Cultures of Embodiment

Against mind-made body

There are two major cultures of "embodiment" in current spiritual discourse, which I will call "representational" and "affordance" approaches.

This is the difference between having a body and being a body.

Representational embodiment conceives itself as strengthening the "mind-body connection". By applying mind to body, a richer map of the body is created, but it is a map. Those who spend an excessive amount of time in this approach have a body.

The characteristic texture of having a body is as if an often very functional body, perhaps the body of a ballet dancer, is being operated through a thin film of plastic wrap.

The body-mind-based embodiment approach cultivates an observer "I" which conceives of itself as the body, creating a subtle separation through positing mind and body as "things to integrate."

Think a ballet dancer creating a body that approaches asymptotically an ideal.

Affordance embodiment is about increasing bodily responsiveness.

It aims toward the gnosis that "I" is the body.

The characteristic texture, like a good pu'er tea, is "earthy" and "unpretentious".

Affordance embodiment is the traditional body of a farmer who works their land and is horny for their spouse, faced with endless novel challenges of responsiveness, from moving hay to wrangling animals to the act of sexual union.

For such a person, there is no subtle film that separates bodily life and existence; bodily life is existence, and thought and speech is something that springs from the body and is anchored in the body, even when telling a fantastical story seated on a stool.

Representational embodiment has perhaps risen in prominence due to the dissemination of literature relative to embodiment that started in the 60's, which led to an increase in embodiment practices constituting fixed practices mediated by the word, and later by audio and video.

I say to you: representational embodiment is a false prophet. It leads down the path of having a body instead of being a body.

While perhaps initially a rewarding path for those who are disembodied, it ultimately creates a mind-made body that is an appendage of mind.

The path of affordance embodiment is of more-and-more participating fully in life as a body, until the question of "the body" is transcended in the gnosis that "I" is the body, and the mind a functional appendage like the hand, useful, but an appendage nonetheless.

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All embodiment practices which involved prescribed forms can lead to mind-made embodiment.

Take guided dancing, such as Five Rhythms: some may take the instructions to "dance lyrically", and dance "lyrically", i.e., trying to make their body match an image of lyricism.

The same circumstance could be a circumstance of full bodily participation if fully surrendered to the vibe, without self-consciousness, not trying to achieve any particular display with your movement, and without concern for how you will appear to others.

The full surrender to be a body is only known often when losing that surrender, just as a meditative state may only be known in its loss.

The signs are a continual freshness of response: bodily movement is surprising, it is something that happens of its own accord.

A small example: I do not turn my shower off when I am done. Instead, at some point, my arm reaches out and turns off the water. My thinking mind is surprised by my bodily action.

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The simplest scaffolding might be "bring bodily force and sensitivity to all activity".

Contrast with "bring mindfulness to all activity". Bringing bodily force and sensitivity is fundamentally a release of mental control. Similar to "really going for it" when playing a sport.

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“I” is the body. Mind-made body is a cultivation of the illusion that “I” is something else.