Knowing oneself Awareness through Action

ALEXANDRA MAZEK and THOMAS HIRT show how our movements reflect and reshape our inner condition, and how fostering the body–mind–spirit connection can transform the way we experience and respond to life.

- 

How do we embody the meditative state in daily life? What does it reveal about the way we move through the world? In this series, we explore how the way we move both reflects our inner condition and shapes it—and how bringing attention to movement can help bring the two into alignment.

Daaji has observed that the way we approach even a simple act—like opening a door—reflects our inner condition. The attitude we bring, and the care with which we act, reveals something of our state within.

Hearing this idea, I was taken back to my early teenage years. I was a nervous person: my movements erratic, my mind restless, my body tense. Sudden bursts of anger and tantrums were common. Yet the idea of being present in my actions deeply attracted me. Intuitively, I sensed that a peaceful mind is reflected in the gentleness of physical movement, just as Daaji described—but I had no real way of approaching it.

I longed to change—to become steadier and more at ease—to be someone who could sit by the riverbank and simply listen to the sound of the water, as Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha does. I tried, in different ways, to arrive there. I tried yoga asanas, pranayama, meditation, and chanted mantras. I fell in love with the wrong man and tried to expand my consciousness through drugs. Inevitably, my nervous system suffered. Eventually, my body sent a signal I could not ignore: I lost my voice. Every attempt to speak resulted in a strangled, trembling sound that made others stare. My fear and nervousness were suddenly exposed—most painfully in moments when I wanted to appear confident. I could no longer hide what was happening within me. Perhaps this created the humility to admit that I had to start again—that I did not know, and that I wanted to learn.