Introduction
"What is always speaking silently is the body." - Norman O. Brown
Suppleness is one of the truly great words, for who doesn’t want to be supple? Who doesn’t want to be able to move with grace and ease? Who doesn’t want to be free of tension and restrictions? Suppleness is a word that cannot be pinned down by a clear definition and by objective goals. We can’t measure suppleness. We can only experience it. We can only sense it. We know it when we have it, and we certainly know it when we don’t have it. When we’re supple, we move with ease, and when we’re not, our movements are limited and painful. And this subjectivity of suppleness is a good thing, for few of us really care whether we can touch our toes, squat to the floor, or turn our necks through their full range of motion. What we really care about is being able to move with ease in our daily lives. We want movement to be and to feel easy and unrestricted. The desire to move with ease is the desire for suppleness. When we say we want to be more flexible and to have more mobility, and when we stretch and massage our muscles, what we’re really after is suppleness.
But there’s a shadow side to this desire for unrestricted, free movement. Within this desire for freedom of motion is a desire to be free of the constraints of the body. One can almost feel one’s spirit soaring up-up-and-away from the body when the words ‘unrestricted’ and ‘free’ are used. We just want to be able to do what we want to do without interference from the cumbersome body. Most of us, if we’re honest with ourselves, would prefer to ignore, numb, or anesthetize the body so as to be able to enjoy unfettered movement. We imagine the body to be a machine to get us from place to place, and, like ignoring the ‘check engine light’ of a car, we’d prefer to find a way to not have to care about the body and its problems. If the machine isn’t working properly, if it is hurting or restricting our movement, limiting our lives, then we’d prefer to trade it in for the newer model, or at the very least to get it fixed in the same way that a mechanic would fix a car.
But our bodies are not machines. They are living animals! They are pulsating with life. The body is what actually makes us alive. Without the body we would be disembodied, like the nymph Echo who turned into a mere voice in order to escape the bodily, lusty, wild, animalistic, half-goat god Pan, who was every bit the image of the body. The body is no machine, and it refuses to be treated or even imagined as such. The way we imagine the body is the way we treat the body, and the way we speak about the body displays the way we imagine it. So the words we use to talk about the body are vitally important for the way we imagine and treat the body.
The word ‘suppleness’ is very different from the words ‘flexibility’ and ‘mobility.’ Flexibility and mobility, because they can be measured, can be attained by anyone willing to torment his or her body into whatever tortuous position is required to achieve the mark, be it a yoga pose or a sit-and-reach test. But this is supplication of the body, not suppleness. This is taming the wild animal with a whip, and stuffing a bridle in its mouth. One shouldn’t be surprised if the animal revolts against this kind of treatment. The words ‘flexibility’ and ‘mobility’ force us to imagine the body as a machine. ‘Flexibility’ comes from the Latin ‘flectere,’ which means ‘to bend,’ and the word ‘mobility’ comes from the Latin ‘mobilis,’ which means movable. Both of these words are rooted in the ability to be moved or bent. They mean bendable, but nothing is implied about whether the bending be graceful or not. These words lack grace.
The word ‘supple,’ on the other hand, helps us to imagine beyond the machine, for it comes to us from the Latin ‘supplex’ for submissive, humbly begging, beseeching, or kneeling in entreaty. It literally means to kneel down as before a king. To be supple is not only to be able to bend but to be willing to bend. Suppleness is rooted in the very act of bending. There is humility in the word supple. It is rooted in the Latin word ‘placere,’ which means to propitiate, or to win the favor of a god, spirit, or person, by doing something that pleases them. So to be supple is to bend one’s will to the will of another. Suppleness is easy and graceful, not labored. And herein lies the power of the word ‘supple.’ Since we can’t measure suppleness, we also can’t achieve it. Therefore, there’s no point in trying to force the body into suppleness. We can force ourselves to touch our toes, but the word ‘supple’ will instantly float before us, reminding us that suppleness is not a struggle. Movement is not really supple if we have to struggle to do it. The very word ‘supple’ keeps us on track.
