I found a very interesting article in The Sun magazine, written by Amnon Buchbinder about an interview he did with Philip Shepherd titled, "Out of Our Heads."
Philip's book is titled, "New Self, New World: Recovering our senses in the 21st Century.
"New Self, New World explores the implications of the little known fact that we have two brains; in addition to the familiar cranial brain in the head, there is a "second brain" in the gut. This is not a metaphor. Scientists recognize the web of neurons lining the gastrointestinal tract as an independent brain, and a new field of medicine - neurogastroenterology - has been created to study it."
Buchbinder: You've said that we have a misguided cultral story about what it means to be human. What does that story tell us?
Shepherd: It tells us that the head should be in charge, because it knows the answers, and the body is little more than a vehicle for transporting the head to its next engagement. It tells us that doing is the primary value, while being is secondary. It shapes our perceptions, actions and experiences of life. It separates us from the sensations of the body and alienates us from the world. And there is no escaping the story; it's embedded in our language, our architecture, our customs, and our hierachies. It's like the ocean, and we are like fish who swim in it and barely notice it because we've lived with it since infancy."
"By interpreting reality for us, stories frame and give meaning to our actions. But there's a danger to living by a story that you can't question, because you start to mistake story for reality. And that's where my work starts - in formulating questions that can expose that story and hold it to account."
Buchbinder: Where did this story come from?
Shepherd: It dates back to the Neolithic Revolution, which was underway in most of Europe by 6,000 BC and gave us a new way of living; agriculture, permanent settlements, domesticated animals. We started taking charge of our environment. When you domesticate an animal, you become like a god to it. You determine with whom it will mate, and you own its babies. You choose what it will eat and when. And you determine the moment of its death."
"So at the start of the Neolithic Era humankind was radially altering its relationship with the world. The unforeseen consequence of that, which our culture hasn't yet begun to appreciate, is that we also began to take control of the self in ways that created within us the same divisions we were creating in our relationship with the world. If you go back to the Indo-European roots of the English language, which date from the Neolithic, you find that the word for the hub of the wheel came from the word navel. The hub is the center around which the wheel revolves. The metaphor suggests that the center of the self was located in the belly."
"The idea of being centered in the belly shows up in many cultures - Incan, Maya. there is a Chinese word for belly that means "mind palace." Japanese culture rests on a foundation of hara, which means "belly" and represents the seat of understanding. The Japanese have a host of expressions that use hara where we use head. We say "He's hotheaded." They say "His belly rises easily." We say, "He has a good head on his shoulders." They say, "He has a well-developed belly."
Buchbinder: This isn't just a semantic issue, is it?
Shepherd: No, it's deeper. These cultural differences point out that we have lost some choice in how we experiene ourselves. Our culture doesn't recognize that hub in the belly, and most of us don't trust it enough to come to rest there. Our story insists that our thinking happens exclusively in the head. And we are stuck in the cranium, unable to open the door to the body and join its thinking. The best we can do is put our ear to the imaginary wall separating us from it and "listen to the body," a phrase that means well but actually keeps us in the head, gathering information from the outside. But the body is not outside. The body is you. We are missing the experience of our own being."
Further on in the article Buchbinder asks, "Why bring "male" and "female" into it? Why associate "doing" with the male and "being" with the female?
Shepherd: The terms are imperfect, certainly, because people will tend to hear "men" and "women" - but I'm not talking about men and women. I'm talking about the complementary opposites that exist in each of us. Whether you are a man or a woman, there is both a masculine aspect to your consciousness and a feminine aspect. To come into wholeness is to realize the indivisible unity of these parts. At this point in our culture the male aspect has eclipsed the female aspect. I see this in both men and women. We have been taught to mistrust our bodies, to mistrust our intuition, to mistrust any information that is not analytical."
"This head-based, masculine perspective gives rise to three serious misunderstandings that drive our culture; we misunderstand what intelligence is, what information is, and what thinking is. Take our understanding of intelligence. We think it's the ability to reason in an abstract fashion, something you can measure with an I Q test. So we remain blind to the impotence of reason in areas of vital concern to us. You cannot reason your way into being present. You cannot reason your way into love. You cannot reason your way into fulfillment. If you wish to be present, you need to submit to the present, and suddenly you find yourself at one with it. You submit to love. There's a quote from the Persian mystic Rumi: "Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it."
Buchbinder: If intelligence isn't abstract reasoning, what is it?
Shepherd: It's sensitivity - specifically a grounded sensitivity, because a reactive sensitivity isn't able to integrate information. A sensitivity to music, to the flight of a swallow, to arithmetic relationship, to a child's tears - all of these are forms of intelligence. And your sensitivity isn't a static, permanent condition. Anything that increases it increases your ability to live more intelligently. Conversely, the constant noise and distractions of modern life have the opposite effect. The jackhammer you walk past on the street diminishes your intelligence by blunting your sensitivity."
And another exchange I liked.
"Buchbinder: So when we're confronted with tyranny, the solution you're prescribing is "self-achieved submission." But how do you deal with tyranny as a social reality? Surely the answer is not to give in to tyranny and let them have their way?"
Shepherd: You're not surrendering to a political tyrant You are the tyrant who must descend from your fortified abode, reunite with the body's grounded sensitivity, and become aware of the world as it is, as opposed to your concept of it. The more sensitive you are to the world around you, the more responsive you are. That ability to respond is the basis of responsibility. And the actions it prompts will be a grounded means of addressing a human necessity, not a reflexive action goaded onward by an idea."
"Ideas are seductive in their certainty and simplicity, but because any idea is a static construct, it stands independent of the present. To give your allegiance to an idea is to turn away from the connected intelligence of your being. I think the most dangerous people in the world are those who feel their ideas about the world more keenly than they feel the world itself, because they will be disconnected from what is in front of them and can act only out of their fantasy. Holding fast to an idea, because it's frozen, also promises to excuse you from having to change. But harmony requires us to change along with the whole. If you open yourself to the hum of the world - if you live in the present rather than in your idea of it - it will change you."
Buchbinder: When I took your workshop. I found it interesting that, although many of the participants were teachers of practices like yoga or Pilates, they didn't necessarily have an easier time doing your exercises than I did.
Shepherd: A lot of those wonderful body-work practices still emphasize how important it is to "listen" to the body. My work is not about "listening to the body." It's aobut listening to the world through the body. Once you come to rest in the body, you come to rest in the wholeness that is the trembling world itself...."
What I love about this article is that it affirms my journey of finding my way via my insides...by gut instinct and feelings in my belly. That is all.
I didn't have the intellectual ideas that I followed, and most often I had to toss out the previous 'intelligence' I had gone by, for it all was based upon something that wasn't found in reality. If my belly felt upset or anxious or nervous or more often terrified and in fear, I moved away. I let my body lead me and my mind often fought and argued with my body, but I had learned to respect my body's wisdom after failing to hear its cries of fear of my father.
My experience is that reality is found listening to the body's view of the world.
