The Systematic Style of living puts a wall of thoughts, concepts, ideas, and distance between us and immediate experience. This wall is often helpful (who doesn’t love some peace and quiet when focusing on something?), but when we’re unable to take it down, we lose presence in our lives.

We hear this all the time—”you feel distant,” “You’re not really here, are you?” “Sorry, I was miles away,” “it’s like my life is happening to someone else”—but one particular description has stuck with me.

I don’t remember where I heard the phrase, but it stayed with me: “It feels like I’m living about 6 inches outside of my life, and nothing works to close the gap.”

Speaking for myself: somatic meditation closed the gap.

This is a large part of what we’re doing here. We’re closing the gap so we can live in our lives. —Actually no, even that’s imprecise: We’re closing the gap so so we can live our lives.

<aside> 💡 This may only be wordplay, but if feels at least worth mentioning:

The word “Yoga” comes from the same root as “yoke” and shares the meaning. Yoga is a practice of yoking together the body and soul—closing the gap on that separation between “me” and “my experience” until it makes no sense to list them as separate things.

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