Our modern default method of working on the body is an heroic method. It identifies problems and then solves those problems by working on the problems. In the case of the body, we find a lack of suppleness and so we work on the body to gain (or, more accurately, to force) its compliance. This is a method of subjugation of the body, and it will never bring suppleness. It may force flexibility, but it won’t bring suppleness, for suppleness cannot be forced. The very nature of suppleness is a humble bending. Suppleness is a choice: the body’s choice. And so we are faced with two very different approaches to the body: the heroic approach of flexibility in which we work on the body, and the supple approach in which we work with the body.
In order to more fully understand these two different approaches to the body, we must understand the difference between intention and attention. The root of both of these words is ‘ten,’ which means ‘to stretch’ or ‘to tension.’ When we intend something, we are placing our tension into an object. To intend is to stretch something to one’s will. Attention is quite different. To attend something is to stretch oneself for the sake of the other. One places tension upon oneself for the sake of what one is attending. For example, the servants of a king attend the king by stretching themselves to the will of the king. They do his bidding. The difference between intention and attention is the difference between the heroic approach to the body and the supple approach to the body. The heroic approach works on the body and tries to subjugate it. It intends something of the body. It attempts to force its will upon the body. But the supple approach works with the body. It is a method of attention, not intention.
For suppleness, our method cannot be a quest, adventure, exploration, or mission, because the force of heroism cannot bring us to suppleness. Suppleness cannot be conquered. We must be very clear: our approach cannot be a journey toward suppleness. It cannot be a program to achieve suppleness, as if suppleness were a goal. We cannot draw a straight line from non-suppleness to suppleness, and then storm the gates by force. Instead, our method must be a ritual, a regular practice of working with the body in which giving the body attention is our primary concern. The image of a ritual, of a routine of devotional practice, is very helpful in understanding how we must approach the body for suppleness.
The task before us is to explore the fantasy of suppleness and to present a method that we can use to ask the body for more suppleness. Suppleness is a fantasy and it’s an experience. Anyone can move with suppleness immediately, but only if the movement being performed is done within the bounds and desires of the body. It is the body that allows or disallows suppleness. Movement without suppleness is movement without the body’s consent, or movement against the body, or movement in antagonism to the body. It is intended movement, not attended movement. But supple movement is movement with which the body agrees. So our method must be a ritual to placate and appease the body. We need the body to agree with us, or for us to agree with the body.
We’ve been speaking of the body as if it were a separate being, an animated lifeform that is separate from us with its own will and desires. This is a form of animism, for it imaginatively animates and gives life to an object not always granted such status by our modern imaginations. Normally, we imagine the world to be dead matter that we can manipulate. But we now must face the animated body straight-on, for it is very useful to imagine that the body is a separate being with its own desires. Not only is the body a living animal, but it is separate from us. The body is separate from who we think we are. It’s another being with whom we must interact.
There is a strong tendency in our modern thinking to want to unite the mind and the body. There is resistance to the idea of separating a person into various parts. The modern mind favors the idea that we are one united whole. But the fantasy of wholeness is by no means the only way to imagine things. The mind-body connection that is so popular today is often just a guise for a philosophy of mind-over-matter in which the mind dominates and rules the unruly body. This is an unacceptable philosophy to the body, who wants to be imagined as a separate being, equal to the mind in importance. Connecting the mind and the body in our imaginations does nothing but serve the mind at the expense of the body. By imagining the body as a separate being, we can enter the body’s world, and we can learn its language, listen to it, and attend to it.
The body speaks to us in its own language, the language of movement and images, and we must learn to listen to it in this language. We aren’t totally new to the language of the body. We are all familiar with the body’s screams: its restricted movements and its pains. Restricted movement is one form of movement, while supple movement is at the other end of the spectrum. Both of these are movements, and thus both of these are ways in which the body speaks.
