Vilasamani, who is a body therapist, introduces those elements of the body and nervous system that tend to impel us down automatic or reactive channels. We can gently influence our mood and behaviour by understanding physical susceptibilities, and working with them. Excerpted from the talk Body Reactive, Body Creative given at
West London Buddhist Centre, 2017. ***
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[music] Dharma Bites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for your life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. Thank you and happy listening. The reactive body, that's a body under stress, will respond in stereotypical ways. Those ways are actually not necessarily only human. We tend to decompensate to our more primitive bits of our brain when we are stressed. So this evening is going to be around that reactive process in the body. Also, we can play around a little bit with this idea of a creative body as well. One of the kind of statements that was coming out very clearly to me, which I've heard before, I've spent the last 10 years, I guess, training around the body and trauma. Again, hearing this statement, that it's biology before psychology. We might have in our minds a model of psychology, at some point, segueing into spirituality. We don't have to have to picture it that way. I mean, Sangarachta makes it quite explicit. He says that that transition, that shift from the psychological into the spiritual, takes place when we move from the hindrances into Dhyana. So everything below Dhyana is psychological. Anything beyond the first Dhyana, he says, is spiritual. There are other ways to have that conversation. But yeah, maybe there's some point of which we shift out of what in the West we've come to know as a kind of psychological term of reference. Again, psychology is a very protean word. Maybe we can talk about it in terms of our neurotic states. Hopefully not our psychotic states, but potentially our psychotic states. If not psychotic, then neurotic states. At some point, we develop enough momentum in our spiritual practice to start to leave some of those behind. But yeah, what I'm suggesting is actually beneath the psychological, so-called psychological level, where we, as human beings, tend to spend a whole lot of time, is actually a biological underpinning to how we experience the world. So Stephen Porgis, who is one of the teachers on this conference, who made the statement, that our behavior sits on a platform of our physiological state. Our behavior sits on the platform of our physiological state. And when he talks about physiology, he's particularly talking about our neurophysiology. So what's happening in our nervous system? Specifically, if we are what he calls socially engaged, so we feel sufficiently safe and connected with other people in order for us to switch off our threat detection system and be in community, which we could say is our deepest human need and longing. To feel safe, to be around with other people that we feel safe with, and that opens up the possibility of cooperation and collective creative endeavor. I haven't thought about it before, but it's interesting that Sangrashit says that the bodhicitta, the will to enlightenment, arises in collectivity, in collective practice. But we have to feel safe enough in order for that to take place. We hope you enjoyed today's Dharma Bite. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. And thank you. [MUSIC PLAYING]
