The One Year Manual: Body Awareness

One of my many Kabbalistic projects picked up for the new year is Israel Regardie's One Year Manual, which is twelve exercises, one per month practiced daily, said to bring you closer to spiritual enlightenment. Regardie was one of the most renowned Kabbalist scholars of our time and has written countless books on the subject. I'll be posting my progress with his Manual each month and you can follow along if you'd like.

The first month's exercise is Body Awareness. Seems simple enough on the surface: Remain absolutely still, not moving a muscle for ten minutes. Easier said than done!

First you'll want to make sure you're comfortable so that you're not squirming at any time during the ten minutes. Once you've found your spot and comfort zone, lay your hands at your side, close your eyes and begin.

The first thing I always notice is my breathing pattern, the way my body heaves up and down. Then something inevitably will start to itch or tingle somewhere. Recognize it, accept it, move past it. There will be a lot of these along the way. When I make it past the five minute mark, my limbs start to feel very heavy! Heavier and heavier, in fact, until they become one with wherever I'm laying.

While it doesn't say anything at all about this in the manual, in the final minutes, I have actually experienced myself rising up out of my body. It's as though when you shut down the physical, the soul ascends to a higher plane, much like Kabbalists believe we do in sleep -- only here, you are conscious of tha ascension and it is quite a rush!

The first time I did this, I couldn't make it three minutes. As of the 15th day, I'm up to 8 minutes. By the end of the month, you should be able to successfully reach 10.

In order to gain any sort of advancement or achieve any goal, we have to first accept and understand where we are currently. The same can be said for spiritual enlightenment. To ascend like that, to achieve of a level of walking in the spiritual instead of the physical, it is important to first understand the physical and this shell that we inhabit.

By remaining perfectly still and focusing on our bodies for ten minutes, we recognize how much our body does that we don't even notice at every second of the day while also showing us that we have complete control of our physical bodies.

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Have questions? Need advice? Want to share? EMAIL Jason at jason@jasonsechrest.com