Published

in 2016 by Embodied Philosophy Press

New York City, New York 10037

Copyright 2016 by Jacob Kyle Parkinson
All Right Reserved

EmbodiedPhilosophy.com

1
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

"Know Thyself" 4

Suffering in the Myth of the Brain 10

What Philosophy Isn't & Is 17

Images of the Body 28

2
 CHAPTER 1

"Know Thyself"

The popular maxim Know Thyself has been a resounding call for
curious seekers throughout the ages. Originally attributed to several
different sages of the Ancient Greek period -- perhaps most notably
philosophers Socrates and Heraclitus -- this message speaks to us at a
universal level, encouraging the deepening and expansion of spiritual,
philosophical and self-improvement projects that have been inspired by
a variety of traditions.

Embodied Philosophy is first and foremost a response to this calling. We

seek, at the most fundamental level, to know ourselves deeply and
profoundly, to leave no question unquestioned, to leave no mystery left
out of our experience of wonder and amazement at the flows and forms
of Existence.

3
In our process of questioning and exploring the dynamic terrain of
conscious experience, we arrive at the inevitable questions: what is the
self, after all, and what kind of knowledge am I seeking? The self I speak
of and the knowledge I intend to have of that self are themselves up for
investigation. Is the self the body; is it the mind? Is the knowledge Im
looking for the kind of knowledge one finds in books?

For many of us at Embodied Philosophy, it was yoga and the wider

Eastern philosophical tradition that offered us meaningful ways of
approaching these questions, and so here you can find thought-
provoking writings and educational materials on subjects related to
Hinduism and Buddhism, Shaivism and Taoism, as well as the
illuminating symbolism of mythology, mysticism, archetypal metaphor
and some teachings and traditions from within the Western
philosophical canon.

However, this practice of exploring Ancient (and not-so-ancient)

wisdom is not in the service of merely intellectual passion - even though
many of us have such passion -, but is rather involved in a process of
becoming more integrated with our bodies, with our emotions, with our
friends, our family and our planet. To that end, Embodied Philosophy is
not just a place for the introduction and exploration of ancient wisdom
texts, but is a home for remarks and musings about social justice, mental
health, the political landscape and the contemporary human condition.
By bringing ancient wisdom and practices into dialogue with the world
as it is today, we become richer in our capacity to respond to todays
issues with clarity, lightness, and balance.
4
 But why study at all? some might ask. Why not just get involved with
a good cause? Getting involved with a meaningful organization or cause
is admirable and timely, but embodied study is no less important, for
ideas, in our view, are not simply empty abstractions. Ideas have a
material component and affect; therefore, ideas matter. An idea has the
capacity to change our bodies and therefore the world around us by
influencing the way that we perceive and interact with other beings and
our environment.

For example, when an individual operates from a fear-based idea that

the world is out to get him or her, we see the shoulders cower forward,
the chest sink back and the gaze stay to the ground. A recent study
showed that the postural habits caused by excessive cellular phone usage
can literally change our moods.

Ideas are therefore powerful material, but unfortunately many people

take their ideas for granted, assume they represent reality, and fail to
realize the profound potentiality that exists in each of us to think, and
thus feel, and thus be more fully.

To consider this more deeply, lets return to the two questions that arise
when we consider the maxim Know Thyself: What is the self? What is
knowledge? If we were to ignore these questions and simply take know
thyself at face value, we might consider the calling simply to be to get to
know better the various features of our personality: I like this and that.
I dont like this and that. I respond to these stressors this way. I favor
this over that thing. These are my dreams and ambitions. This is what
made me this way. Etcetera and so on
5
made me this way. Etcetera and so on

Certainly becoming familiar with these qualities serves the overall goal
of knowing thyself, insofar as these personality features illustrate the
various ways that consciousness can function, but this is not the whole
story for us at Embodied Philosophy.

In the Eastern Philosophical tradition, one can find at least three

fundamental claims about the self:

1. The Self does not Exist.

2. The Self is not the Personality.
3. The Self is All there Is.

Depending on what tradition you are exploring, sometimes these

positions overlap, and sometimes they conflict. While it is beyond the
scope of this introduction to get into the specifics, needless to say what
the self is is by no means self-evident. In fact, much of the traditions,
cultures and texts we explore at Embodied Philosophy deny that the self-
as-personality model is all there is to say about the topic of the self.

In many instances, the personality actually becomes an obstacle to

knowing thyself and perpetuates negative moods and experiences of
psychological suffering. The personality, in other words, is an idea, and
one that very well may stand in the way of knowing ourselves in the
most expansive way possible.

6
Like the self, knowledge also has a way of presenting itself as self-
evident. What could be more obvious than what knowledge is? I either
have a knowledge of how to fix cars, or I dont. I either know the history
of U.S. immigration, or I dont know it.

