Universal Physics and Body-based Practice

July 19th, 2006 Fred McVittie Posted in Evolution, Performance, Physics, Training, Universals |

A range of body-based (or ‘bodymind’) practices have been developed in a wide range of different cultures which are reputed to improve health, effect healing of psychic or bodily disorders, optimise performance in various tasks, enhance spirituality, etc. These practices include yoga, taichi, reiki, acupuncture, etc. There is a considerable variation in the extent to which these practices use the body: some, yoga for example, require extensive, often arduous body disciplines, whilst others, zen meditation for instance, require very little exertion or ’skill’ at all. All of these practices, however, stress that the body and the mind are not discontinuous, and that these practices are effectively ‘psychophysical’, implementing both mental and corporeal processes inseparably. The apparent differences in levels of exertion or required skill level is therefore not significant, what is important is the beliefs and assumptions about how the psychophysiology which underpins these various practices actually works . It will be argued that common throughout these practices is reference to a set of universal axioms about the physical world, including the central role of the person in that world. These axioms are those of a kind of ‘Universal Physics’; a set of theories about the world held by all human cultures and produced by shared evolutionary history and shared biological incarnation.