Ganesha: The "Disabled God"

“Ganesha, the disabled God!” This is an image that came to me unbidden as I was practicing my Chakradance just a few days ago.

I now understand that there has been this wondering, simmering just below my consciousness. Not in the forefront, until this image just broke through. This is why I am always in awe of the power of the psyche!

I am training to be a Chakradance Facilitator. I love the practice, and have found it immensely powerful for myself - to begin to bring my spirituality, literally, “into my body.” The wondering that I’ve had is how I can speak about this practice, how I can “market” it, so it does not become yet another “ableist” thing. In other words, I’d hate to send a message that there is a “right way” of being embodied, and that if you can’t move or dance, then this practice is not for you.

On the contrary, I truly believe that this practice can be for anyone at all, who is longing to feel the sacred in their body. And I want to especially call in those of us who have always felt that we just do not have the “right body type,” or “training,” or “skill set” to dance. I remember being moved to tears when the founder of Chakradance, Natalie Southgate, once spoke about a woman who came to her workshop in a wheelchair, and her husband just helped her lay on a mat on the floor. I imagine this woman, entranced, moving whatever body part she could move. Maybe just her facial muscles, maybe her fingers or arms, maybe even just her eyes. And I imagine something deep in her healing - by engaging with this beautiful, moving music, in a darkened room, lit up with candles. I imagine her being barred from anything “embodied” until just that day. I imagine her lying on that mat, where wounds and memories that live in her flesh and bones and sinews, are welcomed, and held in reverence. Where her wounded body is once again made sacred.

I feel strongly about this, because many of us carry deep embodiment wounds. Maybe not as obvious as this workshop participant, but deeply painful nevertheless. Many of us have been shamed because we do not have perfect bodies. Others of us subject our bodies to extreme rigors and deprivation, to fit more closely into some societal ideal.

I have often joked with friends that if all women suddenly stop buying all products labeled with any iteration of the words “beauty” and “health,” the entire economy, especially of the prosperous West, would just collapse into a heap! So, what I would really hope to avoid, as I contemplate offering this practice in the near future, is to become yet another ambassador of the “health and beauty industry!”

Believe me, I have nothing against either health or beauty. In fact, I think they are both laudable goals. But I have something against fetishizing these. And I certainly have a lot against any messaging that ends up shaming people for their bodily imperfections.

As I said, in retrospect, I think all of this was at the back of my mind as I was dancing the Svadhishthana Chakra dance. This is the second Chakra of the most common seven-chakra system that the Chakradance modality uses. The name of this Chakra in Sanskrit is composed to two parts: “Sva” (one’s own) and Adhishthana (where one dwells). I love Joseph Campbell’s English translation of this Chakra’s name the most. He called it, “Her Own Abode.” It is a Chakra associated with the watery, flowing, feminine energies of sensuality and grace. When I think of this Chakra, I think of the luscious, swaying, languid movements of the ocean waves. And I think of elephants meandering through a grassland. In Indian classical dance, there is a special movement called “gajagamini” (a woman who moves like an elephant). It is that swaying movement that conjures up for me the energy of this Chakra.

I think this is how my mind made the associative jump that morning: elephant —> elephant-headed God —> Ganesha!

I had to pause for a few seconds as I heard in my mind, “Ganesha, the Disabled God!”

Ganesha getting ready to throw his lotus. Basohli miniature. Source: This work is reproduced and described in Martin-Dubost, Paul (1997). Gaņeśa: The Enchanter of the Three Worlds.

Of course, none of the old myths have only one telling. The specifics vary depending on the source, and in my experience (at least in India), the specific telling depends on which part of the country you come from.

The name of this God, Ganesha (pronounced “Ganesh”), is again composed of two Sanskrit words: “gana” meaning people or the masses, and “isha” meaning the one who is wished for. He is thus the god of the ordinary person. He is “every person’s god.”

Here is a version of the myth of how Ganesha was born. Shiva, Parvati’s husband, was often gone for days to hang out in the cremation grounds with his companions - the ghosts and monsters who frequent cremation grounds. Parvati felt alone in her abode in Kailash, and a bit afraid. So, she created Ganesha, from dirt (some myths say she used the dirt from her own body). Even as a young boy, Parvati gave him the task of protecting her.

So, in the myth, Ganesha was dutifully guarding the entrance to Kailash when Shiva returns from one of his sojourns. Ganesha, who had never met Shiva, bars the door. Shiva, the god who is quick to anger (and quick to be appeased) is offended by his audacity. Shiva looks at the little Ganesha with fiery eyes of anger, which burns his head right off! Parvati hears the commotion and comes running to the scene. Seeing her decapitated son, she is distraught. She tells Shiva who the boy was, and how he was only following her commandment. Shiva, of course, now feels terrible, and also a little flustered. So, he leaves in a hurry, vowing to find a head for Ganesha. He vows to get the head of whatever being would cross his path first, which happens to be an elephant! So, Shiva chops the head off the elephant (let’s not get started about animal rights here!). He rushes home with the severed elephant head, and places it on Ganesha. From that day forward, Ganesha sports an elephant head.

I think of baby Ganesha.

I imagine him in a school with other God-children, being bullied by other boys and girls for having an elephant head. His journey through life as a young man is always tainted by that elephant head! He is forever maimed, different from all the other boys. I am sure his elephant head affects how he looks, how he smells, how and what he eats. His senses may be more acute than that one other “able-bodied Gods,” but there is no escaping it. He is different. Imperfect. Disabled.

Interestingly, in Bengal, where I come from, Ganesha’s “wife” is a banana tree (“kolabau”) - maybe the only being who deigned to marry this deformed God!

This flash of insight has really made me wonder… How would it be for us as a culture if we dissociated the idea of “perfection” from “divine.” I feel that in our culture, the “goal” of spiritual practice is often to reach some perfection (some call it nirvana, others call it enlightenment; but it is almost always some vision of perfection).

What if our image of god could be imperfect? Disabled? How would our spirituality look if that were the case? And how would we treat our own imperfections, and those of our fellow beings?

How would our sense of embodiment change if we divorced embodiment from some ideal of what it “should” look like?

For me, these are some of the things that are percolating through me, as I prepare to facilitate Chakradance in a few months’ time.