Our body is our foundationSpirituality

Our body is a wonderful mechanism. It goes on functioning beautifully and efficiently without our knowledge. We eat food and this food becomes our blood, bones and marrow and, above all, our consciousness.

We have no idea how it happens. No scientist on earth has ever been able to fully explain this alchemy of transformation. The body seems to have a natural wisdom to perform this miracle only if we let it function in its natural way and do not interfere with it. And what is most important is not to deprive our body of the required amount of food, work and sleep. What's important is not to force the body to do anything unnatural. We need to be able to communicate with our body and respond to it.

Our body is our foundation. It is the edifice in which the divine resides. It also acts as our mirror. Our mind may hide what we don't want to show to the world but our body has its own language. It manifests our health and illness without any fear.

Any disturbance in our psyche affects our body and the vibrations in our body create a certain colour or aura. Doctors and scientists have now come to recognise what common sense has always told us-that there is a deep connection between body and mind and this profoundly affects our overall physical health and sense of wellbeing. Researchers have found that nearly half our physical ailments are stress-related. And the 'placebo effect' -where people get better just because they believe that a certain treatment or medicine is going to help them, even if they are only taking a sugar pill-is well documented.

There are four levels of our existence-our body, our thoughts, our feelings and our consciousness, which transcends the former three levels. These levels can function in harmony only when we are fully conscious.

Osho has devised a wonderful method of talking to one's body and mind and making them both listen. We have to establish a relationship with them and it works. Osho developed this revolutionary technique in 1989, just two months before he left his body. It started as an experiment with his own body, when his shoulder was giving him a great deal of pain. According to notes taken by his secretary at the time, Osho told his shoulder to 'drop the pain' and it did-literally!-as the pain dropped from the shoulder first into the arm and then the leg. But he kept on experimenting and invited others to do the same. Over the next few days and weeks, a new meditative therapy was born: 'Reminding Yourself of the Forgotten Language of Talking to the Body and Mind'.

One can do a talking-tobody meditation by channelising one's consciousness in each part of one's body and feeling it from within. Slowly, we are able to communicate with it and it starts responding. Then we can go to the deeper layers of our feelings and thoughts and realise inner harmony between body, mind and soul. The first step to total wellness and self-realisation begins with our body. In Zen Buddism, they say: "This Very Body, the Buddha!"