Integral Life Practice, part 1: the body

Integral Life Practice Starter Kit

If you were to invent a spirituality for the 21st century, one that would reflect our current evolutionary position, that was able to draw upon what is universal to all the great wisdom traditions, that was conversant with the contributions of modern developmental psychology, and that had a place for everyone, what would it look like? It would probably look something very much like Integral Spirituality. The outcome of the contributions of many thinkers but as a synthetic unity largely the brain child of the philosopher Ken Wilber, Integral Spirituality is so named because it attempts to provide a complete picture, or as nearly complete as we can have it right now, of consciousness and of psycho-spiritual development. This is something that could only take place now because it is only at this moment that we have the information learned from both the contemplative traditions of religion (especially eastern) and modern psychology that allow us to chart out a developmental map of both individual human and cultural experience that lays out the progressive unfolding from matter to spirit. You have to imagine something that, while “resting on the shoulders of giants” is also so current and so chic that it could appeal to the entertainment industry. I will say more about this in a later article, but for now wish to stick with the history of Integral Spirituality itself.
 

What is truly remarkable about Wilber is not even so much his extraordinary ability to synthesize the world’s spiritual, ethical, philosophical, epistemological, and psychological thought into a coherent developmental scheme or his ability to be equally at home discussing Eastern spiritual and Western philosophical and psychological traditions as it is his humility and accessibility. What could have been just another moment in academic or intellectual history, because of Wilber, has turned into an institution, The Integral Institute, which is not only a living embodiment of intellectual and spiritual exchange among the various wisdom traditions with an ambitious program to make integral theory relevant to a complete array of activities or domains (from medicine and business to education and ecology), but also has the mission of making Integral Spirituality available to regular people like you and me. This radical accessibility (try to imagine Kant or Hegel with a popular radio show), which is of course appropriate to spirituality and a test of its applicability, takes several forms, from workshops and professional teaching seminars to three websites (The Integral Institute, Integral Naked, and The Integral Spiritual Center) and a weekly eNewsletter. Membership provides one with monthly DVDs and CDs as well as access to the websites, which include clips from various seminars; interviews that delve into sports, popular culture, science, politics, and spirituality; art; and musical performances. But at the heart of all this, and what can make it really relevant to your own life is Integral Life Practice, for which the Institute offers an Integral Life Practice Starter Kit. It is this that I will talk about in the next four articles, highlighting the four major modules of Integral Life Practice: Body, Mind, Spirit, and Shadow.

Body:

Despite an ascetic tradition that attempts to discount the body, it is obviously a central fact of our existence and something that needs to be reckoned with in our spiritual practice. As the contemporary mystic Andrew Harvey so eloquently puts it in his book The Direct Path: Creating a Personal Journey to the Divine Using the World’s Spiritual Traditions (Broadway Books, 2000): Celebrating the sacredness of the body leads “to an inward transformation that over time comes to reflect itself in every thought, action, and choice and to heal the false divisions between ‘body’ and ‘soul,’ ‘physical’ and ‘spiritual,’ ‘self’ and ‘other,’ Being conscious of the sacredness of the body slowly turns the whole of life into an experience of feast and celebration; every walk or meal or deep sleep or joy at a flower or beautiful face becomes a form of praise and prayer. Being conscious of the holiness of the bodies of other human and sentient beings makes you instinctively more sensitive and protective of them in every way and breeds what Buddha called a ‘loving harmlessness’ in the core of your being. To see, know, and feel through understanding the sacredness of your own body the sacredness of the entire creation--from the smallest dancing flea to the gray whale and the Himalayas--awakens a holy passion for God in all forms of life, and a practical resolution to do everything in your power to protect and guard nature from humanity’s greed and ignorance.” In the Christian tradition, the body is a temple. In the Buddhist tradition, Enlightenment happens through the body (“This very body, the Buddha”). In Hinduism, the asanas of yoga are preparation for meditation and awakening. And from Taoism stems Chi Gong and Tai Chi. Our embodiment is a major vehicle of our spirituality and this is pointed to in some way in virtually all the spiritual traditions.
 

The modular system of Integral Life Practices

Integral Life Practice is designed to be modular (hence it allows you to mix and match specific practices); customizable (hence you are given choices and options suitable to your schedule, preferences, and needs); scalable (hence adaptable to the time you have, down to 1-minute modules); distilled (hence boiling down the essence of traditional practices); and synergistic (hence you are working in different but complementary areas at the same time). So in creating an Integral Practice you may choose the body discipline in which you want to work. I, for example, have primarily a yoga practice with a more minor Qi Gong practice. I have also used the workouts unique to Integral Practice discussed below and consider my massage practice to be in this category. But a body practice could just as well be biking, swimming, or traditional western exercises. In the DVDs that come with the Integral Life Starter Kit you will be introduced to two further options: the 3-Body Workout and F.I.T weight training.

