Presenting Somatics

Ladies and Gentlemen:
for your edification and entertainment
may I present

somatics

an evolutionary leap

in the understanding of humankind

This kind of stunt happens only every ten thousand years, or so, so listen up.  I'm going to lay a metaphor on you. 

The early stages of life were little more than separation of inner from outer by a cell membrane, with some chemical exchange and a sense of bouncy motion.

Later came light sensitivity and then, eyes, signifying the entire orientation of the next few hundred million years, or so -- the orientation to what is external.  Most of evolutionary history has been taken up with that task, at first in the name of bare survival, then in the name of cultural and social development (beyond bare survival).  The external orientation shows up today with the use of make-up (which simulates the facial coloring changes of sexual arousal).

Only recently (in terms that changed the face of Western culture) has internal awareness been developing; in earlier times, individuals rarely developed much subtle internal awareness, being more preoccupied, as they were, with challenging living conditions and social conformity pressures (both internal and external).  Individual impulses were contained within and by conformist conditioning.

So, the inner is coming into its own, ready to be correlated with the outer.

"Correlated"  -- what does this mean?

It means seeing the correspondences between inner (subjective) experience and outer (objective) behavior or physical changes as two experiences of the same thing.  Not "thinking of them" as the same thing, not thinking "We're supposed to think of them as the same thing."  Actually experiencing them as the same thing, considered differently.

So, "outer is experienced inwardly" and inward experience shows up as outward behaviors or changes.

Then comes the lie detector test.

Just kidding.

Here's some examples, instead.

Dreams are inward events, right?

Ever seen a dog dream?  The waving paws, the changes of breathing, the barking?  See the eyes move back and forth?

They call that REM -- Rapid  Eye Movement.  It's  reliable sign of dreaming.  The outer behavior that corresponds to doggie's inner experience.

Ever watched someone learn to read?  The lip movements?

You're seeing them thinking the words as they sound them.

Ever blushed?

Point made?

So, somatics is based on inner and outer being two aspects of the same thing, not two different things.

First of all, for reasons stated, that alone is an evolutionary leap in the understanding of humankind.

But wait!  There's more.

Those primitive life-forms at the dawn of time, those cells floating in a primordial soup, were very simple.  They had three functions:  eat, excrete, and reproduce.  They enjoyed it, but still, that's all they had.

Later down the line, they developed a fashion sense.

My point is that as life evolved, life forms became more intricate, more organized, capable of more and different forms of behavior.  Most of these behaviors are what would call "instinctual" -- meaning intrinsic to the organism and, for the most part, constituting all of its behavior -- the behavioral patterns of bugs and worms, a reptile or two, maybe a fish.

The higher we go up the evolutionary staircase (fooled you -- you thought I was going to say, "ladder", didn't you?), and the more complex life forms are, the more complex their behavior gets, and something new appears -- the ability to learn more.  Dogs, rats, bankers.

Now, learning is a big deal.  It involves self-loading new behaviors and new perceptions into the Automatic Memory Library for use in day to day living.  Any life-form can learn by repetitive experiences of something -- but how many life-forms self-load new learning?  I ask you.

That's another evolutionary leap.

But wait! There's more!

Sometimes conditions change to such an extent that previous learning no longer closely applies.  What do you do, then?

Learning something new on top of old learning is like playing two pieces of music at the same time.  Moreover, one generally finds it impossible to turn off Song #1.

Good grooming suggests an alternative.  Learn to turn off Song #1, or at least to modulate it.

How?  You've got to switch it from "autoplay" to "manual launch".  And to do that, you've got to switch yourself to "manual launch" and then manually re-launch Song #1.  Now that you know what it feels like to launch Song #1, you also know what it feels like not to launch Song #1 -- and there you are.  STOP PLAYING SONG #1!!  You think I'm being funny?  No.  I'm using a metaphor to explain a principle.  I'll explain, how, later.

For now, let's assume that you've stopped playing Song #1 and things are quiet enough that you can hear yourself think.  You can play Song #2 without interference.

That's it, in principle.

In other language:  Wash before you handle food.

What does this have to do with somatics?

I would think that would be obvious.  But if it's not, here goes.

Our lives are a gigantic recording library of events and behaviors, input from earliest consciousness, grown into maturity, or something similar to maturity.

Life is constantly playing Song #2, while we continue to play Song #1 (to a greater or lesser degree).  By time we get to Song #2, Life expects us to learn Song #3.  It's always something.

We're on a rolling landslide of cultural norms, so Song #1 is definitely on the playlist, as is Song #2 and, of course, Song #3.

 

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to bring songs under control, at least some of the time?  Maybe clear out a little memory space so we can meet experience afresh, learn the next song more adroitly?

That's one of the basic understandings of somatics:  free the grip of old "songs" so that we can dance to the new songs better.  In other language:  Out with the old, in with the new. 

The question of "How" enters the picture.

