Becoming the Body of Automobile

Incorporating the tool as body creates an ecstatic experience (and is more effective).

I drove to the beach the other day. Of course, I meant the “I” who is a combination man-machine, who carries other people within my body.

First, I adjust the seat so I am snug within it, cultivating the sense of my back, buttocks, and legs merging with the fabric. My left foot sinks into and merges with a foot pad provided for the non-driving leg. From a bodily sense, this is all not too different than the way one might relax into corpse pose in yoga, and feel one’s body melt into the floor.

With my right foot, the one that (in the US) controls the acceleration and braking, I connect to the floor through a single pivot point, finding both weight in the heel and the possibility of pivoting, like the heavy mast of a sailing ship set into its base in a way that it is also free to rotate.

The hands go on the wheel. The wheel is felt as an extension of my arms, and my arms are felt as extension of my gut.

When driving, my best experience is when the whole thing is felt from the gut. The gut is the center of gravity of bodily motion and has a deep physical knowledge that the heart and the head do not.

The body of the automobile is felt as my body, from the gut. I know where my front and sides and back are, intuitively. I let the energy of the eyes flow through my heart into my gut, enjoying the resonance and felt connection between them.

I allow vision to expand in all directions, resting in the peripheral. A soft gaze ahead, yes, but a peripheral gaze all around.

I start the engine.

Such enjoyment emanates from the rumble of the seat! The virtue of the internal combustion engine! The whole body subtly vibrates with its turning. This vibration is the final act of unifying man and machine.

Time to move.

Driving in this way is a sensuous enjoyment, of the road, the passengers inside my body, and the space we are both moving through. The integrated complex of gut-car-heart-vision can be kind, gently stopping and accelerating, cruising forward, or gracefully traversing curves in the road. My auto-body relates kindly to the other auto-bodies on the road.

The countryside streams by. This body of man and machine is an odd sort of animal that frolics on a paved path in the countryside.