🌑 Mindfulness is a Misnomer

it's a new moon in gemini 🌑

Sati is the ancient Pali word that was translated as “mindfulness” during the Victorian era — the era that took complex Buddhist concepts and gave us riveting translations like “suffering,” “aggregates,” and “sympathetic joy.” In some ways, yes, mindfulness is a great translation for (part of) sati. It speaks to its attentional capacity. And, in some ways, mindfulness is a misnomer.

Sati is ultimately about training and increasing our overall capacity to be with life in a more easeful, non-reactive way — to experience freedom in any moment regardless what is happening. I have found the body to be the perfect place for this training. I believe it’s why the breath and body are objects for meditation in so many traditions. 

While my mind can (and does) pull me into the past or future, my body is only ever in the present moment. 

One connotation of sati is memory. Not in the sense of recalling information or having a memory of the past, but the actual act of remembering. Often, during meditation my mind wanders (it happens to the best of us!). When I come back into my body, my breath, the present moment – I’ve remembered: “Oh, yeah, duh, I was meditating. That’s what I was doing.” That very precise moment of remembering, of awareness… that is sati.  I am remembering to be fully in this moment. To feel my breath, my body, my existence.

Interestingly, to dismember means to pull the body apart piece by piece… Maybe, with meditation practice, I am re–membering. I am getting out of my head, coming to my senses, cultivating an embodied awareness… putting my body back together breath by breath.

It took time for me to learn to do this in meditation. Like many of us, I lost a connection to my body in early adolescence when I stopped playing sports and became self conscious about all the changes I was going through.  I began thinking of my body as an object more than as a subject (I  began confusingly alternating between exhibiting and hiding my body). It wasn’t until I started doing yoga in my early twenties that I began to (re)connect to my body. Through yoga (and dance), I learned where I carry stress and tension in my body and where I find and cultivate ease. I began to understand that contraction and tension in my mind has an effect on my body, and that my body effects my mind. 

As I've mentioned often, for a few years now, my main meditation practice has been lying down. Lying on the floor helps my body release tension more easily and sense my body in relationship to the earth – everything softens when I lie down. I feel more grounded, relaxed and open.  Learning to cultivate and allow ease in my body is an ongoing challenge but is vital to my well-being (especially in times of great stress). And, throughout the day it's a moment to moment practice of coming back to sensations, to feeling my seat, feeling my feet, taking a deep breath… to opening my heart. 

The body is where I remember that I am a vital, beautiful being capable of love – capable of tenderness and sorrow… and of wonder and joy.

Next time, in answer to a reader question, I will be sharing more about how I practice living a more embodied life. Until the full moon, here is a 20 minute guided body scan you can try on your own…

May we all remember.