Here's the basic approach:

Whatever a person is doing "wrong"

(causing problems for self or others) -- 

have him (her) do it more --

and then less.

The "more" part heightens awareness.

The "less" part activates responsibility.

Sounds like fun, huh?

This strategy works with physical pains, emotional distress, and stupid thinking.

It's a basic strategem of somatics, and if you don't like it, try drugs -- the legal kind, of course.  (Oh, no, I would never advocate the use of psychoactive drugs -- you know, the kind that expand your reach beyond conventional thinking!  oh, no ... not I.)

Which brings us to another principle, which I call "The Prime Directive of Somatics":

Ya Gotta Wanna.

If you don' wanna, you don'a get so much done.

I heard that, once.

The field of somatics observes certain principles and from those principles develops courses of action that free individuals from old songs so they can learn new ones and maybe a new act or two.  Of course, ya gotta wanna.

Here's another way of saying the same thing:
There is No Mind-Body Connection | There Is No Mind-Body Split
Pain Relief through Somatic Education 

Practical Action:
Programs 

Are You Centered? Where is Your Center, Really?

When people refer to being "centered", one wonders what they mean.  Immobile?  In possession of ones faculties? Calm? This piece clarifies the term.  Psychologists -- don't worry.

If you answer the question with from a bodily perspective, “at the center of the trunk" or “at the hara,” I bid you recognize that those answers come from the third-person perspective (“it”), but for the answer to be meaningful, it must jive (correlate) with the first-person (“I”) perspective that is the essence of somatic existence.

What makes the somatic center, The Somatic Center? We would have to answer the question in functional terms, wouldn’t we? and in experiential terms, yes?

So, let’s explore some answers.

We might say that movement originates from the somatic center. Now, in experiental terms, when you lift your arm, do you experience the act emanating from the center of your trunk? Can you keep your trunk relaxed and still lift your arm? Well, mostly. You’ll find that you have to stiffen your spine to some degree, even if you are lying down, and even then your shoulder gets far more contracted than your spine.

So we are left with a bit of a question about the matter. Is our spine our somatic center?

Chiropractors and teachers of The Alexander Technique would argue that movement originates at the neck. Our neck is part of our spine, but hardly the center of our trunk, or hara.

Perhaps we need to revisit our criterion. Perhaps the somatic center is not the place from which movement originates, in that sense. Perhaps it’s the place at which the intention to expand into the world originates.

That still seems a bit abstract. To firm the idea up, a bit, we might look at the opposite motive, to withdraw from involvement with the world. The action of withdrawal from the whole world (which is different from withdrawing from something specific in our environment, which involves walking or running away) generally involves curling in upon ourselves, protecting our soft belly, hiding the hara. It’s wholesale avoidance of everything.

That might seem to give us an answer, but it’s still conceptual rather than experiential.

What are we protecting, when we curl that way, and what are we exposing, when we uncurl?

In first-person terms, we are protecting or exposing our most sensitive feeling-being.

That gives us a bit of a better lead on an answer, but leaves us with a deeper question.

From what place in ourselves are we viewing our most sensitive feeling-being?

Now, don’t go into your thinking mind for the answer. Go into your experience. You’ll notice that you can observe the sensation of your hara, which means you observe it from a from a place outside it. Since we are observing from that place, it must be at least “closer” to the center of our sensitive feeling-being than the thing being observed.

So, where is the center of our most sensitive feeling-being?

At this point, any answer you give that is based upon a bodily, or somatic, frame of reference, falls back to the same question. From what point of view are we viewing that?

Go experiential with that question and start exploring with your attention for the answer, and you discover something disorienting. All “places” from which we view anything can themselves be viewed, or felt, as as “something, somewhere.” The point of view from which you do the viewing, however, is always not there, where the object being viewed, is, but here, where our hereness is, the “hereness” that doesn’t move no matter where or how much we move.

If, at last, you turn your attention to the origin of the viewing, you can’t discover anything there because you are always viewing from “here” and anything you can view is “there.”

Now, where is the somatic center?

OK. I’ll give you a break. Let’s reframe the question, again.

Is awareness of the somatic center the center of somatic awareness? Or is the center of somatic awareness outside soma altogether?

Or to put the question another way, which is more central, our somatic center or the “hereness” from which we view it?

What does it do to your somatic experience to recognize that the center of your experiencing (hereness) is not the same as your somatic center?

Just asking.

Here’s a little clue: Whatever you can experience is not your essential self because it is always “there” and changeable; it is not your “hereness,” which is always here, always you.

That means you can discriminate more clearly between contractions that are so familiar that you identify them as yourself (sensory-motor amnesia) and the free condition of sensory-motor awareness.

Soma can be said to be our functional self because we identify, as self, anything we can control by mere act of will, with no intervening steps. However, soma cannot be said to be our self because somatic sensations are always perceived as “there” to our hereness, observable by ourself.

