We had the Sunday Introduction to Meditation Class at Yoga Bliss yesterday: several guided meditations and a period of mindful walking.  We entrained our awareness on breathing while listening to silence – even the silence that exists within sound. Our practice was inspired by Matthew Sanford‘s experience of silence in healing after a traumatic injury that left him paralyzed at thirteen.

In The Body’s Grace, the interview with On Being radio journalist, Krista Tippett, Matthew describes the silences of separation, connection and integration.  In his  book, Waking: A Memoir of Trauma and Transcendence, he recalls an inner silence he was forced into from which he eventually accessed a powerful yet subtle mind body connection.

In principle, my experience is not so different from yours, it is only more extreme. … My mind-body relationship changed in an instant — the time it took for my back to break. But the changing relationship between mind and body is a feature of everyone’s life. We are all leaving our bodies — this is the inevitable arc of living. Death cannot be avoided; neither can the inward silence that comes with the aging process.

I now experience a different, more subtle connection between mind and body. It does not require that I flex muscles. It does not dissipate in the presence of increasing inward silence.

… It does require, however, that I seek more profoundly within my own experience and do so with an open mind. It means that I must reach intuitively into what may feel like darkness.

In his interview he describes “separating” from his body in order to cope with the  pain of years long healing process.  Discovering yoga became a way of re-integrating those parts of his being that he “lost” along the way.  He had to feel his way back to wholeness.  He describes an exquisite, subtle hum of energy he could access in the silence that underlies the “noise” of flexing muscles of every day living:

I experienced what existence would be like before toil, before action. Like this is what it is when it just hums. And to whatever extent I can feel and intuit that, which I call energetic awareness or sensation, I’m getting a glimpse into a level of existence that we have a hard time hearing. And that’s part of why I came back to tell my story.

We can all experience our energy bodies.  Are we willing to open our minds and fully awaken our senses?  Silence can bear many fruits.  It can lead to separation.  Separation can lead to pain, suffering even violence.  It also offers us opportunities to realize connection and intimacy.  In the practice of silence I believe we forge an inner resilience that can help us really listen – to ourselves – and – to each other.  Our brief moments of sharing are an integral part of my meditation practice.  My life is so enriched by yours.   Namaste.