The three bodies of The 3-Body Workout refer to the physical, subtle, and causal bodies that correspond respectively to three states of consciousness: waking, dreaming, and deep sleep. The gross physical body is the body of skin, muscles, skeleton, cardiovascular system, and so on. This is represented in the workout with western physical exercises such as squats, crunches, and push-ups. The subtle body is the energy body, and work here involves any practice that “promotes a healthy energy (chi or prana) flow throughout the body, opening you to subtle and causal states of awareness.”  This is represented in the workout primarily by exercises taken from Yoga, Chi Gong, or Tai Chi. The causal body is so-called “because it is the cause and support of all others... it is said to be the finest and subtlest energy of all... [and] includes the entire field of manifest existence, feeling to infinity, releasing into All Space, and energetic oneness with everything arising.” This is represented in the work primarily by putting oneself into, or gesturing toward, a meditative state.

Throughout the exercises verbal cues help to remind one which body is being addressed. The very first invocation puts us in touch with the causal body. Feet together and hands in prayer gesture in front of the sternum these words are spoken by a narrator: “Notice the suchness, the is-ness of this and every moment. I am this suchness. I am the openness in which all things arise.” With hands then crossed over chest and on an exhale raised, opening up on either side, the narrator intones: “I release to infinity.” The subtle body is pointed to in a Chi Gong exercise. On an inhale hands are interlaced below the navel and the narrator says: “I breathe into the fullness of life." Rotating the hands on an exhale until they are interlocked with palms facing upward above the head, he says: “I breathe out and return to life.” And returning to the original position, he says: “Completing the circle, I am free and full.” The physical body portion of the workout is announced when the hands are put over the belly and the narrator says: “Infinite freedom and fullness are this precious human body." Then as we squat and touch the ground, he says: “Touching the earth, I am connected to all beings.” The workout ends with a dedication that recalls the bodhisattva vow to work for the liberation of all beings. As we stand in prayer position and bow in the four directions, we say: “May my consciousness and my behavior be of service to all beings in all worlds, liberating all into the suchness of this and every moment.”
 

Ken Wilber

F.I.T. stands for Focused Intensity Training, which is a system for physical exercise, especially weight training, developed by the weightlifter Shawn Phillips, who has recently come out with a new book on the subject, Strength for Life (Ballantine Books, 2008). Using this system is intended both to maximize your effort and to put your experience at the gym into a larger context than than the competitiveness, narcissism, or routine drudgery that often inform our activity there. This system includes pre- and post-workout activities (including centering rituals, visualizations, intentions, reflection, and journaling) that help identify your motivation, integrate the practice with the rest of your life, and dedicate it to something beyond your separate self. The crux of what is done in the workout consists of four steps: grounding, charging, focusing, and surrendering. Grounding is done as one approaches the exercise and consists of normal resting breathing combined with an intentional connection to the felt-sense of the body, including the energetic fields of the subtle and causal bodies. Charging is done right before the exercise and consists of 3-5 short explosive breaths in the upper chest to activate the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight). Focusing is performed during the exercise itself and consists of having a single pointed attention to the activity, remaining in and returning always to the present moment, as in meditation. Finally, in surrendering we let go completely of our effort, breathing deeply from the diaphragm and opening up awareness, visualizing tension flowing in the body downward toward the ground. We allow ourselves to rest in the state of witness consciousness, the witness being the part of all of us that is not our thoughts or feelings but the part that can look at them, the “suchness of this and every moment.”

Both of these systems provide us with a larger motivation for physical exercise than either mere vanity or the attempt to get physically healthy, although it is, of course, perfectly fine to have those motivations as well. They are integral in the sense that they include the complete body or bodymind (physical, subtle, and causal) and in the sense that they are meant to be viewed not as separate activities but integrated with the other modules of an Integral Life Practice and with the rest of your life. This, of course, is what happens with any serious practice, whether one wants it to or not. Knowledge about patience may come from golf, acceptance from yoga, lovingkindness from meditation, or relationship from prayer. In some way, the experience gained in practice will reveal, assert, or integrate itself into life, so that the boundaries between them become less and less clear. When we realize that that is happening in ways that we have not necessarily planned for or expected, we know we are in the midst of transformation. How that happens exactly will be unique to each person because, while Integral Life Practice presents a blueprint for accelerated transformation, the issues we have, the choices we make, the groups and individuals we work with, and the specific practices we choose are not generic. We fill out the blueprint with the beautiful, unexpected, sometimes frustrating or messy, sometimes grace-filled particulars of our lives in order to create the three-dimensional, lived-in building.

The Integral Life Practice Starter Kit as well as a short introductory book, The Integral Vision by Ken Wilber, may be purchased from The Integral Life Store (http://integrallifestore.com/). In addition, if one cannot afford the Starter Kit, the guide, Integral Life Practice: A 21st-Century Blueprint for Physical Health, Emotional Balance, Mental Clarity, and Spiritual Awakening by Ken Wilber, Terry Patten, Adam Leonard, and Marco Morelli may be purchased separately from amazon.com.