Intertwining

Continuing this post, intertwining is an apt metaphor. Last night, while doing my subtle, syntegral yoga exercises, this intertwining became a powerfully felt experience. I could feel how my body, emotions and thoughts, while autonomous domains, were nonetheless so intertwined and interrelated as to be inseparable. I could feel how my broken dysfunctions in one domain directly related to brokenness in the other domains.

Part of the powerful impact was that while my exercises are geared to correcting such dysfunctions and syntegrating the domains, the realization that some brokenness, like Humpty Dumpty, can never be completely fixed and put back together again. It's a humiliating and humbling experience to know just how fucked up one is with such subtle examination. I wouldn't recommend it for the faint of heart.

On a more intellectual note,
Merleau-Ponty really likes the notion of a chiasmic intertwining that "ensures that in some sense the other is always already intertwined within the subject …. the alterity of the other’s look is always already involved in us, and rather than unduly exalting alterity by positing it as forever elusive, or as recognizable only as freedom that transcends my freedom, he instead affirms an interdependence of self and other that involves these categories overlapping and intertwining with one another, but without ever being reduced to each other.”