This interests me concerning many facets of my life. I asked one of our instructors last night after class concerning children and mind/body unification. We regularly have children attend our classes, and they are so very natural in their movements, and very sensitive to what we're doing. They can always pick out the subtle movements adults are doing that we're not even aware of. They make great teachers
Here's a brief summary of what was said last night:
Children love to play and live in the moment, and we could call this mind/body unification of a sort. However, they do not yet KNOW that they have this ability. In this not-knowing, they have no way of knowing that there are behaviors that adults consider to be “bad” and some others “good”. First they must mature through the next stages of life, which basically consist of the children being instilled with what it is to be “good boys and girls” or “bad boys and girls” by their parents, teachers, and other well-meaning adults. And by the very nature of these conditioned boundaries of behavior, the children are forced to shut down their ability to be present in the moment. They are too busy being pre-occupied with being “good” and avoiding being “bad” to even be aware of, let alone revel in, their own experiences of life. Consequently, as part of this conditioned disaster of the human family, these poor children are then also taught to use their “will power” to force them selves to behave as “good boys and girls” and to avoid behaving as “bad boys and girls”. This effort takes the children completely away from living and loving in the moment, and creates a great and continued sense of dis-ease. We call this disease “suffering”.
At some point in his or her life, hopefully (and by the way quite rarely), an individual will NOTICE that this constant mental pre-occupation with fitting into the mold of how others prefer them to be is in fact the very cause of their suffering. Once this realization begins to occur, then the INTENTION to return to living and loving in the moment begins to awaken within the individual. Once this happens, and we gradually learn to hold this intention in the heart, our conditioned existence, and hence our suffering, begins to fall away, the more and more the luminous joy of present awareness awakens within us.
Made sense to me....
z
