Vipassna : Mind-Body Consonance

Just like we have vowels and consonants in scripts wherein the vowels are omnipresent - as vowels and as well as part of consonants, in physical world we have mind and body wherein the mind is omnipresent - as mind itself and as controller of the body. All of body metabolism are governed by mind - mostly sub-consciously. A sub-conscious mind gives some liberty to the body to function almost autonomously and err to get sick.
A prominent Theo : Gautama Buddha, not the Siddhartha Buddha of Boddha Dharma fame, propounded a way of mind lookingafter the body functioning consciously and curing its ailments, if any. This technique is called Vipassana - meaning ‘psycho-analytics’ of the body.Posture for Comfortable SittingThe usual tradition of sitting with legs fully-folded at knees, both feet close to each other knees, and knees almost touching the flat ground in level of the buttocks, called Padmasana, gives some abnormal twist to the knee joints and so can not be adopted for long except through long practice. Its long practice stretches and twists the knee ligaments beyond their normal stretch loosening the knee joint which is adversely felt in old age when the ligaments get further loosened. This posture of sitting is not recommended in Vipassna but any comfortable posture suiting the subject is recommended. The idea is that no body part must be over-stressed as to draw mind’s attention to itself for a comfort.

Isolation of Mind from the World

The place and situation of the subject must be calm and quite not to disturb him/her and distract mind from the body. For further isolation, eyes of the subject must be softly closed to prevent outside view but not to put any strain on the eye balls and the eye-lids. The body should have minimum of touches of hard/tight clothes and must be fresh and clean to avoid any in-between itching. The backbone must be straight naturally but not strained in any way. Hands may be put one over the other in the lap withunstressed and free arms.
Not to get disturbed by the digestion process and not to disturb it in any way, the exercise must not be taken up within an hour of taking the meals which should be light, easily digestible and nutritive. Oatmeal or wheat porridge,Saboo-dana, seasonal fruits, etc. are highly recommended.

Focusing the Mind

Now, with body in full comfort and mind free from any disturbancesfrom the external world, the subject trains his/her mind to observe his/her natural breathing without disturbing it in any way until the mind calms down and gets trained to focus. In the first session, it may take 15-20 minutes but later even 5 minutes are good enough for this initial step of Vipassna.

The Exercise

Now move the mind’s attention consciously to the place joining the two eyes and the nose. This is the easiest place in the body for a sharp focus of the mind. When the focus is reduced to a point, move the attention very slowly in any direction on the body surface and keep on moving to cover almost the whole body. In this process, the subject keeps on visualising the body through his/her mind’s eye as it moves from one point to the other. All along, the mind remains fully conscious of its movements and visualizations. Such a practice need be continued from half an hour to one hour for about a week. During this practice, the mind gets fully trained to consciously control the body functioning.
The next and the final phase of Vipassna is to look inside the body through mind’s eye gradually moving from one organ to the other and mentally asking them ‘how do you do?’ Any minor ailment in the body will get minutely noticed by the mind and a corrective action will be started. However, if there is some major ailment, the mind need to observe it, analyze it and focus on it for some time to start a corrective action.
It is observed that any body ailment may be cured by this method, but the duration of cure may vary depending on the seriousness of the ailment and the nutrition the body gets during this process.

Nutrition

Since the mind remains in conscious state for durations longer than normal, it needs a good nutrition. Simultaneously, since the body undergoes a lot of corrective actions inside as a result of this exercise, it also needs good nutrition which must be suitable to the organs going into corrections. The basic principle behind food item selection is that a food item feeds a body organ best if its natural shape resembles the shape of the body organ