Form gives rise to feeling. The smallest volitional effort begins the process of self-contact. It brings forth the existential truth of one's immediate personal bodily experience rather than ideas, mental concepts or someone else's notion about appropriate behaviors and actions. The gift of cortical function makes possible volitional participation in our lives. Through volition, distinctions can be made in a general pattern of experience.
Volitional function is learned with practice over time.
This forming practice proceeds from the simple to the complex through a continual chain of events, establishing patterns that have duration. In this way, an inner dialogue grows, giving our lives a personal and sacred dimension. With practice and commitment, we can have some say in our embodied life. How we encourage or inhibit our innate actions personalizes and establishes the autonomy to transcend the past and present and orient to the future. This organizing process is a metabolism of expanding and shrinking body shapes.