Focusing the Will on the Physical Body and its Development

The mind has a tremendous power to influence the physical body, for good or ill. In some cases, mental ideas can lead to extraordinary imbalances in the body, which can lead to weakness, illness and even the death of the body. Many times we will push the body beyond its limits without conce
for the effect this will have, or even, how we go about doing this. We also can put the body into extremely precarious situations with extremes of environment that can tax the body’s resources. There is even a saying that “whatever does not kill you, makes you stronger.” Unfortunately, while this is a mental conception that is widely accepted, it does not always bear itself out in practice. Sometimes, pushing beyond and into the extremes does not immediately kill the body, but it may causing lasting harm and injury that has long-term consequences. Recently a friend recounted her experience that illustrated this conce
precisely. She was an advanced practitioner and teacher of Hatha Yoga under the guidance of a well-know
Hatha Yoga master. He instructed the advanced students to undertake a particularly strenuous exercise of splits suspended on ropes, without any warm up or preparation or guidance on how to do it. As she attempted this practice, and followed the normal protocol of “relaxing into the pose” she experienced a serious pull on her hamstring muscle. This so weakened the muscle that some years later, when she went to step over a short obstacle, the muscle detached from the bone and she spent over a year recuperating without being able to exercise or otherwise strain the affected tissue.

We frequently impose upon the body with extreme diets and pressures including extreme sports, challenging the body to exceed itself. If not done with proper preparation, attention, focus and discipline, the results can be harmful.

Over time, however, humanity has found that the mind can also provide tremendous benefits to the development of the body, aiding it in the healing process when it is imbalanced, or systematically developing its capacities beyond its existing limitations with disciplines that have been worked out through time and experience.

When the will is focused on the development of the body, therefore, it must be combined with an approach that takes into account the circumstances, the current status of the body, the intended development, and the steps that it will take to accomplish that, as well as an appraisal of the time needed so as to allow the development without breaking down the process.

The will may start as a mental focus or intention, or it may channel higher energies still, and this provides us an insight into the future evolution of the body as the forces that reside in domains above the mind begin to make themselves felt and undertake to remake the body to be able to hold those forces and pressures, just as the mind has changed the body and its functioning to meet is own needs.

The Mother observes: “The basis of all these methods [of physical culture] is the power exercised by the conscious will over matter. Usually it is a method which someone has used fairly successfully and set up as a principle of action, which he has taught to others who in turn have continued and perfected it until it has taken a somewhat fixed form of one kind of discipline or another. But the whole basis is the action of the conscious will on the body. The exact form of the method is not of primary importance. In various countries, at various times, one method or another has been used, but always behind it there is a canalised mental power which acts methodically. Of course, some methods try to use a higher power which would in its turn transmit its capacity to the mental power: if a power of a higher order is infused into the mental method, this method naturally becomes more effective and powerful. But essentially all these disciplines depend above all on the person who practices them and the way he uses them. One can, even in the most material, ordinary processes, make use of this altogether exte
al basis to infuse into them powers of a higher order. And all methods, whatever they may be, depend almost exclusively on the person who uses them, on what he puts into them.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Powers Within, Chapter V Will-Power, pp. 50-51