Esalen's First Yoga Teacher — Teaching yoga since 1968

I Am This Body

The human body is the most magnificent thing in the universe. The complexity and beauty of the life process is unparalleled. To be a human body is the most awesome thing that can ever happen.

When I was a philosophy major at Berkeley, I found the philosophy classes boring and irrelevant. The teachers were pondering questions that were not useful to me. When I took biology and physiology classes, I found what I was looking for. I was dazzled by the life process. The extraordinary combination of processes necessary to maintain life blew my mind.

Life is its own excuse for being.

To say that I am not my body, that I could exist without my body, would be to denigrate the the worth of life. Not being amazed and grateful to be a part of nature is to miss the satisfying amazement of being alive.

If this body is not me, who the hell is it?

I am my body.

See also our other pages

The Invasiveness of Native Plant People

Lazy Compost

Esalen Archives 1960s

Photo credit Nancy Jamello