What's in a Name?

One of the things that fascinate me in life are the words that we use to describe things. Specifically, their origin and how they came to be used into their current context. That is, I am a big fan of the etymology dictionary. I also love languages and finding connections between words in different languages, usually by figuring out a common root in the words. For example, the word for "life" in my native language, Bulgarian, is "zhivot." In Sanskrit, "jiva" most simply means "living," "alive," among many more subtle meanings. So, that is fascinating, because obviously the Bulgarian word for life is etymologically connected to the Sanskrit word "jiva" (which is also from where the Jivamukti style of yoga takes its name, for example).

So, why is this blog called FleshContext?

Flesh:
I got fascinated with using "flesh" as a way to describe and think about the "body" (most simply, our physical embodiment) courtesy of the fascinating Matthew Remski, a writer, yoga and Ayurveda practitioner, whom I highly recommend that you check out (I've always wondered how I would describe myself in terms of yoga and, thanks to him, as of now, I feel that phenomenological yogi is a fitting description). As most of my readers know, the mind and the body are really one continuum and are anything but separate. However, the word "body" implies a separation from the "soul" at least since the 13th century and it also has the meaning of "corpse" from around the same time. It also implies separation from the world and from one's environment or "livingworld" as Remski calls it. Moreover, the "yoga body" is quite fetishisized in contemporary yoga culture and, like yoga poses, it becomes a thing--static, like a snapshot forever frozen in time. But that is the subject of another post. In short, the connection between mind and body, between thinking and feeling, between thought and flesh is always-already present, regardless of whether we perceive, are conscious, or aware of it. In other words, flesh implies a dynamism rather than stasis, the idea that balance and health occur through our relationship with our livingworld, within our circumstance. After consulting with the etymology dictionary, I was delighted to discover the following under the entry for flesh: An Old English poetry-word for "body" was flæsc-hama, literally "flesh-home." So, flesh is simply one's physical embodiment, the instrument through which we feel, experience, and reflect on the world.

Context:
Context is one of my favorite words or concepts and I find it so useful when self-reflecting and trying to make sense of anything in my life. In short, context is your livingworld, the environment within which you function, your ecology: from the food you eat to the air you breathe to your family, friends, and colleagues, to the driver that cut you off and made you mad this morning, to the weather right now, to what you see in the various media, ad infinitum... To borrow a memorable phrase from another fascinating modern yogi and thinker, Christina Sell, "context is everything." The etymological dictionary reveals this about context: from Latin contextus "a joining together," originally pp. of contexere "to weave together," from com- "together" + texere "to weave". Does this remind you of something else? Yes, that's right! Yoga, which literally translates as "union," "yoking," "to join."

In a nutshell, why FleshContext? Because, for me, it encapsulates what life and one's existence are all about. To borrow from Ayurveda, the meaning of life is your journey towards wholeness (context) that accounts for your uniqueness (flesh). So, we are not one, we are not separate, we are the dynamic balance between the two.