So, I hate to break it to you, but that means that soma is neither self, nor is it not-self.

What a relief.

© 2006 Lawrence Gold, Sunday, October 8, 2006, 1:28 PM


MORE:

There is No "Now" Moment -- There is An All-Present Now-Field

There is No "Now" Moment -- It's All Memory

A common confusion exists about what constitutes, "now" or "nowness".  This entry clarifies that confusion to the point of dropping you into your own self-nature, which is only "now" -- not a person, place, thing, state, or process.  

"Now" is utterly transcendental and not knowable as a particular "something" that we can "be" in, by decision.

In the Upanishads, the esoteric Hindu scriptures, and elsewhere, reference is made to the three "times" -- past, present, and future.  We are said to exist only in the present.

Eastern spiritual and Western psychotherapeutic teachings exhort us to "be here, now" as the gateway to health and sanity.

While there exists a measure of benefit to following that advice, it leaves in place the very habit that leaves us subject to distress and strife.

It's helpful to re-cast the three times in other, familiar language.  As we will discover, there are only two times -- past and future -- and what we call the present is actually the past.  There is no "now" in which to be, here.

The past is memory.  The future is imagination.  The so-called present is considered the infinitesimal "edge" across which "future" enters our experience and becomes the past.

Psychology teaches us to "live in the present".  The expression is, "Lose your mind and come to your senses."  As noble as the intention behind it may be, even that advice leaves us in bondage to memory and habit.

Time is fleeting.  No one has identified how infinitesimal the "edge" of the present is.  I submit that it does not exist, but only appears to exist because of memory.

Everything Happens Before We Know It

This is not just a figure of speech.  It's an observable fact.

There once existed a game show, "Name That Tune."  Players competed to guess the tune being played in the minimum number of notes possible.  No one guessed before the first note.  The tune had to play for a certain number of notes before recognition was possible.  My point is that contestants needed a certain span of time to recognize the tune. 

There always exists a span of time, after an experience has started, before we can recognize it.  Every event happens before we know it.  We live, always, in the past.

Test my words.

Sitting as you are, now, turn and look elsewhere -- wait!  Before you do, decide to notice how long it takes to see what you are now facing.  Now do it.


You notice that you need a certain amount of time before your eyes can focus well enough to see what you are looking at -- and even more time to discern details.  See?


Another example:  Turn on the radio or some other source of music that someone other than you has programmed.  You'll notice that, not only don't you know what's playing, at first; you don't even know the rhythm for some time.  The music happens before you know it; you know it only after the fact.

Same with "The News":  "news" is a misnomer -- it's old before we hear it.  It may be a new development since the last time we heard "news", but if it's not "right now", it's old.  Even "breaking" news with live coverage happens before we know it, since we need time to comprehend it, and then our emotions rise before we know it.  "The News" ain't new.  Interestingly, to give the impression of immediacy, news media commonly print headlines as if stating a general truth in the form of a generality:

GIANTS DEFEAT PATRIOTS

and not,

GIANTS DEFEATED PATRIOTS

which states the fact as in-the-past, which would be true.   Oddly, people never question it.  (Don't say, "People understand what is meant."  It's a mis-statement, period, a distortion of the truth that people have to correct in their minds or be misled.)

You meditators -- here's one for you.

Some people make an effort to quiet (or silence) the mind in meditation.  The vexing thing is that thoughts always seem to be arising and to exist before we can quell them.  Ever notice?  Thinking happens before we know it.  Then, we may try to stomp on thoughts to get the mind quiet or we may try to "listen to the silence between" thoughts.  The only problem:  these strategies depend on thought (or intention -- same thing, for all intents and purposes.  There's an "out" for that.  Click here.)

Well, folks, there's no escaping it:  Everything happens before we know it, both outside us and inside us, and everything we experience is memory (or perhaps, imagination, or both).

There are some, I know, who attempt to "hedge" on this observation.  They say that events happen so recently in the past that they are, for all intents and purposes, in the present.  This is a stand for the notion of "free will".

These people forget that their own reactions also happen before they know it -- and their efforts to control their reactions also happen before they know it.  They confuse the past with the present, confuse memory with now-ness.

Likewise, people who believe that living in their sensations (or with mindfulness) constitutes "living in the Now".

Earlier, I showed how living in the senses always entails a delay between happening and recognizing.  Now, let me drive the point home, some more.

I'll take two approaches that drive toward the same point.

Approach #1:  The Limits of Physiology

It's an accepted physiological fact that our senses deliver information along nerves, from sense receptors (retinas of the eyes, inner ears, touch receptors, etc.) to our brain.  Nerve impulses travel slower than instantaneously; they take time to reach the brain and time for the brain to process them.  There's always a delay between stimulus and sensing the stimulus (never mind "reaction time").  We are always and only sensing the past (but paradoxically, in the present).

Approach #2:  The Basis of Perception

Perception always depends upon recognition, and recognition always depends upon memory.

