When it comes to sensing distinctions within our own movement, I believe natural human longing for safety coupled with our perfectionistic culture breeds a special self-conscious movement impatience. We’re compelled to know, to rush, to categorize, to perform—whether for others or ourselves—and all of this obstructs bodily presence and the self-awareness that comes with it.
Even the simple intention to shift into a calmer, slower gear—the state needed to take the time to truly feel movement can seem ambiguous or uncomfortably unfamiliar. Initially, just setting that intention may bring anxiety. This isn’t resistance to truth, a character flaw, or the absence of some innate ability that only some people have. Yet it appears and feels subtly defensive.
In over fifty years of observing, discussing, and guiding people toward greater movement sensitivity, I’ve come to believe that simple underexposure is the main barrier. Whether chemist or athlete, most people have had little experience with this kind of inner attention—and so we can grow shy, even to our own witness, much less someone else’s.
Please sit upright in a chair as you read this next part. For today, I’m choosing a less common area as more familiar tensions often fade into background noise making them harder to discern—so we aim for a place new enough to grab your attention. The exploration begins with the more recognizable layer (physical) and moves to deeper layers (mental, emotional, spiritual) as we stay with the process.
Please begin leaning a bit forward in your chair and lifting a heel so that you’re leaning on the toes and ball of that foot; toes pressing into the ground and heel lifted. ‘Listen’ to your toes, as they press into the ground. Then:
Pause and scan your body for tension.
Now, trace what else is involved in this sensation.
Is there tension in an adjacent joint or muscle?
Does an entire leg or even the entire body weigh in to this sensation?
Might this reflect a movement habit like commonly lifting a heel when sitting, that repeats regularly.
Try describing every nuance you notice:
“When my heel rises, I press my first three toes into the floor along their medial sides. My knee rolls inward slightly, my same side hip gets tired, and my medial calf stays subtly tense.”
Now, widen your scan:
Is there unrelated tension in your jaw, neck, or chest that tends to accompany this pattern?
What about your breath? Don’t change it—just observe its rhythm and depth.
If you notice shallow breathing or a rhythm shift, pay close attention—Is it familiar? Does this breath rhythm feel relaxed or somewhat tense? Now, down-shift even a small amount to level the rhythm a bit. Then ask:
Did that shift also influence the tension in my toes? Anyplace else?
As you notice and name sensations, the language you choose becomes a bridge: between subtle awareness, physical action, and your relationship with other bodily systems. This kind of linking is at the heart of bodily awareness.
And then perhaps—if you stay with it—you might sense even finer threads:
Does this tension carry an emotion?
Is it old?
Does it muddy or clarify your current thoughts or intentions?
This sample can be tricky since just reading and sensing in this position can be cumbersome and render it seemingly useless. Do this process- take your time with a different posture/tension and then talk someone through as their guide. With a little more sampling, you’ll be able to use it comfortably and get a good sense of how reading inwardly, articulating for yourself, brings bodily awareness and improves your ability to articulate with others.
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From Bodily Knowledge to Intuitive Movement prepares physical therapists, yoga therapists and all movement practitioners to recognize various components of discomfort including the bio, psycho, social and spiritual contributions to posture, movement patterns, and to their pain. This book offers practical advice, real-life examples and case studies as well as deep insight into how individual bodies can move and heal within each body’s ‘normal.’ Sherry Brourman masterfully coalesces physical therapy, yoga therapy and pain science to create this valuable resource that ultimately utilizes intuitive movement for better health.
Oppression, cruelty, and danger are surprisingly matters that anyone can ignore and be unaware of if they are not directly impacted. And even when it is on our doorstep, we can choose to be ignorant about such matters by creating ad hoc explanations that do not situate tragedy within larger historical trends.
Many of us for years have been concerned about the deterioration of the health of the environment and the remarkable systemic cruelty inflicted on nonhuman animals in ecosystems and factory farms, and we watched all of this in horror as most humans normalize this. This slow destruction of everything not human sets the backdrop for numerous painfully slow genocides and wars that have been occurring in spaces suffering from the legacy of colonization.
As a South Asianist, I was aware of the war against Tamil people in Sri Lanka, and the genocide of Rohingya people at the hands of the Myanmar state, both surprisingly (or perhaps not surprisingly) supported by local Buddhists! As I complete my second book on colonization, I’ve come to appreciate how normalized genocide has been in various theaters for centuries, including and especially North America.
