Going out of your mind with me?

A strange invitation, isn’t it? Why would you willingly go out of your mind?

If I’d give you a better intelligence to access than your mind, you might.

Let me start out by making it clear that I have nothing against mind and its IQ. We need our minds and mindlessness is a scourge. It’s just that Reason has been the privileged state of functioning for hundreds of years. Mental intelligence has been so central that the mind and intelligence have become conflated, and ​all intelligence is now understood as mental intelligence quotient (IQ). Lately, emotional intelligence quotient (EQ) has made some inroads, raising the importance of empathy and recognizing emotional atmosphere it is still based on a single perspective. MQ is based on simultaneous multiple perspectives experienced as a variety of embodied states. Let me explain. Our embodied intelligence quotient (MQ) functions in a radically different fashion than these other intelligences. It has a completely different speed, rhythm and point of view than IQ. I’m not talking about your brain or your gut or even neuroscience, though all of that matters and will be addressed in my course; I’m talking about the way MQ is experienced differently than IQ. Whereas IQ is about processing speed, the idea being that the higher the frequency, the better, MQ is about slowing down: by entering a “slow-mo” state, we can observe embodied processes that occur at a much lower frequency than mental ones.

It’s not quite the slowness of watching a flower grow. That is the speed of the organic world and the physical body. MQ is about the low-frequency rhythms of embodiment. So what do I mean by “embodiment?” Do I mean just getting in touch with your physical body, as yoga and other physical disciplines emphasize? No, that’s not what I mean; thought it is true that honoring the body, and being more aware of it, will help you understand and access MQ. But I mean something fundamentally different.

Embodiment is ​the way an image takes on body. For example, when we say she or he is the embodiment of beauty, this means that in her (or him) the indescribable idea of Beauty is perfectly presented. Embodiment is the coincidence of the invisible idea and the physical body. Its most powerful source is the creative imagination. Whereas mental intelligence is ultimately about abstraction and mathematical intuition, MQ is mainly about the way images take on body, most extremely in the process of dreaming. My course will help you move around in imaginal environments such as dreams and memories, which will hone your creativity, change your perspective and thus make you see things differently, enhancing productivity, research, art and work. You will notice how your embodied self will come up with solutions you could only have dreamed of.

In a dream, intelligence is distributed over many subjects, or characters. A dog chasing you, with bloodthirst in its jaws, has a different state of embodiment than the dream ‘you’ does, as you flee from the dog with terror in your heart. The intelligence of the dog is different than the intelligence of the body that is being chased. The dog might be in a rageful state with its intelligence in full attack mode, while you may be in the intelligence given to an escaping body. Embodied intelligence does not prioritize the perspective of the dream you over the dog; rather, you and the dog are co-existing perspectives, each with its own presence and value.

In this course, I will teach how to hold these states simultaneously, by way of acting techniques that help you morph into non-self characters. Using these tools, you can learn to become embodied by the various presences in your dreaming and through that access a much wider range of intelligences and perspectives. These perspectives and intelligences are experienced in the body where they self-organize into a radically new awareness that changes mind and body equally — because embodiment is the coincidence of body and mind. In this way we function outside of the body/mind conundrum that has artificially haunted the West for centuries. The outcome will be greater resilience, a more profound participation in life and perspectives you had hitherto been blind to.

Get past all your static, vicious circles and cogitations. Go out of your mind and drop into your intelligent body.

Purchase this 10-class course with Robert Bosnak here.