Knowledge, in these examples, is something outside you. Its a kind of

object, and you either have it or you dont have it. Also, with this kind of
knowledge, you can have or not have a certain knowledge, but the self
(who you are) remains the same. There is a subject (you) on one side of
this knowledge equation and an object (how to fix a microwave) on the
other. Therefore, here there are two substances: the subject and the
object (of knowledge).

While we want to save the Sanskrit words mostly for later in your
Embodied Philosophy journey, there is one word that captures a second
kind of knowledge that is important to our discussion here: jnana.
Jnana means knowledge in Sanskrit, but this kind of knowledge is an
embodied knowledge. In other words, you dont simply have this
knowledge you become this knowledge. This kind of knowledge
pervades every aspect of your being, changes you, and shifts the
coordinates of who you are and what you considered yourself to be.

For a recent Chalkboard Yoga Studies Episode exploring Jnana, go

here.

Jnana is more than a knowledge that you read in books at the library.
Jnana is a knowledge that radically transforms the way that you perceive
and interact with the world.
7
and interact with the world.

This is not to say that book knowledge and how-to knowledge are not
important. Certainly they are, for someone first has to be introduced to
knowledge in the object-ive way before one can step into this
knowledge and embody it.

Thus, as should be becoming clear, the kind of investigation (knowing)

of Self that we are involved with here at Embodied Philosophy is more
than simply a practice of armchair theorizing. It is more than simply a
process of abstract intellectualizing. It is instead very much an ethical
practice that informs everything that we do. It informs our interactions
with others, our perspective on the world, and even our base perceptions
and impressions. Being involved in this process is to be transmuted in
an alchemical way. Like mercury becoming gold through a slight shift in
its atomic structure, through the practical philosophies studied here we
take on new form and expression.

Know Thyself. We respond to this calling with openness, curiosity and

wonder. The body-mind is a malleable instrument conducive to this
process of expanding awareness, but obstacles inevitably arise, one of
which is the familiar experience of suffering. In the next article of this
introductory series, Embodied Philosophy 101, we look at suffering and
especially a cultural myth that has arisen around this experience.

In Chapter Two of Embodied Philosophy 101, we explore

psychological suffering and a pervasive myth about the brain.

8
 CHAPTER 2

Suffering and the Myth of the Brain

In the previous chapter of this introduction to Embodied Philosophy, we

looked at the ancient maxim Know Thyself and discussed notions of
self and different ideas about knowledge in an effort to deepen our
understanding of how taken for granted notions might actually
profoundly shape our experiential world.

In this chapter, we want to look at perhaps the most universal obstacle

to a sense of fullness in life: psychological suffering.

How happy and contented you are at the deepest level of your being is of
course ultimately for you to decide, and so our point here is not to claim
that everyone is suffering and needs to change. However, at Embodied
Philosophy we do recognize that suffering exists on a variety of personal,
social and political levels, and thus one of the truths that informs our
9
explorations is the very real truth of suffering. Besides the curious
seeker, then, our work here is intended for those who are suffering - to
social and political levels, and thus one of the truths that informs our
explorations is the very real truth of suffering. Besides the curious
seeker, then, our work here is intended for those who are suffering - to
provide resources that reveal the difference between inevitable pain and
optional suffering, in such a way that the latter might be to some degree
alleviated.

Inevitable pain is a fact of life. I stub my toe. I feel it. I burn myself. It
hurts. Pain is a teacher that often guides us away from problematic
habits, like when too many chaturrangas in a yoga asana class produces
painful feelings of impingement in ones rotator cuff.

While there are indeed tales of realized beings walking through flames
without a flinch, we are not here so much interested in the development
of these powers (or siddhis, as they are called in Sanskrit). Our concern
here is another kind of suffering that we consider optional and which
often parades under the banner of psychological suffering emotional
habits that produce dis-ease in the body-mind.

(It should be noted in passing that psychological is not quite effective

at capturing all of what we call optional suffering, for this word does not
extend to the very real experiences of pain that we might, for lack of a
better word, call psychosomatic.

Also, certainly optional suffering can be seen at a social and a political

level. These conflicts that exist between peoples and nations are not
psychological per se, however these conflicts do originate in ideas we
unconsciously collaborate in perpetuating, and therefore in a certain 10

sense this suffering originates in the realm of what we might call

 unconsciously collaborate in perpetuating, and therefore in a certain
sense this suffering originates in the realm of what we might call
psycho-social.)

The current paradigm of thinking that circulates around psychological

suffering is unfortunately monopolized by the psychiatric medical
establishment. According to its predominant worldview, psychological
suffering can be addressed through prescription medications, because
the operating belief is that psychological suffering originates in the
neurochemistry of the brain.

