:: HEALTH ::

BODY: The Vehicle of Relaxation

“In relaxation you have simply to relax, unfocused -- it is just the contrary to concentration.

Just before you go to sleep, sit in your chair. Be comfortable. Comfort is the most essential part of it. For relaxation one has to be very comfortable. So make yourself comfortable. Whatsoever posture you want to take in the chair, take. Close your eyes and relax the body. Just from the toe up to the head, feel inside where you feel the tension. If you feel it at the knee, relax the knee. Just touch the knee and say to the knee, 'Please relax.' If you feel some tension in the shoulders, just touch the place and say, 'Please relax.' Within a week you will be able to communicate with your body. And once you start communicating with your body, things become very easy.

The body need not be forced, it can be persuaded. One need not fight with the body -- that's ugly, violent, aggressive, and any sort of conflict is going to create more and more tension. So you need not be in any conflict -- let comfort be the rule. And the body is such a beautiful gift from God that to fight with it, is to deny God Himself. It is a shrine... we are enshrined in it; it is a temple. We exist in it and we have to take every care of it -- it is our responsibility.

So for seven days.... It will look a little absurd in the beginning because we have never been taught to talk to our own body -- and miracles can happen through it. They are already happening without our knowing it. When I am saying something to you, my hand follows in a gesture. I am talking to you -- it is my mind that is communicating something to you. My body is following it. The body is en rapport with the mind.

When you want to raise the hand, you have to do nothing -- you simply raise it. Just the very idea that you want to raise it and the body follows it; it is a miracle. In fact biology or physiology has not yet been able to explain how it happens. Because an idea is an idea; you want to raise your hand -- it is an idea. How does this idea become transformed into a physical message to the hand? And it does not take any time at all -- in a split second; sometimes without any time gap.

For example I am talking to you and my hand will go on collaborating; there is no time gap. It is as if the body is running parallel to the mind. It is very sensitive -- one should learn how to talk to it, and many things can be done.

So the first thing. Relax in the chair, have the light dark or dim as you like, but the light should not be bright. Tell everybody for these twenty minutes no disturbance, no phone call, nothing whatsoever... as if the world is no more for those twenty minutes. Close the doors, relax in the chair with loose clothes so there is no tightness anywhere, and start feeling where the tension is. You will find many spots of tension. Those have to be relaxed first, because if the body is not relaxed, the mind cannot be either. The body creates the situation for the mind to relax. The body becomes the vehicle of relaxation.

When you want to be angry, or when you are angry, if the body does not collaborate with you, you will not be able to be angry. A subtle mechanism follows, certain poisons are released into the blood: your face becomes red, your eyes become red, your hands want to beat or to kill or to hit. You want to shout or shriek, and the whole body is ready. Sometimes try -- without any bodily symptom of anger, try to be angry, and you will feel that it is impossible. Unless the body gives a base, nothing is possible. So the first thing is to create a body base.

So just go on touching the place. Wherever you feel some tension, touch your own body with deep love, with compassion. The body is your servant, and you have not paid anything for it -- it is simply a gift. And so Complicated, so tremendously complex that science has not been able yet to make anything like the body. But we never think about that; we don't love the body. On the contrary; we feel angry about it. And so-called saints have taught many foolish things to people -- that the body is the enemy, that the body is your degradation. that the body is pulling you downwards, that the body is the sin; it is all sin.

If you want to commit a sin, the body helps, that's true. But the responsibility is yours, not the body's. If you want to meditate, the body is ready to help you for that too. If you want to go downwards. the body follows you. If you want to go upwards, the body follows you. The body is not the culprit at all. The whole responsibility is of your own consciousness -- but we always try to find scapegoats. The body has been one of the most ancient scapegoats. You can throw anything. and the body is dumb. It cannot retaliate, it cannot answer, it cannot say that you are wrong. So whatsoever you say, there is no reaction from the body against it.

So go on all over the body and surround it with loving compassion, with deep sympathy, care. This will take at least five minutes, and you will start feeling very very limp. relaxed, almost sleepy. Then bring your consciousness to the breathing: relax the breathing.

The body is our outermost part, the consciousness the innermost, and the breathing is the bridge that joins them together. That's why once breathing disappears, the person is dead -- because the bridge is broken; now the body cannot function as your home, your abode.

So when the body is relaxed, just close your eyes and see your breathing; relax that too. Have a little talk to the breathing: 'Please relax. Be natural.' You will see that the moment you say, 'Please relax,' there will be a subtle click. Ordinarily breathing has become very unnatural, and we have forgotten how to relax it because we are so continuously tense that it has become almost habitual for the breathing to remain tense.

So just tell it to relax two or three times and then just remain silent.”

The Great Nothing
# 9