M R D U · S O F T
When the body metaphorically has moved from health towards disbalance, discomfort, or disease along a path, it may take some time to return and walk the path back towards health.
Last week when i was speaking with a client who is challenged with a neurological condition, we talked about her experience of the treatment so far. She said she understood the metaphor of the path, but that her biggest revelation was that the treatment taught her she doesn’t need to work harder to feel better, for her the path to health now meant letting go, bit by bit.
This made me think of the Sanskrit word Mṛdu. A word I loved from the instant I heard it during my first year of Ayurvedic studies, probably because how tender it felt trying to pronounce it.
Mṛdu (मृदु) can be translated as ‘soft, tender’, it’s one of twenty words that describe the property of a substance. Mṛdu being the opposite of Kathina (‘hard’).
Mṛdu is most present in water and space/ether element. Space/ether element can be the least easy to grasp in our daily life: it is all-encompassing or omnipresent, inaudible and invisible; no one can feel ether (like we can feel earth, water, fire, air). It does not, however, suggest absence; it is considered the origin of everything.
Softness causes relaxation. In an Ayurvedic treatment the soft presence of oil and touch, the warmth, flow and repetition counterbalance what is hard, stuck and dry within the body. The softness loosens what is stuck and helps the body move its wastes to the channels that can digest and expel them.
When I looked in the Sanskrit dictionary now I found that in veterinary medicine in 15th century scriptures Mṛdu (मृदु) refers to the “gentle sigh” of certain elephants.
Here are some images of natural softness from my photo library:
soft patch of land
dandelions in oil
brown leaf
Winsteria
willow catkins
powdered pine
dawn redwood
seeds
linden pollen in Berlin street
soft onion
linen yarn
mimosa