Therefore, the solution offered by this worldview is to change the

neurochemistry through pharmaceutical chemical compounds.

Far be it from us at Embodied Philosophy to deny the efficaciousness of

prescription medications for those who have derived great benefit from
them. Certainly there are instances in which-, and conditions under
which such prescriptions are both timely and practical. However, the
scale at which pharmaceuticals are prescribed and consumed, in our
view, far outweighs the instances in which they are necessary.

And we are certainly not alone in this view. Our sense is that this issue
persists for two main reasons (only the latter of which we will address
here):

1. the incentives of a for-profit pharmaceutical industry,

2. and the myth of the chemical imbalance.
11
An article by Chris Kresser articulately and effectively outlines the
origin, the history and the falsities perpetuated by this myth of a
chemical imbalance that causes symptoms of mental illness, which has
been relatively pervasive since the 1950s.

Kresser cites the work of Elliot Valenstein in Blaming the Brain, a book
that discusses the considerable research showing there to be no direct
relationship between, for example, levels of serotonin and
norepinephrine in the brain and ones history of depression.

An issue with this myth is a classic confusion of correlation with

causation. Motivated by this confusion, one mistakenly presumes that if
some condition can be shown to correlate with (exist alongside) a
particular symptom, it follows that this condition is the cause of that
symptom. In this instance, if a certain chemical imbalance (low
serotonin levels) is shown to be present while someone undergoes a
symptom of sadness or depression, then this imbalance, it is thought,
must be the cause of that sadness.

The problem with this boils down to a game of chicken and egg. Did the
imbalance cause the sadness or did the sadness cause the
imbalance?

Because our culture in general imagines the brain to be the fundamental

origin and creator of psychological experience and believes furthermore
that the mind can be shown to be created by the brain, it is taken for
granted that one must have a particular symptom because a certain
dynamic of chemicals can be found at a particular place in the brain. 12
 dynamic of chemicals can be found at a particular place in the brain.

However, recent work in the study of consciousness shows that this

belief that the brain is the origin and creator of human experience and
that consciousness is the byproduct of the brains supposed role as a
god-like dictator is problematic.

It is problematic, because, as Thomas Fuchs points out, it separates the

brain from both the living body and its interactions with the
environment. As a consequence, mind and world are treated as
separate from each other, with the outside world being mirrored by the
mind as a representational system inside the head (Fuchs, 2011; 196-7).

Fuchs and others therefore posit the brain as a mediating organ of the
mind, but not the seat of the mind, for indeed the mind is not located
in any one place at all (Ibid., 197).

We find this teaching about the mind echoed in a variety of ways

throughout the various traditions that we discuss and explore here at
Embodied Philosophy.

The mind is a process that at any given moment reflects our

various relationships as embodied beings and our degree of
interconnectedness with an environment. The brain serves, in
the modified view supported by Fuchs and others, to mediate our
experiences, actions, and interactions and is no longer considered the
god-like dictator of our experience.

13
Instead of the brain creating mental life, then, in fact, mental life
(actions and interactions in a responsive environment) creates the brain.

We can see this perhaps most clearly by looking at a relatively recent

case, in which a man experienced considerable brain damage in an
accident, paralyzing him from the waist down. The old model of thinking
would have said hes paralyzed for life, because the region of the brain
responsible for the creation of mobility in the legs was irreparably
damaged.

Thankfully, through much recent research, this old idea of a static brain
has been largely replaced by the notion of neuroplasticity.

Operating on this idea that the brain is plastic and can be remolded and
changed to build mobility in the legs again, physical therapists assisted
the individual in a rigorous treatment that involved, at first, seemingly
fruitless attempts at movement. These attempts eventually evolved into
very small hints at movement, which eventually became actual
movement, which eventually became a remarkably full recovery, with
complete mobility in the legs again.

Observations of the brain during this process noted that a completely

different, undamaged region of the brain became active, taking over
for the part of the brain that had been damaged in the accident.

The moral of the story? The brain can be changed and rewired
with at least two components: an idea (neuroplasticity) and a
discipline (repetitive exercises) to make that idea manifest. 14
 discipline (repetitive exercises) to make that idea manifest.

What does this have to do with our original topic, the pervasiveness of
suffering?

Psychological suffering, from this new and radical view of the brain,
should rarely, if at all, be considered a disease of the brain. Instead, it
is a conflict, a dis-ease of the mind and its processes of meaning and
relationship.

Suffering is a phenomenological crisis: it ultimately can be reduced to

the range and structure of phenomena that are available in ones
personal world be they people, places, feelings, or ideas. Obviously this
doesnt mean this kind of suffering is any less debilitating or real; it
simply means that our approach to understanding and making sense of
these experiences are wrong-headed.

