Why do we have body tension?

What is this process of being human? Prana moves and shapes us, and Prana is shaped by our inner geometry. We compress and repress this energy with our personal history and the stories we tell our selves. Look inside, and see if this is true.

Why do we meditate and do yoga? Why do we feel so differently when we do our practices and become aware of ourselves? During most of our waking hours we can easily blame the outer world for the struggles and tensions that leave us fatigued and upset. If this world were only different!

But when we take time out to get a massage or meditate or spend time in a flotation tank, we are left with only ourselves and our own holding. Our own grasping and guarding become apparent. The incessant voices in the head are ours alone. These bodies we are given are revealed to be our true domain.

Then we can play with surrender. Every bit of that beautiful Prana is cosmic energy that longs to nourish and flow. We are not merely our tensions. We are animated and we remember that we do not really animate ourselves. The heart beats and the lungs respire. The intestines digest and the nerves sense and tingle. The brain cogitates. The organs refine. Prana flows, such is its nature. And we shape it with our stories.

Holding on to emotions, trying to control life, defending our self images, harboring unaddressed hurts and resentments, filtering life through deeply held myths of unworthiness and sin, these are attempts at holding Prana still. We wrestle with it and perhaps feel that this is what it is to feel alive.

Following tension to its root, what do we find? A story, a plan, a memory, a constellation of difficulty and fear? How have we muscled our way through our lives? Have we mustered up the effort to get things done and then never released the doing? Are there parts of us that we are afraid to open because they are so full of something we cannot yet name?

Prana is love. Our bodies channel this ocean of love into little rivers that shape us. Each of us is a unique and beautiful landscape. A practice that encourages the flow of prana is a practice of turning toward love. We become a part of the ocean again and the body is vitalized by this joy. The heart at our center is our guide.