What is health: Meditations from the quiet with ayurveda in my heart
I recently moved my altar to the NE corner of the house, close to the Earth under a plume of plants. They are seemed to want to be together.
It’s the early morning on the cross-quarter day, midway between winter solstice and the spring equinox. I am sitting down in front of this prepared space as I do the things I do, like I do.
Practice Prayer Beauty
Except for this day. Just barely after getting started calling myself into it all, I heard a voice. In the ways that this works for me, a voice is often first…then imagery usually follows. This voice, on this day said,
“So. you have been thinking about health..”
In a strong, masculine tone and as the image cleared I was sort of surprised. It was Gumby. You remember Gumby? The green 3-d clay animated character. Honestly I am still a little surprised by it, but then I looked Gumby up and this little bit comes from the web page: www.gumpyworld.com: “Gumby has a magical ability to shape shift and travel to any place and any time past, present or future. He moves through any portal of the imagination—if you can imagine it, Gumby can do it.” Hmmmm…
Anyway, once I got beyond Gumby giving me health advice, I really loved what they had to say. It has given me some pause and I find myself strolling on my walks thinking about it quite a lot. The just of it is this:
Health means something unique for each person. And, it is possible to deepen our health, our wellness, our bandwidth but we humans have to do something very important to see it into fruition:
We must breath into the 2 dimensionality of health to bring it alive and 3-dimensional. Think about it for a little. It is so easy to research, read, investigate EVERYTHING. We use podcasts, books, audio, teachers, teachings, internet, electronics of many sorts to find information. Worlds of information. And that is not necessarily a bad thing, I am sure it is necessary and helpful. But in order to feel health, to practice health, to grow health we must bring it into the very real and felt sense of our body: our mind body, our physical body, our mental/emotional body, our spirit body. In otherwords, we must practice.
In the practice there are the places where the information moves off the page and expands into our being. The superhighway of being a concept, a vision, words on a page if you will to something very alive within. It is living, breathing and growing from inside of us, taking up space and making itself known. When we move health off of a flat surface and into it’s 3 dimensions it becomes real. It takes the distillation of the material we get from the 2-D and shape shifts it into something present, something to see, feel, taste, hear and smell. It becomes so much more personal and can be like a friend we want to get to know more about.
Ayurveda shares that health is found when the doshas are balanced and the digestive fire is strong. Our tissues and our waste systems must be in good working order and our sensory and motor organs, our minds and atma(very loosely translated as spirit) should be in a pleasant state. The term used for this is SWASTHA.
When I consider that health includes such a robust and thorough explanation and understanding it makes so much sense that it IS 3 dimensional and that practice, in its many forms and faces, along with the breath, is what brings it all alive.
Thank you magical Gumby.