We have, at minimum, a memory of the difference between "something" and "nothing".  The sense of "something being there" comes from the act of fixating (or holding) attention someplace.  If you don't hold your attention steady in some way, at least momentarily, there's no possibility of experiencing something as "being there"; you don't perceive it. Holding attention steady depends upon a memory of "movement and position", so the ability to distinguish something from nothing depends upon memory.

Everything else follows from that.  Recognition of persons, places, things and processes depends upon pre-existing, similar memories.  If you don't have a similar memory to be activated by an event, you can't recognize the event; it's incomprehensible to you.

It has been said that the Indians of Central America failed even to see the ships of the approaching Spaniards because they were so unlike anything the Indians had ever seen.  For them, this new thing happening (before they knew it) was the same as nothing happening -- and the Spaniards conquered them before they knew it.

Perception depends upon recognition, and recognition always depends upon memory.

In other words, perception of the present depends upon memory of the past.

Let's take a deep breath, here, and then I'll summarize.

It distills down to this:

Our experience of the present, even of the sensory experience that some call, "the now", is actually the experience of memory -- of the impressions of our past.  Without memory, we have no experience of the so-called present.

"The Now" is a fabrication.

"Now" is indeterminate -- the experience of infinity, which is not some bizarre insanity, but without form, formation, or definition, most ordinary, but unnoticed.

What does that leave us with?

I said, earlier, that "now" is utterly and entirely transcendental.  It is not one or many objects in time; objects-in-time are memories.

More than that, the presumption that we are "living in the now" when we are living in our senses leaves us sensing our memories, since perception depends upon memory -- and thus our sense of "the now" is our sense of "the past" (memories) confronting experience emerging before we know it.  Take another moment with that, if you like.

We cannot exclude memory (or our perceptions or our motivations or our insights, either) in order to "live in the now". Motivation depends upon memory, even the memory of a "spiritual" or "psychologically healthy" intention.  If you can operate upon it, it's memory operating upon memory, enforcing memory (the past) in the name of "the Now".

Thus, it has been said (for all you Buddhists) that "the more we pursue it, the further we go from it," and "You may polish a tile forever, but it will never become a mirror."

There is one loophole.  It's the usual one:  "The way Out is Into and Through."

If we recognize memory as "memory", if we recognize the so-called "now" as "memory", we intuit the subtle field of awareness within which memory exists (which is not a thing with a location) Now and Always.  We intuit -- by another name -- The Universal Eternal (not a thing -- gotta recognize memory of "The Universal Eternal" as memory -- then the intuition flashes forward).

That recognition levels the playing field.  We no longer seek to exclude memories or imagination in order to "live in the Now".  We no longer seek, "The Power of Now", since it is always already the case, and never a "power".  There is no "other" to be sought as Truth; there is only the simultaneous recognition of All Things and the Formless Field in which they arise as perfectly coincident ("not two"), and there is no way to escape Now.  Memory loses its grip, even as it persists, and we fall through.

So, why does it appear that we must make an effort to intuit Now?  It's because of entrapment in unconscious, habituated memory.  Here's the next step, and it's the opposite direction, perhaps, to the one to which we have become accustomed.

Hee hee hee.


MORE:

There is No Mind-Body Connection -- There is No Mind-Body Split

Big, Bad Government -- the Decoy of the Political Far-Right

While the Political Far-Right and many of the rich (The Constipated Rich) publicly decry Big Government, the cry is a decoy.

These are the people who call at every turn for deregulation.

Well, another group of people also call for deregulation:  infants and adolescents.  They want out from under the control of their parents.  They want freedom -- and they want it without responsibility.  So, also, do the self-indulgent, the lazy, and the criminal, liars, hypocrites, and a certain class of politicians, lobbyists, and news commentators and editors.

That much they have in common with the Political Far-Right and The Constipated Rich.  All want to do as they please without obligation to or regulation by others -- or the self-regulation that characterizes morality or even ordinary maturity.

The difference is that infants and adolescents make no pretense about whose good they are seeking -- their own -- whereas the Political Far-Right and The Constipated Rich want us to believe that it is for everyone's good that they seek deregulation.

More than that, there seems to be an even more immoral trait about them: the belief, acted upon commonly in political campaigns, for example, that "anything goes" -- lying, distortion/disinformation, selective recounting of history, mischaracterization -- victory at any cost. They consider fairness quaint or naive -- and so degrade public discourse. And the public, in their (either) naivete or self-dishonesty, believe that they are immune to the same strategies being employed against them.

Let's take an honest and sober look at the pros, cons, and the safe conditions of deregulation and reduction of government.

The pros:  government regulations impose bureaucracy, and all of the time-wasting paperwork and hoop-jumping that goes with it, upon society.  Deregulation and reduction of government promise to reduce the bureaucratic overload and attendant costs, both in dollars and in humanpower.

