From Burned Out Mind to Body: How yoga changed my conscious awareness

Gnosis of the Body

Continuing my personal story of going from burned out travel presse attache to full time yogini.

Musing on how yoga quieted my burned out mind and brought my attention inward to the felt sense of the body.

Yoga was my way of returning to Source of vital energy.

Diving into the practice of yoga also changed my awareness of the place of body in our culture, as a disrespected vehicle for the working body and thinking mind. Small commentary on social values and our relation to workaholism, and how we shame retreating and taking a break.

I compare values of French versus American culture on this.

Relevant quote from Carl Jung:

"It is obvious that social group consisting of stunted individuals cannot be a healthy and viable institution; only a society that can preserve its internal cohesion and collective values, while at the same time granting the individual the greatest possible freedom, has any prospect of enduring vitality. As the individual is not just a single, separate being , but by his very existence presupposes a collective relationship, it follows that the process of individuation must lead to more intense and broader collective relationships and not to isolation."

Carl Jung, Psychological Types (1921) CW 6~758

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