you see a ship in the ocean, you don’t force yourself to focus on the waves. If you see a bird fly past, you don’t exclude it from your attention. If a loving dog sits next to you and joins you in the ocean gazing, you don’t make yourself try to forget him. Ocean gazing attention is open, relaxed and receptive.
When practicing barefoot walking, our attention is meant to be ocean gazing attention.
There may be people around us who are walking with examination attention. They want to complete a certain number of steps a day, or raise their pulse rate to a particular level, or finish listening to a podcast on their earphones, or just get to their destination. In contrast, our attention is open. It rests on the somatic interaction between our feet and the earth, but it allows the receiving of other experiences – visual, aural or otherwise. It allows thoughts to come and go. It allows emotions to rise and fall.
Indoor living, often dominated by screens, pulls us into examination attention.
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One can practice barefoot walking as a daily practice of feeling calmer, coming closer to one’s body and emotions, and connecting to a vaster reality that is both similar to us and also spreads far beyond us in space and in the time that it has existed, and will continue to exist after we are gone.
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Human beings have been around for three hundred thousand years. In this, the vast majority of their time has been spent barefoot. All human beings who exist today on the earth can trace their lineage back to a few thousand who slowly started to walk from east Africa and reached every part of the world except Antarctica, starting about 70000 years ago.
Walking has been an essential part of the human experience, like eating and sleeping. As a practice that we share with all human beings that have ever been, it connects us to our history and to the core of who we are. Because of this, conscious walking is an experience that comes with contemplation and meaning, in comparison to walking as a means to reaching our destination.
Pre-historic societies and their descendants who until modernity have resisted settled life, recognise the sacredness attributed to walking. Remnants of this are found in the world religions. The Buddha spent much of the year walking, and much of the hours of the day walking from one place to another. He understood the value of quiet, contemplative walking to the life he was living.
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In the Taoist path, one slowly moves to cultivating a similar relationship with light, as it reaches us through the sky at different points of the day and night and falls on our bodies. We may also make a similar relationship with food and water, thus encompassing the various elements that make up our somatic experience. We may live in a conscious relationship with them, rather than half-consciously move through such experiences of everyday life.