On the Stillness of Being, Part II

The search for a path through life

Photo: The Tappan Zee Bridge at sunrise, Nov. 23 2023

While Michel de Salzmann does indeed, present exercises about taking energy in in specific locations, and then moving it around in the body, it seems worthwhile to point out (go find the quotes in The Reality of Being yourself, if you are so inclined) that his mother indicated that once energy is present, it ought to be distributed equally throughout all of the body. This is in fact the ultimate point of some exercises.

My own work and experience are in agreement with that aim; and yet that distribution may not (I won't take a fixed position on it) be possible without the initial work of energy that “moves around.”

Such energy can – at least we imagine it can — be "controlled" by us, a Hatha yoga storming-the gates-of-heaven approach if ever, there was one.

Yet the gentler and more measured presenters of such ideas point out that our aim ought to be not to control but to participate. I’m in general agreement with that approach.

When I was trying to explain the difference between sensing the movement of energy and sensing a stillness of being I came up with the following explanation for my wife this morning.