Pain is another way the body speaks. It’s useful to imagine pain as an image. Pain is a picture that the body paints in order to say something (or scream something) to us. Pain can be overwhelmingly agonizing, but it can also be useful. The burning sensation of a hand on a hot stove is an obvious message from the body, but all pains can be read for their messages. If we can pay attention to pain, then we can experience it as an image. We need to attend to the details of the pain, to the exact location and sensation, to what it is “like.” Low back pain can feel like concrete pillars plastered to the spine. Shoulder pain can feel like a sharp pin prick, or a deep throbbing ball of fire, or a mild compression as if bandages were wrapped around it. The image is the way the body is speaking. This holds true for all images, not just the painful ones. When we move, we may sense a feeling of heaviness in a region of the body, or perhaps a color or a light emanating from a region. Oftentimes fantasies and memories will come to us when we’re moving. These are the poems of the body, and they ask for our attention.
Norman O. Brown's quote that serves as the epigraph for this chapter ("What is always speaking silently is the body.”) is perhaps not entirely correct, for the body is not speaking all that silently. It often speaks with screeches of terrifying agony. Perhaps more accurate would be that the body is always speaking, sometimes silently, and sometimes not so silently.
What is the body saying when it limits our suppleness? Why does it get our attention with pain and restrictions? Just by asking these questions we have already halfway answered them, for the body is getting our attention with pains and restrictions. Whatever else the body wants, it certainly wants our attention. And that’s the first and most important thing we must give it. Our tendency to set the mind over the body, our preference to ignore the body rather than to notice it, and our habit of working on the body instead of with it, are the very things that the body is trying to overcome by speaking to us with pain and restricted movement. The body is screaming for our attention, and it’s really tired of our inattention and of our intention.
The language of the body isn’t all pain and restriction. It is also a source of pleasure. Supple movement certainly isn’t numb movement. It’s actually pleasurable movement. It feels good to move when the body is amenable to the movement being performed. When we move with the body, we move with pleasure. And the images that arise with movement need not be painful. They can be beautiful. Supple movement is pleasurable and beautiful movement. It’s the art of movement.
What we’ve been talking about is the idea of taking a subtle approach to the body. The word ‘subtle’ comes from the Latin ‘subtilis,’ which means fine and delicate. The Latin roots are ‘sub,’ which means ‘under,’ and ‘tela,’ which means ‘web, net, or fabric.’ Subtleness is something so delicate that it is almost imperceptible. It is weaved right into the very fabric of things. That’s the sort of attention that we want to give to the body. We want to pay attention to its subtleties, to what’s weaved right into the movement, to the small, delicate changes, and to the images that the body presents while we move. By paying attention to the subtleties of movement and to the images that arise during movement, we give the body subtle attention.
We are now subtly close to the fantasy of suppleness. Suppleness is when the body cooperates with our movement. To be supple is to be acting in agreement with one's body. The movement of a skilled gymnast or dancer may appear to be supple, but it may not be supple. It may in fact be tortured, labored movement from the perspective of the body. What we are after is supple movement as experienced by the body - the pleasure and beauty of moving with grace and ease. A body that is brutalized and forced into submission may submit for a period of time, but it will revolt. Our method then must be a ritual of moving with the body by paying attention to the body, ideally listening to pleasant movements and images, but often requiring us to listen to restrictions and pains. We cannot storm the castle of the body and expect suppleness to result. We must come honoring and respecting the body, entreating it for suppleness. We must come to the body by subtle means. Suppleness is subtle.
Now that we know that what we are really after is suppleness, and that suppleness requires us to attend to the subtleties of the movements and images of the body, we are ready to begin putting together a method to work with the body for suppleness. This method will be a ritual that petitions the body to allow us suppleness. The rest of this book will systematically develop this ritual practice, with each section of the book adding another way of attending the body. We will be using subtle movements, large movements, and various positions, all with the aim of paying attention to the body, and thereby asking it for suppleness. It will prove helpful to imagine this book as a series of seminars and workshops. One must work one’s way through the first seminar and workshop (the first section of the book) in order to begin the second workshop and seminar (the second section of the book), and so on. What is presented in this book is a radically different approach to working with the body. Many of the ideas will seem foreign and difficult to digest. No punches are pulled. Nothing is held back. The ideas are challenging. Each section builds on the previous material and assumes a deep, faithful practice of the material. A change in the way that one imagines and treats the body will result only if one goes deeply into the material of this book.
