Body Wellness

To be healthy is to be happy: most have heard something of this nature before, and though it is not entirely true in and of itself, health does make happiness a lot easier. It also makes spirituality a lot more approachable as a healthy body becomes a clean vessel for internal exploration.

Dynamic and sustaining energy is important for any fulfillment of life’s most basic and advanced requirements. What do we use to communicate with the world? The body. Even thoughts are expressed through the body in speech which can only be accomplished with a mouth and vocal cords.

A human being is a human and a being. Both are important for life. The human dimension is made of the body and brain which together form the earthly homo-sapiens. The being is consciousness and karmic energy which together give character and awareness to the human aspect.

Yoga states that of all the incarnations of life the human life is the most valuable. Why? Because only through the components that make up a human being can the divine recognized; from this recognition can emerge the potential for realization.

We derive our philosophy of the body from the tradition of tantra which upholds the belief that the body is a temple of the divine. Though the human being is not just a body, the body is a vehicle for our experience and expression of life. It is a repository for the experience of the divine, a center for the experience of the sacred through which we can explore the universe in manifest form.

Love your body, care for your body, treat your body as a temple, but do not cling to the body; this is tantra.

 

All of our programs and retreats held at the ashram express this essential perception of human nature, that all features of our created form originate from a divine center. Today many people are destroying the body instead of showing love and care for it; they eat very harmful foods; they consume dangerous drugs; and most destructive of all they hate their body, emitting thoughts of anger, discuss, and abuse which all create a great deal of stress and damage to the body. Start looking at the body through eyes of love and thoughts of tender care and the body will be completely transformed. Wellness, disease prevention, fitness, beauty, and balance all depend upon a loving relationship with the body.

With the right intentions, caring for the body can transform your spirituality, giving you extended vitality and un-diminishing health all of which will allow for you to fully explore the beauty of life.

There is no doubt that some traditions of yoga teach you to forget the body, to abuse the body, and to abolish the body. But we are not on a path of war, we are on a path of unity, one directed by love and fulfilled through harmony. Therefore at the ashram we use food, ayurveda, exercise, and other techniques to care, love, and support the body, giving the proper consideration to the temple that allows us to experience to flow and beauty of life on earth.