MINDFUL MOVEMENT MEDITATION 
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Introduction

In the beginning was movement, before there actually was the word. The body is our first, last and constant space of reference. There is no escaping the fact that we are embodied, and it is only in and through our body that we can live deeply, fully and mindfully. Being awake means having realized the union of breath, body and mind, which constitutes the organism that we are.

There is no mindfulness meditation without the body. The lofty realms of consciousness and pure awareness cannot be climbed or understood outside the foundations of nature, which rest in the story of the survival of life forms. Once we have climbed these peaks of human ingenuity and potential, and we have to do that to get the full bird’s eye view of the horizon, we have to climb back down to what nourishes our existence, namely survival, the human market place, in which the full catastrophe unfolds. It is in this embodied ordinariness of life and wholeness of being the organism that we are, that we discover how extraordinary nature is. However, our climbing efforts are not in vain; like Moses’ effort of climbing the mountain to get God’s Ten Commandments, our effort in mindfulness leaves us with gifts we are responsible to pass on. These are the gifts of knowledge, responsibility and concern, gifts that are characteristic of an embodied and minded organism such as human beings.

Being awake is the core of spiritual surrender. It means to return to the roots of survival with the gifts acquired on the journey through consciousness; to exercise concern towards all existence with the humility that comes from realizing that all we need is the love and compassion necessary to overcome suffering. In the course of evolution we became knowing organisms, and acquired a knowing sense of self, which allows us to discover and understand the world we live in. However, it is our task to learn from this journey of initiation, as the path of mindfulness could be called, that all this knowledge is only worth the extent to which it is put in the service of one of the gifts of God, concern. It follows, that the highest form of knowledge is love, and love breathes through the body.

It is the awakened union of breath, body and mind that all mindfulness traditions point to. This union is experienced as the transcendence of the perceived separation between subject and object. The technique used to walk on this path of union is mindfulness meditation, which can be defined as the practice of certain useful means that allow us to see for ourselves how to lead a more harmonious life free from suffering. As we have seen throughout this website, mindfulness meditation encompasses many different practices. One of these has historically been named after this double reality that is in fact just one: The realization of breath-body-mind union as the state of self-transcendence, and mindfulness meditation as the technique that makes this union possible. The metaphors of ‘union’, ‘conjunction’ and ‘yoke’ all converged in the Sanskrit term ‘yoga’.

For the larger part of the history of yoga practice, the postures we know and practice today played little or even no part in the practice. The word ‘asana’ used today to denote the yoga postures means ‘seat’, pointing to the fact that the original ‘yoga’ meditation consisted of just sitting meditation. It is only later, under the influence of tantric teachings, which view the body as the vehicle through which awakening can occur, rather than as an obstacle to awakening, that a form of yoga developed that emphasized a more ‘engaged’ working with the body, called ‘hatha’ (= forceful) yoga.

As we embrace the body as our temple that houses the stage upon which life unfolds, we can see four fundamental postures that represent all the activities of life: Sitting, standing, walking, and lying down. By maintaining mindful awareness of all we do and all that arises in all four basic postures, we embark on the path of mindfulness. It is crucial to understand, that yoga is not something that we do, and even less some kind of physical workout, but the embodiment of mindfulness, mindfulness meditation at its best.   

Although through mindful movement meditation we strengthen muscles, yoga is not a body building routine; although we increase flexibility, it is not a stretching practice; although we correct alignment, it is not an alignment discipline; and although we increase our heart and breathing rate, it is not a cardio-vascular workout. Yoga is meditation, one of the aspects of mindful living that helps us keep ‘our appointment with life’ (Thich Nhat Hanh) through honoring the body as part of the organism that we are.

Our mindful movement meditation programs, which could also be called ‘mindfulness yoga’, rigorously apply these principles. Working with the body is simply an aspect of mindfulness meditation, with awareness and awakening at its core, not physical well-being.

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