14 Jan The body is the new soul?

“The body is the new soul“, wrote psychiatrist and author Finn Skårderud some days ago. And I have to say, that’s an understanding that fits well in my head. Having been much in the yoga community, now seeing it merge together with ‘ normal world’ (or is it visa versa, or we’re they ever separate?), the extreme focus on the body, how it should be, how to take care of it, what to eat and especially what NOT to eat (preferably being vegan, presence of various food allergies, taking supplements, doing extreme detoxes which has no clinical or empirical support etc), and so on… I mean, there is enough people in the yoga community arguing ‘the real yoga’, implying the emphasis on its implications on the mind and the spirit, but we cannot see aside the societal focus on the body, and that the outside/what you see is supposedly to match up or illustrate inner values. The spurt expansion of social media, where images and photos are the new words and narratives, arguably supports this view. The arise of Instagram-stars and similar exemplifies this easily.

Western minds are excellent in being result oriented, celebrating traits as perfectionism and compulsiveness hidden under adjectives as goal oriented, focused and determined. It’s even argued that our individual centred culture, promoting the unique through becoming perfect (which is a complete paradox) (paraphrasing Skårderud), is aided by the lack of consistency and setting boundaries in child raising. As these two factors are lifted as essential in children’s development of empathy, through learning to perspectivate other people’s opinions/views, and thus preventing stimulating narcissism and self-centredness in the evolving individual. This is anyway a debate going on in norwegian channels at the moment. What’s you’re take on this?

Nowadays even the term mindful has a generalized denotation as a misunderstood synonym to non-reaction, general alertness or attentiveness, the opposite of stress-activation (both neurological and affective/emotional) or at worst, ignorance/”push-everything-under the rug” kinda attitude. By the way, there is nothing wrong with normal stress-activation, it’s a quite clever communicative signaling system between our inner and outer expression (mind and body). These characeristics of neurosis are easily transferred when we as western minds, or contemporary practitioners, take upon meditative practices and yoga, making this apart of the same patterns, same neurosis. (When I say contemporary practitioners I refer to the fact of practicing non-secular or the deduction of compassion or the spiritual content, arguing that within the ethics and existential nuances of meditative practices, lays the deeper psychological meaning).

Since Descartes separation of body and mind, then brought back in the debate by, amongst others Merleau-Ponty and (fairly) recently Damasio in ‘Descartes error’ (1994) we keep nagging about that mind and body shouldn’t be understood separated. They are unified, as the alchemy of yoga also promotes.

So I cannot help asking, is ‘the body is our new soul’ a paradox in this wish for a unified-being perspective? And if so, did something go wrong on the way there?

Please share your thoughts on this, I’m intrigued;)