“The body will exhibit symptoms until the psyche becomes strong enough to contain and carry the conflict.” Judith Harris, Jung & Yoga: The Psyche-Body Connection.
This is the first in series on the topic of Yoga and Psychology.
We come to our yoga practice from a thousand different directions. We might look first for a purely physical practice that promises strength and flexibility and gradually discover its benefits for the mind. Or we come out of a meditation practice to more deeply integrate mindfulness with something that offers to relieve a specific area of long-held tightness or stress in the body. Yoga indeed has the power to connect body and mind and to heal from outside to inside and vice versa. I recently finished re-reading Judith Harris’ book Jung & Yoga: The Psyche-Body Connection[1]. The first chapter, “Creation” deals largely with the ideas of “rooting” and grounding the body and with the concept of the prima materia. It is this idea I would like to explore in this post.
Psyche & Soma: Mind & Body
As yoga practitioners, how often do we connect the physical symptoms of injury or illness with a psychological problem? I’m referring less to the one-off traumas many of us face at one time or another – the torn meniscus or rotator cuff, the spill on the ice that bruises the tailbone – and more to the subtle and ongoing or recurring aches, pains, imbalances, and even health issues in the respiratory, circulatory and digestive systems that we might not initially associate with the muscle and bone work of yoga. In many instances it can be helpful to look at these ailments as symptomatic of deeper conflicts and unaddressed wounds in the psyche.
Those familiar with the chakra or Kundalini system understand how it can offer one route to begin reintegrating mind and body at a much deeper level than we may experience in our day-to-day yoga routine[2]. In working with the first or “root” chakra, one of the first tasks we face is to bring forth or “dig up” some of our unconscious content, the psychological stuff that gets pushed down and out of sight. This “stuff” may be developmental deficiencies inflicted in early infancy, or residue from later emotional disturbances we experienced in childhood or adolescence. This “unconscious content” in part forms our own “first matter” or prima materia.
Prima Materia
prima materia is without beginning or end it is everything & nothing the physical, mental, emotional, spirit & soul it is neither less, nor more than the universe and as the body of the universe, it is you -Dr. Stephanie P. Marango, MD, RYT
The term prima materia comes to us from alchemical studies (simply put, alchemy as historically practiced, was the work of attempting to produce gold or silver from various base metals). In alchemical parlance, the prima materia is
the common, elemental substance or “first matter,” “found in filth,” the “orphan” sought by the alchemists in their attempt to create the Philosopher’s Stone. The original “chaos” or “sea” that constitutes all matter[3].
Carl Jung was a scholar of alchemy (among many, many other things) and extrapolated the practical, material theory of alchemical transformation for use in examining the human psyche. Jung thought of the prima materia as “an unconscious content ready to surface but needing the ‘heat’ of awareness to cook it into a conscious experience.” (Chalquist, ibid.) A consistent Yoga practice that incorporates the development of this “awareness” through mindfulness and meditation can bring us to this state of readiness.
But what are some other familiar parallels of the prima materia with Yoga? What in our study of the sutras or other Yogic philosophy does this concept call to? Something that is both within us and that is simultaneously the very fabric of existence, even of pre-existence as we understand the idea of time and consciousness. We might think of it as the psychological component or parallel to the idea of prana, or the energy that manifests both individually and universally. The prima materia can also be seen as an “elemental substance,” “found in filth” and as Harris notes, as the earth: “Indeed, Jung often refers the prima materia as the earth and calls it ‘the mother of the elements and of all created things.’” (16). In other words, it is both the primordial mass we come from and that to which we return. So how do we begin to engage with the deeper psychological matter, our own prima materia?
Dream work is one way to begin bringing the prima materia to light. Harris’ overriding thesis (or one of them perhaps) is that to achieve psychological wholeness we must work not only upward, toward the light of consciousness, but also downward (a theme I continue to see in current writings and workshops that facilitate the Western practice of Yoga). In Analytical or Jungian psychology our work must begin by witnessing, exploring and giving voice to the unconscious, which Jung believed surfaces in our dreams. The unconscious is a container for everything we have yet to realize in waking life, as well as everything we leave behind, unaddressed, un-realized, repressed. This is our “dark matter,” the shadow of our consciousness. Both bad and good dreams, the Jungians would argue, show us something we are meant to address, and other people, figures, objects, recurring places or themes in our dreams often represent an aspect of our personal psyche that benefits from our attention.
