Raja Yoga

Left to its own organic devices, without the exertion of sensibility and will, protoplasm will simply respond to local forces, bad as well as good. We are sol/gel, semi-solid, fluid crystal, and when we are not actively firming ourselves up into functional structures we are sagging and slipping. Our flesh is like silly putty that distorts when it is ignored. We are constantly obliged to actively participate in its formation, or else it will droop of its own weight and plasticity.

This incessant formation we cannot stop. We can only make the choice to let it go its own way - directed by genetics, gravity, appetites, habits, the accidentals of our surroundings, and so on - or the choice to let our sensory awareness penetrate its processes, to be personally present in the midst of those processes with the full measure of our subjective, internal observations and responses, and to some degree direct the course of that formation.

We do not have the option of remaining passively unchanged, and to believe for a moment in this illusion is to invite distortions and dysfunctions. Like putty, we are either shaping ourselves or we are drooping; like clay, we either keep ourselves moist and malleable or we are drying and hardening. We must do one or the other; we may not passively avoid the issue. Like Job, we must learn to take our flesh in our own teeth, put our lives in our own hands, and actively participate with the subtle and awesome forces which weave the web of our existence.

From Job's Body : A Handbook for Bodywork
by Deane Juhan
pp. 18-19