If I asked you to think about your body, what comes to mind?

How you look from the outside? What amount of weight we’d like to lose? Our skin and bones. Organs and tissues. Muscle and fat. Cells and neurons.

This is the body from an exterior, objective material perspective. It is true, but it is partial.

Unfortunately, so much of Christian history propagated and reinforced a division of the material and the spiritual. Body and soul apart, despite being the religion of the incarnation, of God made flesh. Combine that with a Western materialism that also tends toward disembodiment, and here we are—many of us disconnected and disassociated from our body as a true aspect of our being, not just an object.

There has been pushback of course. More yoga and tai chi, dance and movement. Perhaps we’ve learned some about our emotional body, our pain body. And perhaps, you’ve already begun to come more into your subtle body—your mystical body.