The cons:  unregulated, the principals of certain, well-recognized Big Business corporations -- many of whom are The Constipated Rich -- act in their self interest, not in the interest of society at large.  Their mentality is that of children raiding the forbidden "cookie jar", hoping never to get noticed or caught.  They are quick to label altruism as socialism -- a problem because Socialism suffered the same onus as our degraded Capitalism suffers:  the onus earned by abuse.

Though some Capitalists may not admit it, Capitalism and Socialism suffer similar degradation, and the consequence shows up as a sluggish economy and growing class stratification.

The thing is, the Political Right and the Constipated Rich want class stratification because they think (wrongly) that it benefits them.  It's as if the leaves of a tree, the branches and the fruit, detested the tree's roots.

They regulate themselves badly and it is for that very reason that Big Government and regulation become necessary.

The safe condition for an Economized Government and deregulation would be if people, including and especially the Political Far-Right and the Constipated Rich, exercised their intelligence and saw that they depend upon those whom they strip bare (impoverish) and uproot (disenfranchise) -- and acted accordingly.  Cause the economic waters of society-at-large to rise, and all boats rise.

Instead, they foolishly and dishonestly lay out the decoys of "taxes and government regulation" as the culprits, or socialism, or terrorists, or drugs, or government-mandated health insurance coverage, or The Left.

Such people's behavior creates unnecessary and avoidable strain within the body-politic and pain for the general population -- and for that reason, they should be expelled from the political commons, and would be by a wise electorate. Perhaps we could afford them in earlier times, but today's problems require broad cooperation among many public and private sectors. Cooperation requires, at its base, trust, and trust (to be sound) requires honesty and integrity among those whose cooperation is needed.

It is all too obvious to cursory intelligence that many of the problems that beset us, today, stem from socio-economic imbalances and disparities that disturb and weaken not just societies, but also international relations -- imbalances that can and must be redressed by a balancing of the economic flow of all societies. By fostering conditions that reduce the overall class-stratification of our societies (not merely economically, but also in terms of education and health care -- the primary means and requirements of all productivity) -- we can thereby reduce the need for government bureaucracy and regulation.

To protect their positions, the Far-Right and the Constipated Rich build houses of brick -- legislation and preferential treatment (through lobbyists) -- so that they may be safe from the storms of fate that beset those not so well-off and who live in houses of sticks (mortgage borrowers) or of straw (renters).

And the electorate (voting public) lets them get away with it. Thus, the saying, "The People get the government they deserve."

Now, let me ask, "Who's Afraid of Big Bad Government"?

Not the top 1%, the Political Right, the CEOs; they own the Big, Bad Government through lobbyists (should be banned) and unlimited political contributions ("Citizens United").  

The Supreme Court:  Unfit to Rule

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We start down-to-Earth. Just send for and listen for free to a beautifully articulated and nuanced reading, in nearly its entirety (divided by chapter sections) and in the moods of its author, of the transcription of Thomas Hanna's fervently inspiring rant one afternoon in 1974 and into the evening. That rant became The End of Tyranny. Hear him describe what is happening today with such penetrating clarity that you'll be aroar with the fire of righteous intelligence as you recognize what you see and hear happening, today, with new understanding. Once you've started, you'll be drawn right in. It'll light a fire under your hiney, so take it a little at a time, in sections lasting ten minutes, or so. No need to rush through it.

MORE: The Constipated Rich and Trickle-Down Theory

Constipation of the Greedy and Trickle-Down Theory

Allow me to start with two wisecracks, befitting the title.

"The Fat Cats has been liposuctioning the "fat" out of the economy, into their own pockets, which they don't seem to mind.

Or, otherwise, our world economy appears to be suffering from "Constipation of the Rich".

Trickle-down theory only seems to work when you put the squeeze on, and the ones in control of the squeeze are those who would NOT be squeezed -- so, no squeeze, no trickle-down.

So, this watered-down economy gets by on a trickle while the Fat Cats of the world are bloated with Constipation of the Rich.

And when Constipation of the Rich is concerned, everything slows down.  Stagnation sets in.  People complain.  The News Media make news out of it, as if it's something that results from mysterious economic forces out of anyone's control.

But there's nothing new or even newsworthy about Constipation of the Rich.

Why?

Because no one's done anything (consequential) about it.

Some of us are working on it.

By the way, one major player is "The Fed" (The Federal Reserve, as in what you see on dollar bills) -- named as if a federal agency, but actually a Congressionally established (during the time of Woodrow Wilson), Congressionally endorsed, private, for-profit banking corporation that creates money by "declaring it to exist" with no other backing, lending it to the Federal Government which injects it into (or withdraws it from) the economy, and charging interest on the loan, which we, the taxpayers, pay. Don't believe it? Look it up on YouTube.

You may become a member of the elite club, The Integral Somatics Association of Earth -- "Busybodies, All".

