“It’s only a rumor until it lives in the muscle,” I heard Lance Giroux say years ago while facilitating a session of George Leonard’s Samurai Game. As an accomplished Aikidoist, Lance was referring to the process of knowing and becoming something versus just thinking and believing it. In Aikido, the practitioner “becomes” what is imagined or intended through long-term, repetitive practice: moving the idea or thought of something into the body, into the muscle.
I have described ITP as “an intelligent collection of practices that enable a practitioner to cultivate and become imagined, desired and intended experiences.” Through one’s Integral Transformative Practice, our imagined realities, intentions and affirmations become embodied, and as we transform ourselves, our world transforms. In a 1913 article in the Indian Opinion, Gandhi wrote, "We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him." Over time this has been shortened to the famous “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
In Jeffrey Kripal’s book The Flip – Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge, Jeff makes a case for consciousness preceding physical reality with the brain as a filter, or reducer, of the infinite potentials available to us. A good analogy for this model is television. What is heard and seen on the television does not originate in the television. The television is a receiver, or filter, of a much larger field of frequencies and possibilities, such that when tuned to a particular frequency, signal or channel, it produces an experience of sight and sound congruent with that tuning. With this model of reality in mind, and reflecting back on the words of Gandhi, could it be that as we tune our frequency in body, mind, heart and soul, we can experience realities congruent with that particular tuning or frequency? I say yes, and so do many experienced ITP practitioners who have embodied their affirmations and subsequently experienced them in physical reality.
In the book Living an Extraordinary Life – The Magic of Integral Transformative Practice, authors Christina Grote and Pam Kramer state, “With conscious alignment of our inner and outer worlds, the magic happens. Through the imagination, practice and focused intention, we can redesign our bodies and minds. When we shift internally, the outer world seems to change as well.”
One of the ITP practices for becoming that which we imagine is called Transformational Imaging. Quoting again from Living an Extraordinary Life: “During this period, known as transformational imaging, you bring each of your affirmations to mind and enliven them with your imagination. Imagine yourself in your transformed state – what it would look like, feel like and smell like if your affirmation were already realized.” This process and practice results in what I am calling here Embodied Imagination. When we can embody and be what we imagine is possible, we can then see and experience it in our lives. Through ITP we literally become the change we want to see in the world.
And so, I ask you, what do you imagine is possible for your life? What do you want to experience? And how might you become and embody that which you imagine? Perhaps ITP is a path for its realization, and perhaps I’ll see you there!