The Marriage of Body and Mind

Greetings, Nice to be with you again today!

I drew this mandala as a means of stress management while teaching in Australia in January, 2006. The poem below it reads:

Thank You Dear Sun, Dear Seed, and Dear Flower,
For the life you give me each day.
You are Alive in me, and
through you I live.
I love you, and together
we evolve.
Together, we journey back to
The One, where
Light and Dark loose their identity.

Our bodies are vehicles of experience, through which we perceive both the outer and inner worlds. When we are physically stressed, we only know it through the ability of our minds to perceive. When we are mentally stressed, we know it in our bodies because it is our bodies that give us an instrument of perception. If the mind is unhealthy, naturally, it can only be exemplified in our body. If the body is stressed, for any reason, naturally, we can only perceive such stress in our mind. The body and mind mirror each other.

We can do many things in attempt to heal our body, but if our mind keeps reinstating the illness of mind in the body, we make no long-term gains in well-being. We can do all sorts of courses on mental self-management, and if we are ignorant of what it takes to care for a body, the body cannot effectively receive the impetus of the mind’s new ideas. Just as a printer can scan an image of high quality but can’t reproduce a high-quality image if it lacks toner or ink; the mind can’t imprint high-quality images in a body that lacks (a) toner (water, quality food, rest, movement, effective breathing).

This is exactly why I wrote my book, How To Eat, Move and Be Healthy!

Love and chi,
Paul Chek