We start down-to-Earth.  Just send for and listen for free to a beautifully articulated and nuanced reading, in its entirety and in the moods of its author, of the transcription of Thomas Hanna's fervently inspiring, book-length tirade one afternoon in 1974 and into the evening. That tirade became The End of Tyranny.  Hear him describe what is happening today with such penetrating clarity that you'll be aroar with the fire of righteous intelligence as you recognize what you see and hear happening, today, with new understanding.  Once you've started, you'll be drawn right in.  It'll light a fire under your hiney, so take it a little at a time, in sections lasting ten minutes, or so.  No need to rush through it.

MORE:  Big, Bad Government -- the Decoy of the Far-Right

There is No Mind-Body Connection | There is No Mind-Body Split

Yoga, Religion, and Psychotherapy are Based Upon a Misunderstanding.

The words, "yoga" and "religion" have something in common: they both refer to the unity (one-ness) or union of two things that are presumed to be un-unified in the ordinary person. But in both cases, those two things are always already in union, or "not-two".

"Yoga" means "union" and comes from the same root as the word, "yoke".  Agricultural cultures use the yoke to unify the efforts of two beasts of burden -- whether oxen, bulls, or horses.  In yoga, it is the individual self (you) and the Great Self (God or Brahman or Ultimate Reality) that are to be unified (or realized to be one) through practices outlined in Eastern scriptures -- and also "mind" and "body" that are to be unified. 

Thus, practices exist at the "physical" level (hatha yoga, kriya yoga, etc.), at the emotional level (bhakti yoga), at the "mental" level (jnana yoga, etc.), at the behavioral level (raja yoga, karma yoga), and at the subtle-energetic level (kundalini yoga and siddha yoga).  I put those terms into quotes because they represent not actual, separate levels of the self, but soma-self seen and considered from different perspectives, with different phenomena (kinds of events).  It's the perspectives that are different; "level" means "a perspective and its content".

"Religion" comes from the root words, "re-" (again) and "ligare" (to bind together).  "Ligare" and ligament come from the same meaning-root (ligaments bind bones together).  In religion, it is the individual self (you) and God that are to be re-united -- "God and sinners reconciled", as the Christmas carol goes -- and their separation is the very definition of "sin" -- "to miss the mark".

Yogic scriptures attribute the separation of self from Ultimate Reality to "Maya" or "Samsara" -- conditional reality, which the scriptures describe as "illusory", with Ultimate Reality being the only "Real".  "Conditional reality" is everything experienced through the senses, through memory, and through self-awareness.  Maya or Samsara are called "illusion", while God or Brahman or Ultimate Reality are "the Real".

These statements apply to the more exoteric teachings of religion and yoga.

Well, the whole thing is wrong.

Self and God (or Ultimate Reality) are always already one and the same, and mind"and"body are always already fully united (or more properly, "not-two").

The esoteric teachings state that the self and Ultimate Reality (or God) are always already one, but that actuality must be realized (not merely mentally believed as dogma or arrived at by reasoning, but observably recognized).

However, there exists a reason why they appear to be separate from one another, and that reason is, "memory".  The "ten dollar", Sanscrit word for memories is, "samscaras".  Memory, the carrying forward (persistence) of impressions of past experience (and our reactions to them) into the present moment, is the nature of illusion called, "Maya" or "samsara"; memory (persistence) is a feature of existence, itself, and it is the very mechanism and meaning of the word, "karma" (which literally means, "action").

We, in the West, readily accept the notion that some memories are accessible to us and others are buried in the subconscious or unconscious.  We accept the notion that subconscious memories affect our behavior.  What we may not so readily recognize is that memories are embodied physiologically and that memories define and are what we regard to be ourselves.

In Western psychotherapy, the idea that manifestations of subconscious ("repressed") memories "affect the body" is called "somatization".  Somatization always involves physiological effects -- alterations of bodily functions -- muscle tension, nervous arousal states, glandular and immunological changes.  (A related scientific field is called, "psycho-neuro-immunology".)

Because some memories are subconscious (or unconscious), we feel their somatic effects without recognizing the underlying memory or memories that create those effects; we feel out of control -- and so we say that there exists a mind-body split.  I will say more about subconscious and unconscious memories later.

There exist two faults with this understanding.

The first fault is the notion that one "affects" the "other"; that they are "two".  And there we are, in the notion of a mind-body split that can (or must), through some efforts, be unified -- even though psychotherapy recognizes "somatization".

The second fault is to fail to recognize that all of our chronic or repetitive stresses and tensions are somatization in action; psychotherapy may recognize "clinical" forms of somatization (as outlined in the DSM manual), but if its understanding were more inclusive, it would recognize that ordinary emotional distress, nervous tension, all speech, and all actions and behaviors are forms of somatization, not just clinical disease-entities.

In Western religion, we accept the notion of "sin" as "voluntary wrong action" that separates us from Divinity.  Some branches of Christianity postulate "original sin" -- sin that exists by virtue of being born as a human being that can ultimately only be remediated in heaven after death or upon the Judgment Day.