The ritual practice of suppleness that we will be uncovering follows the monthly course of the moon through the sky. There are a number of reasons for using the moon as our guiding symbol for the practice of suppleness. For one thing, the moon has traditionally been the planetary symbol for the body. Even more importantly, the moon is always moving. Every night it displays itself in a different place in the sky and with a different look. Some nights it doesn’t even appear in the sky at all. It never presents the same image two nights in a row, and it is always slightly more or slightly less full than the previous night. The moon carries the image of movement and subtle change, which are helpful images to keep our desire for suppleness at the fore. The moon has always been associated with the imagination and with the mysteries of life, ruling the night, the time of dreams, as it does. It’s for these reasons that we link our practice to the image and movement of the moon. The moon helps to keep us imaginative while we practice. For all the merits of having a system to follow, a systematic approach always carries with it the danger that it will turn literal and become concretized, spoiling the method and fantasy behind the system by turning it into a rigid program devoid of the subtleties and suppleness it intends to bring. A rigid system would destroy the fantasy of suppleness. The moon, being perhaps the very image of subtlety, works well as the guiding image for our system of subtleness and suppleness. The moon herself seems as supple as anything could be. So our system links certain aspects of our practice with certain phases of the moon’s cycle.
Throughout this book we will be learning the art of Tending the Body, which is the ritual practice of suppleness. Once per day we will be practicing the art of suppleness by performing various sessions in which our primary purpose is to pay attention to the body. Each session is a way in which we will be placing our attention on the body. The first session we will be learning is the very heart of our practice. It is the central flame, the hearth, to which we will return again and again. It involves paying attention to the body without any other techniques being added. Our primary concern when Tending the Body is always first and foremost to practice paying attention to the body, and so before we add any techniques or even any movements to our practice, we must first establish this attention. Since we only have so much attention to give, we want to remove as many distractions as we can. We don’t want anything else vying for our attention. We want to have as few things as possible that can get between us and the body.
This book is both theoretical and practical. It is organized into four phases, each with six chapters, for a total of 24 chapters. Each chapter includes an essay or a poem followed by a practice session. Each chapter and its corresponding practice session corresponds to a day of the moon's cycle. There are at least six days for each phase of the moon, so there are six essays and six practice sessions for each of the four phases of the moon. The number of days per phase of the moon is often more than six, so on extra days during a phase we simply repeat one of the practice sessions that we already performed earlier in the phase. These are bonus days for extra practice.
This first chapter and the following first practice session are designed to be read and practiced on the first day of the moon's cycle: the day of the New Moon. But there is not a high likelihood that the day that one happens to read this chapter for the first time also happens to be the first day of the New Moon. So instead, the first time that one reads through this book, one should just read through the whole book in 24 days, reading one chapter and practicing its session each day. Once the reader has read this book from start to finish and has become familiar with the art of Tending the Body, he or she should then begin to follow the cycle of the moon by reading the chapter and performing the practice session that corresponds to each day of the moon's cycle. By following this cycle of reading and practicing, the reader will work through this book many times and become deeply involved in the art of Tending the Body.
The first session we will be doing will seem a lot like a common relaxation exercise that one may find in many other methods of working with the body. And indeed it is similar. This first session slows us down for a moment and forces our attention away from the daily events of our lives. But the similarities stop there, for we are not intending to meditate, to relax, to soften our muscles, to observe our minds, to quiet our minds, or to do anything else except to pay attention to the body. We are only paying attention to the body - that’s it. This first session is the fundamental practice of suppleness. It is the most important part of what we will be doing throughout this entire book, for it is the practice of paying attention to the body.