According to scholarly reckoning, prior to European settlement in the Americas, Indigenous people on Turtle Island number in the 100 millions. Within three generations of European arrival, that population was down to 5% of its original number.
Many people in the Westernized world had become accustomed to a creation of Europe in the Middle East—Israel. October 7, 2023 changed that normalization with what Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have concluded is an ongoing genocide against Palestinians—a claim that the International Court of Justice determined in 2024, is plausible.
There is a word for what we are going through: a polycrisis. Accordingly, there isn’t just one problem afoot. There are innumerable all at once, but they are not disconnected.
Selective Outrage
What I observed with every new sense of outrage over awareness of some injustice is how people would often react as though it was (a) a new thing, and (b) the only thing wrong. A remarkable single-issue mentality dominates the way people often react to problems, and what this ignores is the root cause of the various challenges. One result of this selective outrage is that energy is directed to very narrow causes while allowing all the other problems of the world to unfold unabated.
Root Cause: Egotism
Understanding what the root cause of the problems we face is not easy. In contexts of oppression, we are encouraged to buy our experiences as part of our self-understanding. In Yoga this is called egotism — asmitā in Sanskrit. Egotism is a conflation of my identity with how I experience the world. And if I experience the world by way of a certain racial, sex, gender, orientation, or political perspective, this becomes part of my sense of who I am. And when I try to protect my self-interests, I protect this very narrow identity.
The result is that I end up caring about what seems relevant to this narrow identity based on various extremely contingent experiences. This would explain how people tend to be selective in their outrage and largely unconcerned with various problems. If I identify with being human, then I stop caring so much about the suffering of nonhumans or the Earth, for I’ve conflated the interests I have with this narrow human identity.
If I conflate my sense of who I am with a narrow sex or ethnic identity, say being male or white, I then only put effort into caring for issues that impact this identity. In this ordinary way of existing, we are devoted to our outlook and experiences. If I understand myself in terms of a specific cultural identity, the genocide and erasure of other groups will seem tolerable if it doesn’t impact me. And I may even feel it is necessary if that other group challenges the privilege I grant my cultural identity.
Our polycrisis goes unabated thus because we focus only on narrow ideas of who we are instead of common interests which would lead us to undermine connected crises that effect all of us.
In contrast, Yoga, the original philosophy, recommends that we should be devoted to Īśvara, Sovereignty, which is defined by the essential traits of being unconservative (not stuck in its past) and self-governing (free to move forward). This is a basic interest that all people share, regardless of species, sex, gender, ethnicity, or orientation. On this account, the Earth and nonhuman animals are persons (puruṣa-s) too as they share this basic interest. Thus to be devoted to Īśvara is to be devoted to a shared interest.
When I put my energy into being devoted to Īśvara, I no longer am defining myself in terms of a narrow set of interests based on contingent experiences. My energy is devoted to what would be safe and healthy for all persons, for I understand that this is in my interest. If people lived life this way, they would put care and attention into making our world safe for all people. They would stop ignoring problems, and also stop being single-issue agents, obsessed with this or that problem, but not with oppression as such.
What Yoga teaches us is that there is no way to be devoted to Sovereignty but also one’s narrow sense of self based on one’s contingent experiences. If I were to be concerned with my sovereignty defined purely in terms of my ethnic, sex, or experiential markers, then I am not actually devoted to Sovereignty but to my experiences and narrow way of engaging the world.
My actual autonomy (kaivalya), Patanjali, the author of the Yoga Sūtra, teaches us, is made possible by an ethical transformation of abandoning the selfishness of egotism in all contexts (YS IV 29). So I must choose what I am devoted to: Sovereignty or the contingencies of my experience. I cannot do both.
If I focus on my narrow ego-based identity, I foster polycrisis by pretending that my interests are narrow and unaffected by distant problems. If I am devoted to Sovereignty, I cannot allow a polycrisis to unfold as that would be incompatible with my autonomy, which is an interest in acting freely in a free world.
Yoga: Anticolonial Philosophy
Why is this insight into the ethical project of Yoga not the starting point of Yoga education? I have found in my research that the very same forces of colonization that we live through structure ordinary discourse around yoga. So instead of going back and learning the original philosophy of yoga, we are encouraged to identify yoga with how we came to the practices of yoga, and in terms of the teachers we identify with.