Think about any consistent patterns in your dream life. Are there any recurring scenarios or characters? If they could speak to you as a part of your own psyche, what would they be calling your attention to? Underwater, underground, basements and caves, enclosed spaces without walls as well as the act of getting dirty, mucky or sticky, “digging in the dirt” – or conversely, recurring dreams that feature flight from, departure from the ground, the earth, rootedness – these places and experiences as they occur in our dreams can be correlated with the root chakra. Addressing the psychological issues these elements bring forth in your dreams is one way to begin working with the prima materia.
Prima Materia and the Root Chakra
“I wish to see humanity become more inclusive of the imagination. The advent of alchemy brought the term radix ipsius to life. It means the “root of itself” or the universal substrate of life. Radix ipsius is a mysterious creative center in the universe. This is the root of our being and the state of absolute being any matter can exist in. In each of us is a replication of the universe. –Pamela Holmes, Artist
Bringing forth our unconscious content is a process of reintegrating it with our waking consciousness. In the Kundalini system this work is taken on in the muladhara (translated as “root support”) chakra, and here we begin to see perhaps more direct parallels with Yogic psychological theory. An interesting correlation is the dual meaning of prima materia as
“radix ipsius (root of itself). As the prima materia is able to root within itself, it remains completely autonomous and dependent on nothing. This is what allows it to be ever-present, in every way…As the prima materia can root itself without any external forces acting upon it, we may also liken it to the earth.” (Harris, 16)
In the Kundalini system the three lower chakras represent our more primal and instinctual needs and impulses and are located in the lower body, at or below the navel: the solar plexus (manipura), the lower abdomen (svadisthana) and the root chakra or muladhara at the base of the pelvis.
Though with the chakra system we are working with the notion of the “subtle body” energetic imbalances in any one chakra may manifest as physical symptoms in the gross body. When issues of basic security and survival are unaddressed through for example, repression of a specific emotional or psychological trauma, we may work our way through life generally ignoring the lower body, living in the higher chakras (which become overdeveloped). Specific lower body ailments such as bowel and intestinal disorders, disorders of the bones or teeth, issues with the legs, feet, knees, hips or the base of the spine, eating disorders and/or frequent illness[4] can be attributed to a deficiency or excess of energy in the root chakra.
Splitting Apart – Coming Together: Individuation
Harris goes on to explain the differentiation of the prima materia into pairs – of the split that happens when we are born, of opposites that must then again be reconciled. Craig Chalquist describes this process as one in which:
…fire and meditation soon bring about the first coniunctio oppositorum, or the reunification of prima materia split into its opposites: Sol (consciousness) with Luna (the unconscious, as personified by the anima), ego with id (body), male with female, sulphur and salt, spirit and nature, heaven and earth, Logos and Eros, son and mother. The increasing heat of awareness fuses the unconscious content, divided and differentiated by a conceptualizing consciousness, into a new, partly conscious substance.
Prima materia is the “first” or “prime” material in Aristotelian thought, the “true foundation of reality.” In the Yogic work of understanding the self, it is both the basis of who we become as individuals, and the collective unconscious our individual psychic selves are born from. We’ve all heard someone speak of “becoming one with the universe.” It is this idea of the conjoining of opposites, of reintegrating the contents of the unconscious with consciousness, of becoming whole, of realizing we all derive from a single, unified source, the universe, and that indeed that universe is within us. A very Yogic idea indeed.
[1] Harris, Judith. 2001. Jung and Yoga: The Psyche Body Connection. Toronto. Inner City Books. Harris’ book is one of a very few that deal deeply and directly with Jungian psychology and the practice of Yoga. See also Jung and the Psychology of Kundalini Yoga, ed. Sonu Shamdasani.
[2] Judith, Anodea. 2004. Eastern Body Western Mind: Psychology and the Chakra System as a Path to the Self. New York. Celestial Arts/Random House. This is an excellent introduction and manual for working to recognize and address mind/body issues within the chakra system, heal the psyche of past traumas, and grow toward psychological wholeness.
[3] Chalquist, Craig. A Glossary of Jungian Terms. chalquist.com/jungdefs.html