Suppleness is one of the truly great words, for who doesn’t want to be supple? Who doesn’t want to be able to move with grace and ease? Who doesn’t want to be free of tension and restrictions? Suppleness is a word that cannot be pinned down by a clear definition and by objective goals. We can’t measure suppleness. We can only experience it. We can only sense it. We know it when we have it, and we certainly know it when we don’t have it. When we’re supple, we move with ease, and when we’re not, our movements are limited and painful. And this subjectivity of suppleness is a good thing, for few of us really care whether we can touch our toes, squat to the floor, or turn our necks through their full range of motion. What we really care about is being able to move with ease in our daily lives. We want movement to be and to feel easy and unrestricted. The desire to move with ease is the desire for suppleness. When we say we want to be more flexible and to have more mobility, and when we stretch and massage our muscles, what we’re really after is suppleness.
But there’s a shadow side to this desire for unrestricted, free movement. Within this desire for freedom of motion is a desire to be free of the constraints of the body. One can almost feel one’s spirit soaring up-up-and-away from the body when the words ‘unrestricted’ and ‘free’ are used. We just want to be able to do what we want to do without interference from the cumbersome body. Most of us, if we’re honest with ourselves, would prefer to ignore, numb, or anesthetize the body so as to be able to enjoy unfettered movement. We imagine the body to be a machine to get us from place to place, and, like ignoring the ‘check engine light’ of a car, we’d prefer to find a way to not have to care about the body and its problems. If the machine isn’t working properly, if it is hurting or restricting our movement, limiting our lives, then we’d prefer to trade it in for the newer model, or at the very least to get it fixed in the same way that a mechanic would fix a car.
But our bodies are not machines. They are living animals! They are pulsating with life. The body is what actually makes us alive. Without the body we would be disembodied, like the nymph Echo who turned into a mere voice in order to escape the bodily, lusty, wild, animalistic, half-goat god Pan, who was every bit the image of the body. The body is no machine, and it refuses to be treated or even imagined as such. The way we imagine the body is the way we treat the body, and the way we speak about the body displays the way we imagine it. So the words we use to talk about the body are vitally important for the way we imagine and treat the body.
The word ‘suppleness’ is very different from the words ‘flexibility’ and ‘mobility.’ Flexibility and mobility, because they can be measured, can be attained by anyone willing to torment his or her body into whatever tortuous position is required to achieve the mark, be it a yoga pose or a sit-and-reach test. But this is supplication of the body, not suppleness. This is taming the wild animal with a whip, and stuffing a bridle in its mouth. One shouldn’t be surprised if the animal revolts against this kind of treatment. The words ‘flexibility’ and ‘mobility’ force us to imagine the body as a machine. ‘Flexibility’ comes from the Latin ‘flectere,’ which means ‘to bend,’ and the word ‘mobility’ comes from the Latin ‘mobilis,’ which means movable. Both of these words are rooted in the ability to be moved or bent. They mean bendable, but nothing is implied about whether the bending be graceful or not. These words lack grace.
The word ‘supple,’ on the other hand, helps us to imagine beyond the machine, for it comes to us from the Latin ‘supplex’ for submissive, humbly begging, beseeching, or kneeling in entreaty. It literally means to kneel down as before a king. To be supple is not only to be able to bend but to be willing to bend. Suppleness is rooted in the very act of bending. There is humility in the word supple. It is rooted in the Latin word ‘placere,’ which means to propitiate, or to win the favor of a god, spirit, or person, by doing something that pleases them. So to be supple is to bend one’s will to the will of another. Suppleness is easy and graceful, not labored. And herein lies the power of the word ‘supple.’ Since we can’t measure suppleness, we also can’t achieve it. Therefore, there’s no point in trying to force the body into suppleness. We can force ourselves to touch our toes, but the word ‘supple’ will instantly float before us, reminding us that suppleness is not a struggle. Movement is not really supple if we have to struggle to do it. The very word ‘supple’ keeps us on track.