Does this deny the occasional effectiveness of drug treatment?

Absolutely not. Anything can contribute to a shift in ones status quo,
and changing brain chemistry through drugs is clearly a big shift in the
status quo, often leaving individuals feeling contented and renewed.

But as so many people who take drugs for psychological treatment will
tell you, these methods only work for a while. Eventually the structures
of feeling and the patterns of thought that are sedimented in ones
awareness will rule the roost, and so the establishment says, try this
new, different drug, and so on.
15
new, different drug, and so on.

Depressed and mentally ill people can have great days and perhaps even
recover through drug treatment; but, for many, until a daily practice of
shifting ones normality at the level of thought and feeling is initiated,
the status quo psychology will almost always prevail.

Like in the story of the man who lost mobility in his legs only to use a
relatively new knowledge of neuroplasticity and the disciplined powers
of mental life to change the structure of his brain, so too at Embodied
Philosophy we seek to build mobility in regions of experience that have
either fallen under a shadow of anxiety and sadness or have perhaps
never been known before.

As so much Eastern Philosophy teaches, there are realms of conscious

experience that go largely unseen because we do not engage in the
practices that give us a vision of them.

Like the visible tip of an iceberg, our status quo consciousness is really
just a fraction of the possible. As an asana practitioner discovers, after
years of practice, profoundly more space in the physical body, so too the
embodied philosopher discovers a conscious space as analogously
malleable as the space of the physical body.

The teachings of the various traditions housed under the umbrella of

Embodied Philosophy, as ancient as they may be, represent a wisdom
that, at least from the perspective of contemporary culture, has been
largely forgotten. Our addiction to the new and the novel in modern
16
capitalist economies veils itself in a myth of progress (if its new, it must
be better!), when in fact even a cursory investigation into these texts
 largely forgotten. Our addiction to the new and the novel in modern
capitalist economies veils itself in a myth of progress (if its new, it must
be better!), when in fact even a cursory investigation into these texts
and traditions will testify to just how progressive they seem when set
against the values and the worldviews that are now en vogue.

Our objective at Embodied Philosophy is to make accessible and

relevant this wisdom and teachings that have changed lives for, in some
cases, thousands of years.

Thank you for joining us on this journey into embodied

consciousness.

In Chapter Three of Embodied Philosophy 101, we discuss the

difference between abstract philosophy and embodied philosophy.
What makes philosophy embodied?

17
 CHAPTER 3

What Embodied Philosophy Isn't & Is

What Philosophy Isnt

Before we can begin to answer the question, What is embodied

philosophy?, we need to first unpack and define the two words that
make up this compound, for what philosophy is and what the body is
are by no means self-evident.

Indeed, these might be two of the most loaded and misunderstood

words in the English language. With regards to the former, this might
not strike you as surprising. But when it comes to the body, how could
this be misunderstood, you might think. Isnt the body one of the most
obvious facts profound, even, in its obviousness?

Lets come back to the body in the next article of our introductory series
18
and first take on this beast of a concept: philosophy.
 Lets come back to the body in the next article of our introductory series
and first take on this beast of a concept: philosophy.

We can describe at least two forms of philosophy that are often referred
to explicitly or implicitly:

1. Personal philosophy
2. Academic philosophy

Embodied Philosophy will carve out a space somewhere in the middle of

these two extremes. But lets unpack the above two forms of
philosophy to get at what we mean here.

Weve all heard someone, at one time or another, refer to his or her
personal philosophy: Id have the ingrate tarred and feathered, but
thats just my personal philosophy; or Everybody has their own
philosophy. Mine happens to be that I will not kiss on the first date.

Philosophy, as it is referred to in these silly examples, means something

like personal values or principles, standards by which one chooses to
live. We might say this is how the word philosophy has become used
in its most popular, colloquial form as a kind of feature of ones
individual personality or style.

This sort of personal philosophy is fine, but it is not exactly the kind of
philosophy were talking about with Embodied Philosophy, although it
is true that the latter involve values and principles. But well discuss that
more shortly
19
more shortly

On the other side of the spectrum, we are familiar with what we might
call high-brow philosophy, the serious kind, mostly to be found in the
halls of academia, echoing in ivory towers and read by few outside the
academy.

This philosophy, in general, is highly abstract and specialized. It

concentrates on interpreting, reinterpreting and defending the
interpretations of mostly Western philosophers from the European
continent: people like Plato, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche,
Wittgenstein, and so on. We call these the continental philosophers.

