What we know in our Bones

Sometimes we say that we can feel something in our bones or we know something in our bones. And my sense is that we're not just talking about intuition, but we're talking about something else, a visceral feeling something that is of the body. In this video, I'm going to share with you the archetypal invocation of bones, especially through this amazing goddess Chamuda.

In a philosophy or tradition, where there is a lot of importance given to body and to matter, bones form the architecture of the body itself. In many of the modern mainstream philosophies, we think of consciousness and matter as separate things. And we think of consciousness as somewhat higher than matter. Many philosophies have been rather dismissive, of body, and of matter, and also of the experiences of body like sensations and feelings, and emotions.

Bones as archetypal comes from very old traditions, traditions that are older than the philosophies that are current, and where body was the centre of the invocation of consciousness and where consciousness was considered to be immanent in matter.

The deepest essence of our body is the bone of because of course the bone is what holds everything together. In one of the tritual invocations in India, the bones are compared to the constellations in the sky. And if you look at the constellations, and you draw lines, as you can see in some astrological or a maps of the sky, they do look like they have these bones connecting the different stars or the different celestial bodies in constellation. So also, the bones in our body connect the different parts of our body, and they are arranged in constellations. And these constellations of body parts, which all move in unique ways.

In some shamanic traditions, they used to have these rituals where they would collect bones and reorganize them. This was a way of reorganizing your consciousness. Archetypal dance is often that reorganization as movement. For example, in Indian dance, which is what I'm inspired by, you can see how the body moves in these multiple constellations all at the same time. And through that movement, we not only transform our experience of body, but when we do that, of course, we transform our consciousness because consciousness is immanent in the body. A wonderful deity that is relevant to this invocation of bone is Goddess Chamunda. And I'm going to share the dance of this Deity with you.