Our modern default method of working on the body is an heroic method. It identifies problems and then solves those problems by working on the problems. In the case of the body, we find a lack of suppleness and so we work on the body to gain (or, more accurately, to force) its compliance. This is a method of subjugation of the body, and it will never bring suppleness. It may force flexibility, but it won’t bring suppleness, for suppleness cannot be forced. The very nature of suppleness is a humble bending. Suppleness is a choice: the body’s choice. And so we are faced with two very different approaches to the body: the heroic approach of flexibility in which we work on the body, and the supple approach in which we work with the body.
In order to more fully understand these two different approaches to the body, we must understand the difference between intention and attention. The root of both of these words is ‘ten,’ which means ‘to stretch’ or ‘to tension.’ When we intend something, we are placing our tension into an object. To intend is to stretch something to one’s will. Attention is quite different. To attend something is to stretch oneself for the sake of the other. One places tension upon oneself for the sake of what one is attending. For example, the servants of a king attend the king by stretching themselves to the will of the king. They do his bidding. The difference between intention and attention is the difference between the heroic approach to the body and the supple approach to the body. The heroic approach works on the body and tries to subjugate it. It intends something of the body. It attempts to force its will upon the body. But the supple approach works with the body. It is a method of attention, not intention.
For suppleness, our method cannot be a quest, adventure, exploration, or mission, because the force of heroism cannot bring us to suppleness. Suppleness cannot be conquered. We must be very clear: our approach cannot be a journey toward suppleness. It cannot be a program to achieve suppleness, as if suppleness were a goal. We cannot draw a straight line from non-suppleness to suppleness, and then storm the gates by force. Instead, our method must be a ritual, a regular practice of working with the body in which giving the body attention is our primary concern. The image of a ritual, of a routine of devotional practice, is very helpful in understanding how we must approach the body for suppleness.
The task before us is to explore the fantasy of suppleness and to present a method that we can use to ask the body for more suppleness. Suppleness is a fantasy and it’s an experience. Anyone can move with suppleness immediately, but only if the movement being performed is done within the bounds and desires of the body. It is the body that allows or disallows suppleness. Movement without suppleness is movement without the body’s consent, or movement against the body, or movement in antagonism to the body. It is intended movement, not attended movement. But supple movement is movement with which the body agrees. So our method must be a ritual to placate and appease the body. We need the body to agree with us, or for us to agree with the body.
We’ve been speaking of the body as if it were a separate being, an animated lifeform that is separate from us with its own will and desires. This is a form of animism, for it imaginatively animates and gives life to an object not always granted such status by our modern imaginations. Normally, we imagine the world to be dead matter that we can manipulate. But we now must face the animated body straight-on, for it is very useful to imagine that the body is a separate being with its own desires. Not only is the body a living animal, but it is separate from us. The body is separate from who we think we are. It’s another being with whom we must interact.
There is a strong tendency in our modern thinking to want to unite the mind and the body. There is resistance to the idea of separating a person into various parts. The modern mind favors the idea that we are one united whole. But the fantasy of wholeness is by no means the only way to imagine things. The mind-body connection that is so popular today is often just a guise for a philosophy of mind-over-matter in which the mind dominates and rules the unruly body. This is an unacceptable philosophy to the body, who wants to be imagined as a separate being, equal to the mind in importance. Connecting the mind and the body in our imaginations does nothing but serve the mind at the expense of the body. By imagining the body as a separate being, we can enter the body’s world, and we can learn its language, listen to it, and attend to it.
The body speaks to us in its own language, the language of movement and images, and we must learn to listen to it in this language. We aren’t totally new to the language of the body. We are all familiar with the body’s screams: its restricted movements and its pains. Restricted movement is one form of movement, while supple movement is at the other end of the spectrum. Both of these are movements, and thus both of these are ways in which the body speaks.