Besides these continental philosophers, there are also the analytic

philosophers, who are even more academic and specialized in their
philosophical writing - to the point where the layman would mostly find
it impossible to grasp anything that Professor so-and-so is saying. These
analytic philosophers are often hung up on mathematics and the logical
analysis of words.

Generally speaking, these continental and analytic academics have

monopolized the word philosophy in the public imagination, hence the
reason why so many of us, when we hear the word philosophy, tend to
think of an old white man with a beard sitting in an armchair, staring off
into space pensively, lost in a kind of a thinking that drifts far above the
world and its problems.

Indeed, philosophy has become characteristically associated with a

20
practice of the mind, a game of headiness and obtuse theorizing, which
is part of the reason why we attach embodied to our version of
 Indeed, philosophy has become characteristically associated with a
practice of the mind, a game of headiness and obtuse theorizing, which
is part of the reason why we attach embodied to our version of
philosophy: to smack against the culturally habituated manner of
understanding what philosophy is.

It is no surprise that so many people have come to view philosophy as

something out of touch with the world and therefore irrelevant to
solving its problems. After all, how could armchair theorizing help the
people suffering in the aftermath of Nepals earthquake? How can
abstract concepts make people less hungry or assist Syrian refugees?
Will LGBT people be able to live their lives without fear of violence
because some white dude split a concept in half and made a really subtle
observation about the phenomenology of color? Doubtful.

Of course, this is a little bit unfair, because the philosophers working on

these tasks mostly never claim to make a direct contribution to the
bettering of lives on the social level -- at least not directly. They
investigate these realities often out of pure enjoyment or for the sake of a
contribution not to social issues but to the conversation on these ideas
being had in the conference rooms of the academy.

The institutionalized culture of the academy perpetuates its own values

of discourse, and the rubber-stamped topics of conversation at any given
moment largely dictate the coordinates of the academic philosophers
world.

The issue is not so much what these philosophers are working on, but
21

that the word philosophy should be attributed to what theyre doing in

The issue is not so much what these philosophers are working
on, but that the word philosophy should be attributed to
what theyre doing in the first place.

According to the definition of philosophy that we ascribe to, what we've

discussed so far is not philosophy; perhaps these discourses should
parade themselves under another name altogether.

But this is not the time or the place for such a campaign. Needless to say,
for our project of embodied philosophy, this kind of ivory tower
philosophy will not do for us. This kind of philosophy is too inaccessible,
too wrapped up in a conversation that excludes too many people.

(I should point out, however, that some of the philosophers I mentioned

above Spinoza, Nietzsche, etc. can and will be found in the pages of
Embodied Philosophy, but their work will be considered from a place of
embodiment and not superfluous abstraction.)

What Philosophy Is

The Ancient Greek word for philosophy is philosophia and literally

translates as love of wisdom or friend of wisdom. It is this original
meaning of the word that inspires what philosophy is for us. But what is
wisdom? And what is love and friendship? These concepts themselves
are not self-evident.

This practice of questioning the meaning of words that we so often take

for granted (since weve grown up using them) has been a practice of 22

philosophizing since its inception. So to be a lover of wisdom must be

 for granted (since weve grown up using them) has been a practice of
philosophizing since its inception.

So to be a lover of wisdom must be somehow related to this practice of

questioning anything that is seemingly normal or taken for granted as
true or real. In our search for wisdom, we question and investigate the
often overlooked assumptions that undergird and support the way that
we, individually and as a culture, view the world around us.

But this process of questioning is an unending process. We dont, as

philosophers, intend to arrive at some kind of static objective truth, a
philosophical heaven on earth. We seek truth for the sake of seeking.

Karl Jaspers puts it this way: The essence of philosophy is not the
possession of the truth but the search for truth. [...] Philosophy means to
be on the way. Its questions are more essential than its answers, and
every answer becomes a new question. [Way to Wisdom: An
Introduction to Philosophy (1951), as translated by Ralph Mannheim,
Ch. 1, What is Philosophy?, p. 12]

So wisdom, then, is not something we possess, just as we

never possess our partners. We are in a relationship with a
partner, with a being that breathes, shifts and changes like
everything else in the universe. To be in a relationship is to be
forever in a process, an unfolding, dynamic experience. To be
a lover of wisdom (philosophos) is to be in an analogous
process and relationship.
23
Interestingly, the Greek word for wisdom, Sophia, is referred to in the
Gnostic tradition as a goddess. Wisdom, in this way of seeing, is not an
object to be acquired but is a sentient being that inspires love and
devotion. After all, how could love of wisdom make any sense if
wisdom was denied a life of its own?

Isnt love more like love when it is for something alive, dynamic and
luminous, rather than for something stiff and encyclopedic?

