Matthew Sanford – The Body's Grace

On Being with Krista Tippett

On Being Studios

Society, Spirituality, Society & Culture, Sociology, Culture, Science, Religion & Spirituality, Krista Tippett, Social Sciences, On Being, Arts

4.7 • 10.2K Ratings

🗓️ 19 October 2023

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A wondrous, buried treasure from the 20-year On Being archive, with renowned yoga teacher Matthew Sanford. Be prepared, as you listen to what follows, to take in subtleties and gracefulness you've never before pondered — or tried to feel in yourself — in the interplay between your mind and your body. Matthew has an immensely energetic physical presence. He has been paralyzed from the chest down since a car accident in 1978. But he likes to say that his experience is only more extreme, not so different, from that of everyone else. He's written, "We are all leaving our bodies — this is the inevitable arc of living. Death cannot be avoided; neither can the inward silence that comes with the aging process." Matthew’s intricate knowledge of that "inward silence," which he was forced to befriend after the noisy connections which most of us take for granted were severed — it’s revelatory. So is his insistence that it’s not possible to live more deeply in your body — in all its grace and all its flaws — without becoming more compassionate towards all of life. And: if you do yoga, you will never think about what it is affecting inside you in the same way again. Krista sat with Matthew Sanford in 2006, just after he'd published his beautiful book Waking: A Memoir of Trauma and Transcendence.

Transcript

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0:00.0	On Being with Christa Tippett is supported in part by the John Templeton Foundation,
0:05.0	funding research and catalyzing conversations that inspire people with awe and wonder.
0:10.0	On the Templeton Ideas podcast, they dive deep into conversations with astrophysicists,
0:15.0	psychologists, and philosophers exploring the most awe-inspiring ideas in our world.
0:21.0	Learn more at templeton.org.
0:24.5	What a joy it is to offer up a wondrous, buried treasure from the 20-year-on-being archive.
0:31.0	Be prepared as you listen to what follows, to take in subtleties and gracefulness
0:36.0	you've never before pondered or tried to feel in yourself in the interplay between your mind and your body.
0:44.0	Matthew Sanford has an immensely energetic physical presence
0:48.0	and is one of the most physically whole human beings I know.
0:52.0	And he has been paralyzed from the chest down since a car accident in 1978.
0:58.0	But he likes to say that his experience is only more extreme, not so different from that of everyone else.
1:04.0	He's written, we are all leaving our bodies.
1:08.0	This is the inevitable arc of living.
1:10.0	Death cannot be avoided.
1:12.0	Neither can the inward silence that comes with the aging process.
1:17.0	Matthew's intricate knowledge of that inward silence,
1:21.0	which he was forced to befriend after the noisy connections which most of us take for granted or severed,
1:27.0	it's revelatory.
1:29.0	The places we don't feel in ourselves are graceful, he says, not lost.
1:34.0	They're not absence, they're presence, they're part of your strength, your fiber.
1:40.0	Ever since this conversation, I have lived in an ongoing wonder.
	...

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