Love song from our Body (video)

May 2022 be the year when we hear the love song of our bodies!

There has been much discussion lately about the “tipping point” of our relationship with Nature and Earth, which of course is our Reality. And on individual levels many of us have also felt the urgency of recalibrating our place in Reality. People have been speaking about how we have created Reality as a “machine” or how the mind is “mechanistic.” And they have been speaking of the “wild” as being the way to balance this soulless reality we have created.

But where is this “wild”? Can we find it by talking about it? Is it about doing more in the external world—buying a farm, going to a remote rainforest, or dreaming about a vacation on an exotic island? In ancient traditions all over the world, there was already recognition of the vital nature of the “wild”, by which we mean Reality that is not constructed by the mind.

And this “wild” is very intimate—is is our body and the body consciousness. The body, like Nature around us, is not created by the mind. It is the Kshetra, or the site where Nature manifests and of which the mental consciousness is a part. When ancient traditions invoked Nature, they returned to the intimacy of their body and the wisdom that when the mind is led by the body’s connection to Nature, we find our rightful place in Reality.

The body is the Goddess in Indian and many other cultural traditions. And She is always singing Her love song to us, waiting for us to hear Her birdsong invitation.

In this video I share a delicate and intimate practice from the ancient Natya Sastra which is also signalled in the Atharva Veda, which is the most mysterious of the Vedas (the source of much of Indian philosophy which has been dated back to at least 6000 BCE).

It is a love song of the Body to the mind and in dance it is the practice of the creeper and the tree. I have provided a translation of the poem below.

I hope this will return you to the intimacy of your Body/Goddess and that this will pervade 2022. I hope you will carry the fragrance of Body/Goddess in the midst of the incessant chatter and talking heads of our mind-dominated world.

I am offering a 2 day intensive on 22-23 January 2022—“Invoking Nature Goddesses” in which I will share similar teachings that will help you return to the intimacy of the wild in your body. If you have it in your hearts to join me, please go to the Group classes and Bookings tab for information and bookings.

Translation of the Vedic poem

Love song of the Body (the tile is mine)

Just as a creeper embraces the tree

My love, embrace me.

Loving me alone

may you never depart.

Just as an eagle’s flight is grounded by Earth

 So ground your mind.

Loving me alone

May you never depart.

As the sun’s sacred and eternal journey of earth and heavens

So I flow around your mind.

Loving me alone

May you never depart.

-Atharva Veda