There exist two faults with this understanding. 

The first fault is the notion that one can cease to be a sinner by accepting and vigorously reinforcing beliefs and right behaviors.  The closest correction to this fault is the notion of being "saved" in Christianity -- saved by grace bestowed upon oneself by a religious authority.

The second fault is to fail to recognize that sin comes from deeply entrenched memory patterns that show up involuntarily and without recognition, as our very self.  "Original sin" approaches this understanding but falls short of obviousness; it fails to recognize that the body or born self is not the problem, but that the subconsciousness or unconsciousness of the memory patterns that define self is the problem.  The automaticity, the automatic nature, the automatic control of the memories of self-identity (and all of our ways, which stem from those memories) -- the unconscious automaticity is the problem.  The unconsciousness is the problem -- the "sinning" behaviors that come from subconscious memories being secondary effects.

So, let me say it another way.  There is no mind-body connection; they are two views of the same thing.  There are two ways of viewing the same living process -- from inside ("mind") and from outside ("body").  From a scientific perspective, "mind" is the "field" and "body" is the "particle" -- two aspects of the same thing.  The two perspectives, together, constitute what we call, "soma" -- your experience of yourself as a conscious, living person with the ability to direct attention and to exercise intention.  Mind and body are always already "one" (named, "soma").

The ability to direct attention and to exercise intention is the very basis of the idea of "sin" (because it presumes we have free will or even absolute control of our actions), but our self-control is limited by the unconsciousness of the controlling memories by which we remember "ourselves", control our actions and make sense of our experiences.

This is a practical distinction that flies in the face of the New Age-y notion that "we are total controllers of our own reality and totally responsible for our experience" -- which is nonsense.  Personal experience shows it to be so.  You should feel relieved.  On the other hand, we are not relieved of responsibility; we still continue to suffer until we get a handle on (not just "right ideas about") the cause of our experience -- which doesn't mean, "understanding" in a mental sense, but the ability to resolve and release their binding, involuntary effects.  Responsibility is a practical matter, and for it to be a practical matter, we must be actually capable of perceiving and doing something practical.  Otherwise, the idea of responsibility is just an abstraction.

However, that understanding, as it is, is insufficient to relieve suffering, which is the ostensible goal both of Western Religion and Eastern spiritual practices.

Our target is properly the unconscious/subconscious material that, when rendered "fine-tunable" or "adjustable" (instead of stuck or poorly adjustable to immediate conditions), becomes recognizable as our repertoire of activities, not assumed as our somehow "human nature" identities.

There is no "mind-body connection" to be restored; there is no "self-and-God" to be re-united.  What there is, are all of the unconscious memories that cause compulsory thinking, compulsory feelings, behaviors that seem to be out of our control, that seem to "happen to" us, the internal conflicts and dilemmas that afflict us in the course of life -- the whole mass of which constitute an illusory "opacity" that hijacks and blocks attention from intuiting the formless, un"knowable" ground of being that Western religions call Divinity and that Eastern spirituality calls "liberation".  The "split" is entirely conceptual, a matter of labelling and of conventional or learned behavior, but not the actual nature of things.  Divinity is being the flow of concepts and sensations that we identify as duality, or split.

The Divine cannot correctly be sought (because seeking depends upon memories that determine "what is to be sought", and memories are precisely what hijack and trap attention); The Divine can only be revealed in the transparency of memory that occurs when unconscious (unrecognized) memory patterns become conscious (and recognizable as memories), so that they lose their binding attraction ("stickiness") and attention can "see through them" (external perception) or "fall through them" (internal apperception) --  to enjoy intuition of self-source, which is Divinity, or Brahman, BEING them -- and which is not some spectacular accomplishment of mind-blowing insanity or weird perception, but merely the easy ordinaryness of the experience of our own most ordinary faculties, unfouled by unconscious memories.

As a practical matter, binding and deluding memories (which may be anything and everything) exist at different levels of the being (or ways of organizing intention/actions and attention/sensations) which we may call "physical", "emotional", "mental", "higher mental", "intuitive", etc., according to their content.  As a practical matter, my experience is that memories must be addressed on their own terms -- or the terms of the level at which they appear -- and that certain principles of conscious awakening and change apply to memories at all "levels".  It's a matter of learning how to apply those principles at different levels.

In my experience, perhaps the most accessible way to learn to exercise those principles is through one form of somatic education or another, which, though it may illuminate any and all levels of the being, approaches through the perspective (or doorway) of embodiment.  It's very easy to tell whether your application of somatic principles is effective; did you feel immediately different after practice?  Was the change durable?  If so, then so; if not, then not.

