so i thought today of an interpretation of this.

the energetic bodies of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd chakras live in and alongside the tailbone and legs; abdomen; and solar plexus, respectively. their physical properties are those of earth, water, and fire–or earth, oceans/waters, and the sun.

think of using your inner eye and looking down at your own sun, water, and earth–as from the sky–and determining how your own inner planet is doing at that moment. how hot the sun, how turbulent or calm and rhythmic the waters, how stable the ground.

the great bill moyers was interviewed on Npr’s fresh air today, and he recalled a conversation he’d had with joseph campbell, the popular scholar of mythology, said this:

if you want to change the world, you change the metaphor.

yesterday, i was shaving in the shower. i forgot that i was doing it, actually, because this is a rote task i’ve done for more than 20 years. instead, i was doing what i usually do: analyzing not the job in front of me, but rather the past few days. I was re-experiencing conversations and experiences i’d had with friends, family, and business colleagues. i was somewhere else while my body–hand and leg–were there, experiencing the deed of wicking the hair away, down the drain, and off my leg.

at the moment i came back to being aware i was shaving without any real participation in the act, i felt the line between my eyebrows furrowed. it’s a line that acupuncture calls the “inner critic;” according to ayurveda, it lies right in between the liver and spleen lines. if you’re wrinkled there, which i was–straight down the middle–you are manifesting dis-ease of those organs, and probably of the stomach, too.

i know this, of course, and i’ve known it for years. and yet, razor in hand, i was aware of having forgotten, utterly and completely, to be present. instead, i chose to stay immersed in analyzing–criticizing–past events over which i now have no control, and which, in any event, having little or nothing to do with shaving in the shower.

for the rest of the shave, i changed my focus. i started noticing each strip of hair wicked away, feeling the weight and angle of the razor in my hand, and on the feeling of the water in the shower itself. staying focused like this had an effect opposite to what many of us might think: it relaxed the line between my eyebrows. i was aware of a calm contentment that also relaxed my upper abdomen/solar plexus area, where my stomach is.

the lesson in this information is to stay present. when you are aware of being as fully involved in any experience–shaving, crying, walking, sleeping, eating–all of your cells are also involved. at the very least, they are more occupied with the mind and body both assisting you in this task. this is a preferable state to the one in which the brain sends signals–typically ones of analysis, criticism, and discontent–to the body that have little to do with what is actually in front of you at that moment.

this is also why meditation is critical in today’s world.

last night, talking with a student after my therapeutic class at smith farm healing center, i remembered that for all my teachers, students tend often to be the sagest.

This student has studied with me for more than a year, and she is recovering from cancer. she is young. i’ve been away from the class for a few weeks, and i was sharing with her some recent events in my life, and my reaction to what felt like a big disappointment this past week. before i could wax any level of philosophical about the experience, she smiled, shook one hand into the air as if flicking away my words, and said, “you know, you just never know why things happen. it could be that this is for the best.”

a lot of people say this when you express disappointment. in general i resist the flicking-away-of-feeling-let-down, because i question why disappointment, among other emotions, is so hard to tolerate and accept. but last night, my student went on to clarify that our conversation reminded her of one she had with her doctor last year. the doctor, also a woman, was in reassurance mode, telling my student that–now that her treatments were over and the cancer was officially in remission–”you’ll have a better year next year, for sure.”

and my student, still with a smile (though by this time a wry one), said to me, “I told my doctor, ‘you know, this year hasn’t really been all that bad. i mean, i had cancer and all, but as i think of it, the year was pretty good!’”