Physical Movement is a Tool

My dear friends...

We’ve been discussing the various tools that I have discovered have given us as a pathway to what I call The Holy Experience. I would like to continue this exploration today with a look at the tool that I call “Movement.”

From the beginning of human experience our species has intuitively understood that Movement was somehow an important tool in both living a good life and connecting with an Essence larger than themselves.

It is no coincidence that even in the earliest times, when humans were feeling good about something and wanted to celebrate, they moved.

Intuitively, they jumped to their feet and agitated in joyous celebration. And soon their movements became coordinated, remembered, and recreated. In short, they danced. This is a physical expression of Resonance.

It is also no coincidence that when they felt bad about something, and sought help from what they understood to be a Higher Power, once again they danced.

We have been dancing and moving in a coordinated and purposeful way for millennia. Somehow we knew that it was good for us.

And it is. We were right, it is.

Not surprisingly, then, Movement is considered to this very day to be a joyful and wonderfully effective Instrument of the Holy Experience; a tool used by many to achieve outer relaxation and inner peace.

In Sufism—which is, of course, a form of Islam—some Muslims dance and swirl their way to a sense of blissful connection with the Divine. They are called Whirling Dervishes.

In contemporary America a new trend has been sweeping the land, called Ecstatic Dance. In cities and towns across the country groups meet weekly to engage in this emerging new version of an ancient form of joyful movement that can bring one an experience of separation from day-to-day worries and frustrations and unification with Life at an entirely different level. Nothing has changed, yet everything is different. For a moment, one can dance into ecstasy.

And, of course, all over the world will be found yoga classes and groups. Another rapidly spreading form of physical-spiritual connection is Dahn Hak, a Korean practice involving pre-set and prescribed movements that seek to unify Body, Mind, and Spirit together as a single life expression through sequenced physical activity.

Tai chi is still another form of such Body-Mind-Spirit integration activity. And then, there is just plain good old-fashioned “exercise.”

However you employ it, the tool of Movement has been known to produce significant benefit. Not only, as may seem obvious, physical toning and shaping, but metaphysical sharpening and opening as well.

And we’ll chat just a bit more about this marvelous tool in this space next week.

Hugs and love,

Read this week's Letter to Neale here

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Read a message from one of the prisoners impacted by our Prison Outreach HERE