Somatic education is a doorway -- but not the entire path -- simply because people commonly consider the scope of somatic education to be "matters bodily" (or physiological); it's a fault of the mind-body "split"-concept.  Actually, somatic education is a full-spectrum affair that runs from physiological concerns to the highest matters of consciousness, and throughout that spectrum, different means apply for awakening responsibility, some of which may look clinical, others psychological, and others, spiritual/evolutionary.  In whatever ways the technical means may differ, the principles are identical.

There is no mind-body connection, there is no yoga, there is no true religion ("binding again"); there is just the uncovering and mastery, freely intelligent use and free release of the patterns of memory by which we define life as a many-ness (of which the minimum is duality) and the logicalities of how we interact in life by habit and unconscious tendency.

As the "stickiness" of memories (Tibetan:  dukkha) dissolves, we are more free to relate freely (in relationship), and so the sense of separation so decried in spiritual circles as the affliction of humanity, ceases to pertain -- as the binding force (entangling stickiness) of memory diminishes and dissolves.

So be it.

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PRACTICAL
somatic education exercises 

We Cannot Stop our Minds -- nor Need We

But when we steadily observe the flow and the feeling of each thought, the space between thoughts gets longer until mind stops by itself, for periods of time.

Attention and intention are the two fundamental functions of all sentient beings ("somas").  Everything more is varied instrumentality for those two ends:  Sense organs (organs of attention) and organs of intention (musculo-skeletology -- hands, feet, mouth, paws, trunk, claws, tail, etc., then speech and then tools and technology that externalize somatic functions).  Sensation and movement.  Emotion (feelings) and motivation (actions).  Imagination and preparation. Perception (incoming) and conception (outgoing).

While the language may indicate that attention and intention -- and their organs -- are separate from each other, they are altogether intertwined, as I describe, as follows.

The most primal intention is the movement of attention, experienced as the impulse to be, which is actually the experience of movement.  Movements maintain the sense of being, even movements as subtle as the movements of breathing and the internal pulsing of heartbeat; without movement, the body-sense fades out, insensate, even as hair and nails lack sensation.

The movements of mind are subject to attention:  movements of thought, the movements of reverie, all of which bear the force of intention to some degree; to discover what the intention of mind at any moment, pay attention. Here's a funny thing: 

Anyone who has ever practiced a meditation or attention discipline has noticed the incessant arising of thoughts and reveries.  The funny thing is, these thoughts and reveries arise before we know them, fading or congealing into existence -- and doing so always, to some unknown degree, before we know it.

Intention is force ("wattage")  -- or in the language of physics, "tendency".  Tendency is the movement of things happening and things changing into something else.

Objects of attention and new intentions are arising in us, ongoingly, as our swooning reveries of thought and daydream-streams.

Now, spiritual fascists -- I being a recovering one -- may have the idea that meditation is about quieting the mind.  Well, that may be an effect, but it isn't the intention, per se, and to attempt to do so by an act of will is less than fruitless; it is counterproductive, reinforcing the mind in this novel, almost-all-encompassing intention:

QUIET THE MIND !!!!!

We can't quiet the mind by an act of will because thoughts and reveries are always already in existence by the time that we notice them to quieten them.  More than that, and in addition to the swooning reverie of thought, the effort to quiet the swooning reverie of thought is just another thought-intention added to all the rest.

There is a loophole, however.  To say it explictly . . . . .

Thinking and reverie
are kinds of stress
which can be felt if we pay attention.

Every thought is evidenced by a feeling --
otherwise, how do you know when you're thinking?
-- never mind, what.

Thinking is an ever-shifting play of feeling
and if a person is imagining (reverie),
there may be imagined sounds, sights, and smells.

These are things upon which we may place our attention.

After all, they are already part of our experience,
so no need to go looking. 

We notice that, if we place our attention on a thought
we have caught ourselves having,
and if we feel the "thought stress",
we notice that the thought dissipates in time, often fairly quickly,
leading attention straight into the "space between thoughts" --
that fabled Bramanic zone of conscious awareness . . . . .

until the next thought reverie captures you
as it rises as a momentary preoccupation

Then, you notice it
and dive your attention down upon it,
like a duck on a bug
feel it,
and follow it through its development.

Feeling the thought-stress
rather than concerning yourself with the content,
the mind dissipates,
dropping you into the Thoughtless Unknown between thoughts.

Then you have an interval of ordinary
thoughtless abiding . . . . .
no mind, though you are present
no thoughts, though you are intelligently present
no special effort
either of action or of rest.

Until the next one arises!  like gas!  effervescence!  The Universal Alka-Seltzer Fizz!  Fizz Mind.

Anyhow, some things dissipate much faster than others,
so take that into account.

Also, some thought-reveries, instead of dissipating under attention
seduce you into their fascinating content
congeal, develop, and become more solid.
They become tangible creations and interactions
with life and duration enough to affect us.

They run their course as life-experience
and then dissipate into the Silent Drop-Off.

It all goes on.
The mind goes off on a tangent.
Then it goes off.

If ever you want to know the way out,
the way "out" is "in-and-through".

phut!