Pain is another way the body speaks. It’s useful to imagine pain as an image. Pain is a picture that the body paints in order to say something (or scream something) to us. Pain can be overwhelmingly agonizing, but it can also be useful. The burning sensation of a hand on a hot stove is an obvious message from the body, but all pains can be read for their messages. If we can pay attention to pain, then we can experience it as an image. We need to attend to the details of the pain, to the exact location and sensation, to what it is “like.” Low back pain can feel like concrete pillars plastered to the spine. Shoulder pain can feel like a sharp pin prick, or a deep throbbing ball of fire, or a mild compression as if bandages were wrapped around it. The image is the way the body is speaking. This holds true for all images, not just the painful ones. When we move, we may sense a feeling of heaviness in a region of the body, or perhaps a color or a light emanating from a region. Oftentimes fantasies and memories will come to us when we’re moving. These are the poems of the body, and they ask for our attention.
Norman O. Brown's quote that serves as the epigraph for this chapter ("What is always speaking silently is the body.”) is perhaps not entirely correct, for the body is not speaking all that silently. It often speaks with screeches of terrifying agony. Perhaps more accurate would be that the body is always speaking, sometimes silently, and sometimes not so silently.
What is the body saying when it limits our suppleness? Why does it get our attention with pain and restrictions? Just by asking these questions we have already halfway answered them, for the body is getting our attention with pains and restrictions. Whatever else the body wants, it certainly wants our attention. And that’s the first and most important thing we must give it. Our tendency to set the mind over the body, our preference to ignore the body rather than to notice it, and our habit of working on the body instead of with it, are the very things that the body is trying to overcome by speaking to us with pain and restricted movement. The body is screaming for our attention, and it’s really tired of our inattention and of our intention.
The language of the body isn’t all pain and restriction. It is also a source of pleasure. Supple movement certainly isn’t numb movement. It’s actually pleasurable movement. It feels good to move when the body is amenable to the movement being performed. When we move with the body, we move with pleasure. And the images that arise with movement need not be painful. They can be beautiful. Supple movement is pleasurable and beautiful movement. It’s the art of movement.
What we’ve been talking about is the idea of taking a subtle approach to the body. The word ‘subtle’ comes from the Latin ‘subtilis,’ which means fine and delicate. The Latin roots are ‘sub,’ which means ‘under,’ and ‘tela,’ which means ‘web, net, or fabric.’ Subtleness is something so delicate that it is almost imperceptible. It is weaved right into the very fabric of things. That’s the sort of attention that we want to give to the body. We want to pay attention to its subtleties, to what’s weaved right into the movement, to the small, delicate changes, and to the images that the body presents while we move. By paying attention to the subtleties of movement and to the images that arise during movement, we give the body subtle attention.
We are now subtly close to the fantasy of suppleness. Suppleness is when the body cooperates with our movement. To be supple is to be acting in agreement with one's body. The movement of a skilled gymnast or dancer may appear to be supple, but it may not be supple. It may in fact be tortured, labored movement from the perspective of the body. What we are after is supple movement as experienced by the body - the pleasure and beauty of moving with grace and ease. A body that is brutalized and forced into submission may submit for a period of time, but it will revolt. Our method then must be a ritual of moving with the body by paying attention to the body, ideally listening to pleasant movements and images, but often requiring us to listen to restrictions and pains. We cannot storm the castle of the body and expect suppleness to result. We must come honoring and respecting the body, entreating it for suppleness. We must come to the body by subtle means. Suppleness is subtle.
Now that we know that what we are really after is suppleness, and that suppleness requires us to attend to the subtleties of the movements and images of the body, we are ready to begin putting together a method to work with the body for suppleness. This method will be a ritual that petitions the body to allow us suppleness. The rest of this book will systematically develop this ritual practice, with each section of the book adding another way of attending the body. We will be using subtle movements, large movements, and various positions, all with the aim of paying attention to the body, and thereby asking it for suppleness. It will prove helpful to imagine this book as a series of seminars and workshops. One must work one’s way through the first seminar and workshop (the first section of the book) in order to begin the second workshop and seminar (the second section of the book), and so on. What is presented in this book is a radically different approach to working with the body. Many of the ideas will seem foreign and difficult to digest. No punches are pulled. Nothing is held back. The ideas are challenging. Each section builds on the previous material and assumes a deep, faithful practice of the material. A change in the way that one imagines and treats the body will result only if one goes deeply into the material of this book.