Academics unconcerned with philosophy but who nevertheless call themselves scholars of Yoga treat these various social identities built around different teachers and lineages as the topic of the study of Yoga. Instead of studying the original philosophy, Yoga, they study various groups and opinions about the use of the word “yoga.”
Yet, if we are careful about research so that we do not try to impose our beliefs on what we are studying (interpretation) but engage in logic-based philosophical learning. We can uncover that Yoga is a timeless resource we can call upon to deal with the challenge of being a quirky individual in a beautiful world of quirky individuals.
All I did, which was quite unique, was to apply the very introductory logic skills I teach my introduction to philosophy students to the study of Indian Philosophy. This allowed me to discern that Yoga is a unique ethical practice centered around devotion to what persons have in common—an interest in Īśvara, or Sovereignty—that involves taking on the responsibility to explore being sovereign by practicing unconservatism and self-governance.
What this taught me is that oppression isn’t interested in individuals. In its most extreme form, it wants us all to be the same, and anything out of the ordinary has to be exterminated or bullied out of existence.
In contrast, Yoga, the original ethical practice, is deeply concerned with individuals in their idiosyncratic glory. It shows us that what we have in common is our individuality, which is something to be valued. But that individuality is not the same as the contingent experiences we have. It has to do with our ethical interest in being unconservative and self-governing. Whenever any of us put energy into working on these essential traits of Sovereignty, we no longer participate as agents of the oppression we experience.
A basic Yoga practice in and of itself disrupts oppression. But it is also the most essential and required form of self-care. This self-care is not selfish as it is not defined in terms of a self constrained by the narrow experiences of race, species, sex, or biology. It is a self that shares the same interest as all selves that we care for as practitioners of Yoga.
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To learn how self-care and anti-oppressive activism amount to the same thing, and to learn about the original philosophy of Yoga, and critically distinguish it from what colonization and oppression has redefined as “yoga,” check out Dr. Shyam Ranganathan’s book, Yoga — Anticolonial Philosophy: An Action Focused Guide to Practice (Singing Dragon 2024).
Also, follow Dr. Shyam Ranganathan on Instagram @yogaphilosophy_com, and Substack @drshyamr
Cultivating deeper attention and mind-body connectivity can be the key to unlocking held trauma and patterns of holding. We explore how to embody awareness through mindful attention and the breath.
What sets the physical aspects of yoga aside from mere exercise is the quality of attention that we bring to focus. A mindful attitude brings us towards embodiment – inviting our mind to where our body resides in the present moment – and allows us to fully tune in and gauge appropriate response. This ‘listening and responding’ is the basis of a meditative practice, and the route to registering safety through our whole system as the nervous system can settle. As in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra 1:2;
“…stilling the fluctuations of the mind”.
The importance of the pause
Within practice, we can slow down to truly feel the experience – yoga as ‘moving meditation’ – and also punctuate movement with places of pause, where we allow processing through tissues and integration of experience. Within the heightened input of information from the ‘doing’ of movement, points of stillness offer a chance to drop beneath the mind imposing its will or story upon our practice.
“The ultimate purpose of inquiry is that it allows us to pause. In the space of a pause, truth can shine through.”
Tara Brach
Whether this is in response to what has been (eg judgment, comparison or analysis) or what is to come eg (ambition, anticipation or expectation); a pause is a place for presence. Brought into the body and physical experience, this might show as noticing we’ve ‘checked out’, are changing planes (such as moving from low to high) or observational enquiry between sides one and two of an asymmetrical position.
When a physical yoga practice simply keeps moving, we lose the opportunity to catch up with breath, to let the ripples of the motions settle and to integrate their effect. Slowing down to ‘simply be’, we can explore the mindful quality of the experience rather than simply where to move a foot or limb.
So often in modern society, we are habitually ‘up in our heads’. To do lists, competing stressors, perpetual analysis… All of which can lead to dissociation from the body on a personal level, but also a disconnect from our environment, those around us. We have become more like machines in our conditioned drive for productivity. Perhaps this is why so many of us are drawn to modalities such as yoga and Somatics, which bring us back into connection, which literally earth us.
