Pulling Ourselves Together

The Christian tradition has traditionally argued that an aspect of human dysfunction consists is a loss of coordination between body and soul. Our souls live in a certain alienation from our bodies, theologians have observed, and at the same time are subject to the body’s whims, wishes, and demands. “If only we could get our bodies control,” this line of thinking too often continues. “If only the body had not wondered so far from our minds and souls.”

This attention to the alienation and lack of coordination between body and soul is shared by the broader tradition of mindfulness practice, but with a key difference that is, ironically, more true to the Christian tradition at its root. For the broader tradition of mindfulness practice, body and soul are alienated because the mind has wondered off—has lost itself in other concerns, in anxieties about the future or grievances over the past. The goal of the practice, then, is to gather soul back to body, not vice versa.

As Thich Nhat Hanh observes, “In a state of dispersion, our mind is not together with our body. Our body may be here, but our mind is in the past, in the future, caught up in our anger, in our anxiety, in our projects. Mind and body are not together. So with mindful breathing we bring mind back to body. In English we call it pulling oneself together. Pulling oneself together means that you become your better self.” (Buddha Mind, Buddha Body, p. 80)

Mindfulness practice begins with an understanding of the body rooted in the greater good of the creation. There is a simple wholeness to creation that the body shares. Under this vision of reality, the mind or soul loses itself when it disconnects from a deeper relationship with this wholeness—when it separates itself from the wholeness, most often in an effort to gain some control over it. This attempt at control is not only futile, but also damaging for the soul. It leaves it isolated. It diminishes its freedom, making it subject to the forces that impinge on it. (This is the truth of the Christian tradition’s concern with the power of body over soul. The mind has traded a life-giving relationship with the wholeness of the body for a combative relationship with a body that it attempts to subdue. Too often, it loses this combat because of its unrooted, dispersed state.)

Mindfulness practice calls us to attend to our breath and to simply appreciate the intimate relationship between soul and body. And, indeed, this intimacy grows through the simple act of attention. It calls us, in other words, to remember our creation—that God breathes soul into a body lifted up from the good earth (Gen. 2). This is our wholeness—soul breathed into body—and through attention to our breath, we take small steps towards living more fully into this wholeness. Mindfulness of this wholeness helps us to integrate it into our every day way of being.