The ritual practice of suppleness that we will be uncovering follows the monthly course of the moon through the sky. There are a number of reasons for using the moon as our guiding symbol for the practice of suppleness. For one thing, the moon has traditionally been the planetary symbol for the body. Even more importantly, the moon is always moving. Every night it displays itself in a different place in the sky and with a different look. Some nights it doesn’t even appear in the sky at all. It never presents the same image two nights in a row, and it is always slightly more or slightly less full than the previous night. The moon carries the image of movement and subtle change, which are helpful images to keep our desire for suppleness at the fore. The moon has always been associated with the imagination and with the mysteries of life, ruling the night, the time of dreams, as it does. It’s for these reasons that we link our practice to the image and movement of the moon. The moon helps to keep us imaginative while we practice. For all the merits of having a system to follow, a systematic approach always carries with it the danger that it will turn literal and become concretized, spoiling the method and fantasy behind the system by turning it into a rigid program devoid of the subtleties and suppleness it intends to bring. A rigid system would destroy the fantasy of suppleness. The moon, being perhaps the very image of subtlety, works well as the guiding image for our system of subtleness and suppleness. The moon herself seems as supple as anything could be. So our system links certain aspects of our practice with certain phases of the moon’s cycle.
Throughout this book we will be learning the art of Tending the Body, which is the ritual practice of suppleness. Once per day we will be practicing the art of suppleness by performing various sessions in which our primary purpose is to pay attention to the body. Each session is a way in which we will be placing our attention on the body. The first session we will be learning is the very heart of our practice. It is the central flame, the hearth, to which we will return again and again. It involves paying attention to the body without any other techniques being added. Our primary concern when Tending the Body is always first and foremost to practice paying attention to the body, and so before we add any techniques or even any movements to our practice, we must first establish this attention. Since we only have so much attention to give, we want to remove as many distractions as we can. We don’t want anything else vying for our attention. We want to have as few things as possible that can get between us and the body.
This book is both theoretical and practical. It is organized into four phases, each with six chapters, for a total of 24 chapters. Each chapter includes an essay or a poem followed by a practice session. Each chapter and its corresponding practice session corresponds to a day of the moon's cycle. There are at least six days for each phase of the moon, so there are six essays and six practice sessions for each of the four phases of the moon. The number of days per phase of the moon is often more than six, so on extra days during a phase we simply repeat one of the practice sessions that we already performed earlier in the phase. These are bonus days for extra practice.
This first chapter and the following first practice session are designed to be read and practiced on the first day of the moon's cycle: the day of the New Moon. But there is not a high likelihood that the day that one happens to read this chapter for the first time also happens to be the first day of the New Moon. So instead, the first time that one reads through this book, one should just read through the whole book in 24 days, reading one chapter and practicing its session each day. Once the reader has read this book from start to finish and has become familiar with the art of Tending the Body, he or she should then begin to follow the cycle of the moon by reading the chapter and performing the practice session that corresponds to each day of the moon's cycle. By following this cycle of reading and practicing, the reader will work through this book many times and become deeply involved in the art of Tending the Body.
The first session we will be doing will seem a lot like a common relaxation exercise that one may find in many other methods of working with the body. And indeed it is similar. This first session slows us down for a moment and forces our attention away from the daily events of our lives. But the similarities stop there, for we are not intending to meditate, to relax, to soften our muscles, to observe our minds, to quiet our minds, or to do anything else except to pay attention to the body. We are only paying attention to the body - that’s it. This first session is the fundamental practice of suppleness. It is the most important part of what we will be doing throughout this entire book, for it is the practice of paying attention to the body.
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