Embodiment

The critical thing to remember is that acceptance embraces the moment, the body, the mind, and the experience for what it is. It doesn’t try to change it at that moment. This acceptance creates an emotional platform in which changes can be internalized for the better.

Work with the body during an emotional experience has to able to undo the body’s defenses against emotions and make them easier to access for processing. It also has to be able to manage the extreme stress and dysregulation in the body so that the emotional experience is more bearable. At the same time, it has to ensure that the body is not excessively regulated so that the very emotional experience one is working with is not destroyed.

Queer theory in practice gives us, as LGBTQ+ people, a theoretical position from which we can counter discriminatory gender narratives, such as those explicated above. Queer theory allows us to put forward the idea that gender is unique to the individual. Spiritual seekers may need to understand these basic tenets, perhaps more than others, because we believe ourselves already to be enlightened, that our rules, including this long-held idea of “gender balance” to be revelatory and embedded in sacred texts. 

The latest research showed that changes in gut microbiota could affect the brain’s physiological, behavioral, and cognitive functions.

Most of modern yoga is done with the Advaitic intention of oneness, even if its practitioners don’t know it! And though the boundaries have become so blurry over time that we accept the integration of these two systems without even questioning it, it is important to realize what a huge leap it originally was to incorporate dualistic yoga into the non-dualistic system of Advaita.