Finding Peace in the Body

Finding peace has never been a thing that humans do particularly well, especially not with the world as it is now. It seems we have all come to accept living with a steady hum of background anxiety. Like white noise, we barely notice that it is there. The tension starts to seem normal because we have nothing to compare it to anymore, having lost touch with what a calm nervous system even feels like. Peace seems like nice idea, a vacation we never take, a reward that never comes. If asked how to find it, we would not even know where to begin rummaging in the junk drawer of our lives. The last place we would probably look is in the body. 

My first confirmation that the body might has an important role to play in our sense of peace occurred when I was a new student of qi gong. Learning this moving meditation practice rooted in Traditional Chinese Medicine, I experienced a depth of connection between physical and spiritual health that I didn't know was possible. So when I found an instructor training program, I was inspired by the idea that one day I would be able to share this practice with others. At the start of the course, there was an induction ceremony for our small cohort of students where we were asked to choose a symbol - a Chinese character that would act as a talisman throughout our two years of study. Some people chose "strength" or "wisdom," or other such aspirational elements among the options that were offered. I chose "peace." This simple act meant a great deal to me. The acknowledgment that peace is something you can choose and the dedication to that ideal has impacted my life ever since. At that moment, however, I had no idea what I didn’t know, and what I am still trying to learn decades later - how to choose it. 

My search for how to choose peace recently led me to Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, a program developed in the 70s by Jon Kabat-Zinn. The course places emphasis on a type of guided meditation experience called a "body scan," where you are directed to bring your attention to various parts of the body. The object here is to use awareness of the body as an anchor to the present moment, a way to divert the busy mind away from the stream of thoughts about the past or future and bring it to rest in our actual sensory experience. In this program, the exercise can last up to 40 minutes, creating opportunity for an awareness of the body that most of us are not used to exploring. Such raw observation can bring up uncomfortable feelings and unpleasant sensations. This can be disconcerting when most of us have come to this practice looking for relief of some kind, when we have come here looking for peace.

You may be familiar with this kind of discomfort if you have tried in any form of sitting meditation. Sometimes before we even sit down, resistance arises from anticipation of physical discomfort, with thoughts like, "My back is going to hurt." "This isn’t going to feel good on my knees." Or "It’s just a matter of time before this becomes unbearable." Once on the cushion, our attitude can end up being one of "does it hurt yet" rather than stillness or peace. I’m obviously speaking from personal experience. One of my goals in teaching, whether it’s art or tai chi, is to help both myself and others better understand and address obstacles to developing consistent mindfulness practice. I have definitely noticed that how we relate to the body can be one of these challenges. So what is going on here? 

We all, in some way, live at odds with our body - if for no other reason than it represents a time limit on our existence. We are all, as Jon Kabat-Zinn observes, "attached to a dying animal."* Our body is our mortality. Its limitations are the reason we will one day cease to exist, at least in the way that we currently know. Spiritual traditions tell us that we will one day be liberated from our mortal coil, but that in the mean time, its drives must be overcome. In this adversarial relationship, the body becomes a problem to solve or a project to manage - not an instrument of our highest good. Even when we seek stillness, we often bring tension to our physical form, trying to force it into a shape or a state that feels "better." This constant striving can keep us feeling fragmented, as if our body is something separate from who we are.

In response, we might turn to yoga or other "mind/body" practices in search of deeper connection, a way to find peace. These tools are incredibly supportive, but sometimes, even in these practices, we bring an undercurrent of control or achievement. We ask: Am I doing this right? Why can’t I relax? Why doesn’t my body feel the way I want it to? The deeper opportunity may not lie in getting the body to feel peaceful, but discovering the peace that’s already there — quiet, steady, and waiting to be noticed. From this perspective, peace is no longer something we wait to happen to us, but something we sense in our bones. It's not something we strive to make the body feel, but something we listen for within it. What if we even expected peace, just knew that it was already there as a natural feature of the body, waiting to be found? 

Shifting our approach to thinking of the body as an instrument of peace rather than an obstacle to it, we can begin to heal our way of relating to the body and come to know it in whole new way - as a source of our deepest wisdom. When we move from an attitude of control to one of care, we may begin to sense the same kind of natural rhythm in the body that we knew when we were kids. We start to remember that our body is not just an alert system of pain, illness, and anxiety. It is also how we love, how we play, how we are connected to all things in this world. We can develop our trust in its strength and compassion for its fragility. In this way, we become more sensitive to the subtle truths that it is always offering, moment by moment, not just through the five senses, but through many deeper ones - a wisdom that exists on a cellular level. We start to understand that any lasting peace in the mind comes through the body, not in spite of it. In this new awareness, the body is no longer a battleground, but a sanctuary.