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Lately, in sirsasana, it’s easy to find the balance point where I feel… nothing. No up, no down, no side to side. Just nothing. No shoulders, no arms, no trunk, no legs. No body, basically. Nothing to adjust, nothing to fix.

It’s all very Heart Sutra: “no attainment with nothing to attain.”

So, in that moment, when I actually don’t feel my body, am I fully embodied, or totally disembodied?

I wondered about this today, just after my visit with Candice, Massage Therapist of the Steel Thumb Order. I *think* I felt her crushing the knots around my shoulder blades, but somehow I was floating outside the experience. Or floating inside it, maybe.

What’s the difference between embodied and disembodied?

Yes, I know this is just like asking a zen question about same and different — the answer is to just be in the experience. What matter does it make, how I conceptualize like and unlike, whether I am embodied or disembodied? Just words added to an experience, just extraneous conceptualization, just “painting legs on a snake.”

I know.

But it’s fun to think about.

***

Lunch with Sanskrit Scholar. She’s a force of nature.

There’s nothing better than seeing someone create (and take responsibility for) their own reality.

I went on and on about Matthew Sweeney’s workshop. How can I still have things to say about that? I’m not repeating myself, either — there just seems to be more and more to the experience, the deeper I dig.

And yet, not unlike a fully dis/embodied sirsasana, it all just comes back around to doing it. To practicing and practicing and putting everything else down.