Naturally, I understand that this might inspire some raised eyebrows --

Wisdom is a goddess? Come on, now. However, I am speaking less
about something literal in the common sense understanding of that
word, and more about the images that we use to understand certain
matters of experience.

Pictures and images that are invoked through our use of language are
incredibly powerful and unconsciously motivate so much of the way that
we see and comprehend the world.

By picturing and imagining wisdom as a goddess, we invoke

the will to see wisdom as a conscious thing, and furthermore
to see consciousness as a pervading energy in everything, even
things we dont traditionally consider conscious (mostly due to
cultural bias, something we love to explore at Embodied Philosophy).

Well come back to the matter of consciousness when we discuss the

body in the next article, but suffice it to say for now that the choice to see
wisdom as a goddess hinges on the experience of seeking wisdom either 24

as a process of subject acquiring and accumulating objects or as a

 wisdom as a goddess hinges on the experience of seeking wisdom either
as a process of subject acquiring and accumulating objects or as a
relational process of subject to subject.

The latter structure is a more fruitful one, because, just as you would
hopefully never expect your partner to remain exactly the same as when
you met him or her on first meeting, you would similarly not expect
wisdom to be a static object that, once found, will remain stagnant and
unchanging in its expression.

This distinction between living wisdom and static knowledge echoes our
discussion of the two kinds of knowledge (object-knowledge vs. jnana)
from the first article of this series, Know Thyself. Like so many
descriptions of the process of love as being a fusion of two beings into
one, the process of jnana is analogously a process of fusing ones being
to the goddess wisdom such that previous boundaries of self and other
dissolve into fullness.

To return, then, to how this process of being in relationship to wisdom is

connected to our principles and our values, every tradition we explore at
Embodied Philosophy offers tenets of behavior, principles and
prescriptions for how to act in the world, that align most deeply with this
dance with fullness that is philosophy.

The prescriptions and values that we will explore here are not
meant to be seen as arbitrary commandments from a
transcendent deity; instead, these are the principles that
realized beings, practitioners of these philosophies have
25

found to be most amiable to the process of waking up and of

realized beings, practitioners of these philosophies have
found to be most amiable to the process of waking up and of
shirking the scales from the eyes of deep awareness.

Naturally, an investigation of this word philosophy could take up an

entire website or be the focus of ones lifes work, so this short article
should not be taken as comprehensive or authoritative on the topic.

Indeed, there may even be disagreements with the above found in the
pages you explore at Embodied Philosophy, but disagreement is of
course a part of the process of philosophy.

After all, who can claim to never have had a disagreement with a lover?

In Chapter Four of Embodied Philosophy 101, we discuss the

body and specifically the issue of mind/body dualism that breeds so
much confusion and suffering in the world.

26
 CHAPTER 4

Images of the Body

In the previous chapter, we took a look at what we mean by philosophy

at Embodied Philosophy and distinguished what philosophy is for us
from what philosophy is often considered to be, given prevailing cultural
usages of that word.

In this chapter, well discuss the body, which also deserves a bit of
unpacking, given how pervasive our ideas of the body actually are.

What we call the body often hinges on a story about boundaries, about
where I end and the world begins. In common sense understanding,
the body is our external architecture, the house of our experience. Seems
fairly unproblematic, doesnt it? I can see my body and the bodies of
others; no problem there, right?

27
Aside from the occasional amputation or birth defect, the body is
generally comprised of two arms, two legs, a head and a torso. Bodies
can be skinny or overweight, short or tall, have healthy spines or
unhealthy spines.

The range of expression individually is vast, but no expression is ever so

unique that we would be tempted not to call it a body. Pointing out
bodies is just not a big deal to most of us, while pointing out what is and
what is not a philosophy is a far more problematic undertaking, prone to
error and disagreement. The body generally does not invoke such
controversy. So whats the fuss all about?

The body, it turns out, is in fact a controversial topic, but not for any of
the reasons described above. The body is controversial for at least two
reasons:

1. The body is controversial for being spoken about as

merely a mechanical substance;
2. And it is controversial for being considered a self-enclosed,
autonomous organism.

Lets take each of these reasons in turn.

(1)
Firstly, the body is controversial in being spoken about as a mechanical,
material substance separate from the mind. Those familiar with this
discussion will know this controversy by the name of the mind/body
problem. The most primitive way of defining this problem might be, 28

how does the qualitative experience of mind arise from the purely
 problem.

The most primitive way of defining this problem might be, how does the
qualitative experience of mind arise from the purely mechanical,
quantitative functions of matter? How our mental states like belief,
action, volition are related to our physical states and bodies has been
boggling the minds of philosophers and scientists since at least the
beginnings of Western Philosophy (and indeed, this problem is
generally more Western than Eastern, for reasons that well discuss
later).