An interesting lens through which we can access a sense of grounding is the chakras. Perhaps no other spiritual map has taken up human imagination as much, allowing us a framework through which to explore the polarities of light and shadow, spirit and matter, and embodiment as part of a healthy psyche. For digestive health, the polarities of nourishment and elimination are a potent expression of this animism. The chakra system has morphed from its eastern roots – much through the work of 20th-century psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung, as well as the Theosophy and ‘New Age’ movements of the 1960s-80s – as a way of mapping how we feel and respond throughout life. As a universally acknowledged topography for mind-body symbolism, this can be a useful route into modern body psychology, psychosomatic and trauma work.
As our digestive tract is such a repository for the unconscious conditionings we can push down and continue to act from, self-enquiry through mind-body work provides some sense of the journey. Western developmental ideas can work so well in conjunction with the lineage of yoga.
Leonie Taylor & Charlotte Watts explore how our skin is the first line in communication, both to our internal landscape and the world around us.
The integumentary system (aka the skin)
The integumentary system, otherwise known as our skin, is both a boundary and a contact surface, a sensory organ. Every inch of our skin hosts over 2.5 million bacteria. The make-up of the skin microbiome varies greatly between individuals as well as where on the body it is, influenced by:
Physiology: sex hormones, age and site
Environment: climate and geographical location
Immune system: previous exposures and inflammation
…And how yoga – both physically and philosophically – can ease the path to healing
By Leonie Taylor & Charlotte Watts
From content covered in their books Yoga Therapy for Digestive Health and Yoga & Somatics for Immune & Respiratory Health.
To talk ‘health’ in a modern context is to recognise the need to be ‘trauma-informed’ and meet the recognition that we are all holding the stories of the past in various ways, much of which is unconscious and comes out in reactions that may overwhelm or that we don’t understand. This is not to teach a specific ‘trauma class’, but to be aware of holding compassionate space for the subtleties that tuning in and embodiment can uncover.
We don’t need to identify or even mention trauma but whether teaching a class or holding space for ourselves, recognising that tuning into our needs, boundaries and responses is to allow any nature of experience to arise. Whether we are holding intergenerational, shock, developmental or vicarious trauma, embodied awareness (tuning into the sensory, bodily experience of each moment) can help us navigate towards a relationship with grounding and even calm. It may even be the gateway towards post-traumatic growth.
We explore why listening in to and cultivating compassion for your microbiome can affect your whole health, including your immunity and mood…
Written by Charlotte Watts and Leonie Taylor, co-authors of Yoga Therapy for Digestive Health and Yoga and Somatics for Immune and Respiratory Health.
When we explore a meditative yoga or somatic practice, we bring attention to the subtle body, our interior landscape, as a means of then expanding clearer compassionate connection to our environment. In scientific terms, this plays out in the relationship between our microbiome and our whole body-mind integration, and out into the world around us.
The importance of the gut environment – the microbiome – on all aspects of our health, including psychological, is being increasingly researched. We are home to trillions of bacteria and, in a healthy digestive tract, 80% friendly, 20% pathogenic. The beneficial or probiotic bacteria help keep harmful bacteria as well as colonisers like yeast in check. Low probiotic bacteria levels are associated with depression and fatigue states, whereas a healthy gut flora can modulate the hypersensitivity that may come from chronic exposure to stress. Our microbiome is now believed to be a large part of the signalling mechanisms up through the gut-brain axis, where its communication plays a vital role in healthy brain function.
Pranayama, yogic breathing, means ‘extends life force’. This points to the importance of the breath to our whole health; healthy breathing patterns not only support respiratory health but also affect our immune capacity. This in turn affects our digestive and whole body health.
January is a common time for resolution-based diets and lifestyle shifts that may purport to ‘boost our immunity’. As we explore in Yoga & Somatics for Immune & Respiratory Health, ‘boosting’ immunity is, however, a problematic phrase, as immune issues are so often down to poor modulation – inappropriate rather than inadequate immune responses – with some parts stuck on over-reaction, especially inflammation. We can see in Fig 1, below, how the immune system’s balance can become dysregulated in either direction, leading to different issues.
‘Inflammaging’, a term coined by Italian researcher Claudio Franceschi in 2000, refers to the low-grade chronic inflammation that often characterises the ageing process. This may partially explain why some older people suffer more from diseases such as COVID-19. Beyond this pandemic, many refer to the creeping symptoms related to inflammation – such as joint pain, loss of mobility or issues related to immune and respiratory health – as an inevitable sign of ageing1.