Our response to this problem is relatively simple: the body is not as

transparently a purely physical thing as our cultural way of
speaking about it would imply. Speaking about bodily and mental
events as if they relate to two distinct substances is based on a deep and
pervasive misunderstanding.

For those immersed in the yoga tradition, this is perhaps not an unusual
claim. The modern understanding of the chakra system maps
psychological experience on the physical body in a way that
communicates the seamlessness and mutual dependency of mind and
body, leading some to speak of a single body-mind (in the absence of a
better word that would honor the singularity of embodied experience).

Body workers and other health professionals have again and again
witnessed the correspondence between areas of tension and contraction
in the body and the triggering of emotions, memories and trauma. These
imprints of experience are stored in the body, therefore denying a clear
29

separation between mental and bodily phenomena.

imprints of experience are stored in the body, therefore denying a clear
separation between mental and bodily phenomena.

Modern medicine has generally still not incorporated holistic

understandings of the body-mind, perhaps because its whole raison
detre hinges on a compartmentalized, piecemeal approach to the body
attended to by specialists who are only responsible for their small
compartment or region of anatomy.

The ear, nose and throat doctors are probably the closest thing you can
find to a holistic practitioner in the Western approach to medicine, and
even that is anything but holistic.

This compartmentalized approach fosters and allies itself with a

relatively complete separation of the mental from the physical,
which in turn has created a rift in the West between physical medical
practices and psychiatry/psychology.

This rift is one of the most glaring and problematic inheritances of a

distorted mind/body metaphysics.

Molly Pieri puts it this way: Conventional modern Western medical

practice holds bodily illness to be separate from and unaffected by the
patients consciousness, while a second profession, that of psychiatry
attempts to treat mental maladies independently of a patients physical
health.

While there has been a general trend since the 1970s toward a more 30

sympathetic approach to holistic considerations, in general the cultural

 While there has been a general trend since the 1970s toward a more
sympathetic approach to holistic considerations, in general the cultural
milieu is still largely informed by this separation.

Operating from this metaphysics, the human body is approached like a

machine, and the Western doctor is its mechanic certainly doing very
well at fixing things when they malfunction, but mostly silent on the
subject of preventative medicine or how lifestyle, worldview and diet
play into the optimal functioning of the human organism.

The Chinese and the Indian Ayurvedic doctors, on the other hand, have
had a more holistic perspective on embodied experience, approaching
body and mind together as one mutually interdependent process,
therefore the dualistic distortions mentioned above are not an issue.

Our explorations at Embodied Philosophy ascribe to the spirit

of a non-dual body-mind and the philosophies and practices
that clarify that integration.

The term Embodied Philosophy itself is an attempt to integrate and

unify two words that signify the two sides of life currently separated in
the cultural imagination: the physical (embodied) and the mental
(philosophy).

With our focus as Embodied Philosophy, we deny that such a separation

can be reasonably sustained and furthermore that the attempts to
sustain it in practice ultimately manifest experiences of confusion,
alienation, and emotional malaise.
31
alienation, and emotional malaise.

(2)

The second assumption that we see as problematic here at Embodied

Philosophy is the notion that the body is a self-enclosed, autonomous
system. We can see this belief reflected perhaps most notably in our
ideas about the origin of self.

It has for some time been a staple of psychological theories inspired by

the work of Sigmund Freud that the coordinates of selfhood and its
fluctuations of emotional experience can be traced back to ones
personal history. Clearly this history is important, but by seeking out
causes of personality from within a seemingly enclosed mind and its
narratives, we isolate the body-mind from its surrounding context -- the
multifarious stimuli and energies that are incessantly acting on and
moving through the surface of our skin (which perhaps should no longer
be conceived as the boundary of our body, more on this in a moment).

We dont deny that personal history is a factor in shaping ones
experience - clearly, it is a factor, but it isnt the whole story...

From another direction, it has become incredibly popular for

researchers to seek genetic causes for any and every feature of human
identity. You like pizza? Must be genetic. Cant stay faithful to your
partner? Genes. Voting behavior? Must be due to your genetic makeup.

The term genomania has been coined to refer to this 32

pervasive compulsion to seek genetic causes for almost

 The term genomania has been coined to refer to this
pervasive compulsion to seek genetic causes for almost
everything.

The symptom that leads ultimately to genomania is perhaps the same

symptom that leads to (what we explored in the previous Brain article) a
view of the Brain as the origin and creator of human experience. This
symptom is a desire to find a causal source that can be isolated from its
surrounding context and environment.

While it is beyond the scope of this short article to unpack the science
that makes genomania such an issue, a quote by Ruth Hubbard in her
article The Mismeasure of the Gene offers us a glimpse into the
problem:

As soon as we think of DNA as part of the living cells of living

organisms, we realize that even a relatively simple trait, such as eye
color, cannot possibly be 'caused' by a single gene. She concludes
her point saying that the colloquial reference to 'a gene for' this or
that 'must not be taken literally'."

The main idea here, for our concerns, is that no one thing can
be isolated and separated from its environment, including the
human body.

What happens inside and to the human body is the intersection of a

variety of factors and energies, many of which originate outside the
physical body in the environment. Where I end and outside begins is
33

by no means self-evident.
physical body in the environment. Where I end and outside begins is
by no means self-evident.

Taking this to its radical conclusion, we might conclude that it makes

sense to say that our lovers, our friends, the weather, the earth -- all are,
in a very real sense, extensions of our body.

The idea of a separate, autonomous human body is simply an image, and

a problematic one at that, because, for example, the traditionally-
conceived human body is the host of a whole ecosystem of
microorganisms (living in our intestines and elsewhere), called
symbionts, which the body needs in order to function properly.
Indeed, we could not digest our food without them.

In other words, as this example shows, the human body cannot be set
autonomously apart from the creatures (inside and out) that it depends
upon for survival.

So if we can think about these symbiont microorganisms as themselves a

part of the human body, and therefore, in a real sense, a crucial piece of
who or what we are, in an analogous way, what we traditionally think of
as our body is itself a piece of a larger body that, if we begin to think
cosmically at least, extends to the limits of our imagination.

Eastern philosophies teach that where we ultimately place the seat of

who we consider ourselves to be -- where we draw the lines -- is
ultimately arbitrary and the function of one of an infinite amount of
ways of viewing Reality. 34
 ways of viewing Reality.

It is these infinite possibilities of viewing Reality that we

explore and investigate here at Embodied Philosophy.

As we conclude our Embodied Philosophy 101 journey together,

there are three truths we hope have been illuminated by the previous
articles:

1. Unquestioned ideas have the power to manipulate and

control our world in sometimes narrow ways that create
and support unnecessary suffering.
2.
3. We can change those embodied ideas through practice,
through cultivating new habits of seeing and being.
4.
5. The Eastern philosophical ideas and the traditions inspired
by them are fruitful territory for beginning this journey of
evolution.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read the entire Embodied
Philosophy E-Book. I hope it has fruitfully grounded you as you
journey forward with Embodied Philosophy.

35
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jacob Kyle is the Founder of Embodied Philosophy. He is also a yoga

teacher, philosophy enthusiast and writer living in New York City,
treading a path to align with what is. To this end, he seeks to prescribe
an embodied philosophy, philosophy not of the mere intellect, but an
integrated, non-dualistic living wisdom.

In 2007, Jacob completed a Masters Degree in Political Philosophy at

the London School of Economics and Political Science. He completed a
second Masters Degree in Philosophy at the New School for Social
Research in 2013. While living in London, he studied Freudian and
Lacanian psychoanalysis at the Centre for Freudian Analysis and
Research.

Jacob's ongoing studies in Western and Eastern philosophies have

included study of the Yoga Sutras with Edwin Bryant, studies in Tantrik
philosophy with Christopher Watkins, and a course in the history of
Yoga and Tantra at New York University. He recently completed the
Light on the Path course in Tantrik Saivism under the tutelage of 36

Hareesh Wallis and commenced study with Saivism Scholar Paul Muller
Ortega in 2015.
 Yoga and Tantra at New York University. He recently completed the
Light on the Path course in Tantrik Saivism under the tutelage of
Hareesh Wallis and commenced the "Entering the Heart of Shiva"
course with sadhaka and Saivism Scholar Paul Muller Ortega in 2015.

To augment his yoga teaching practice, he has completed over seven

hundred hours of training and workshops with master teachers Nevine
Michaan, Kelly Morris, David Regelin, Schuyler Grant, Tias Little,
Gabriel Halpern, Zach Dacuk & Leslie Kaminoff.

During his years on the academic path, Jacob became disillusioned with
abstruse armchair theorizing, as the possibility of implementing deep
change in his life and the lives of others appeared remote while in an
academic context. It was out of this struggle with academic philosophy
that Jacob started teaching yoga and studying more deeply the practice-
oriented philosophies of the East.

His dream with Embodied Philosophy is to contribute to a sea change in

how we approach philosophy, not as an abstract discipline out of touch
with experience, but as recipes for embodiment.

By implementing these often ancient practices in our modern lives, we

can change our bodies and minds out of self-destructive habits of
thinking and acting. We can transform our physiology and
neurochemistry by walking the talk of the wisdom tradition, by stepping
into a life of embodied philosophy.

37
38
39