“Being in your body?” What could that possibly mean?
Isn’t the body a temporal shell that we will cast aside like the carapace of a molting cicada? Won’t we move on to something more noble, more ethereal like those togaed gods in the movies wafting around clouds pumped from an off-stage fog machine? Won’t the true beauty of our souls finally be revealed at the end of time so we can cast aside our concern for our wrinkly skin, lumpy thighs, hair that grows only where it shouldn’t, and all the unseemly burps and urges of day-to-day life? Won’t we finally be light and lithe?
Don’t you wish.
A few hundreds of years of culture and language have convinced us that the true “us” is separate from our bodies; trapped in the envelope of our skin, our beautiful spirits bouncing from edge to edge, edgy to escape. But face it — here we are, all arms and legs akimbo, full of snaky veins and fatty corpuscles. We are firmly rooted on, in, and of the earth, try as we may to rise above it and ourselves.
To be in our bodies is to embrace the fullness of physicality. We stroll, we jog, we lean on the frame of a door. That is physical. We lolligag and dance and recline and fart and make love and it is all physical. We imagine and we compute and we analyze and we fantasize, plot, and plan; even when we do this sitting absolutely still (which we rarely do) it is still physical. We feel and fear and love and have the greediest desires; we rejoice and lament and tremble in our boots and it is all physical. We face the darkness, the awe overwhelms us, we commune with infinity, our hearts murmur with mysterious God talk, and it is all physical.
Body, mind, heart, spirit — it is all one. Not kept in separate compartments like the knives, forks, and spoons in the silverware drawer, but all jumbled together. Our experience is as specific and varied as the potato masher, the cheese slicer, the garlic press, and other kitchen utensils we can hardly identify. We are a delightful mystery, full of inexplicable surprises and the simplest of pleasures and pain.
But how did we get where we are today, all self-conscious and gangly and embarrassed? We should be plumped up like roosters, our fullness ruffling every feather; instead we slump in wobbly shame, unready to claim the “all” of who we are, have been, will be.
At some tragic point in our life, mere months after birth, we passed out of that all-too-short phase where everything we did was adorable, charming, and amusing and entered into the land of “no.” From then on someone or another was telling us “don’t do that.” Parents, teachers, preachers, bosses—all had expert opinions about what we shouldn’t be doing.
“Be good” they would say before they trotted off, leaving us with the baby sitter. But what did that mean? “Being good” was really about what we shouldn’t do, not what we should. We did less and less or faced the consequences.
And if parental figures weren’t erecting the electrified fences of respectability, then our peers were defining the boundaries of “cool,” the disdainful glance and the cutting comment their weapons of choice.
Is it any wonder then that over time our physicality became more and more restricted and restrained? Slowly but surely the ropes were wrapped around us until we could barely move. Yes, sitting still is a valuable skill to learn, but did we have to stop breathing as well?
Lumpy Thighs
Let’s make a nice long list of all the characteristics of our bodies we don’t like: wrinkly skin, lumpy thighs, hair that grows where it shouldn’t, burps, urges, sleeping less, forgetting more. Oh yes, I love living in this body! The limitations, the annoyances, the sense of diminishment. How do we embrace physicality—practice being in our bodies—when the body seems so flawed?
The first answer, of course, is that you have no choice. Where else will you be if you aren’t in your body, however disappointing that might seem?
But we can do better than limp resignation, can’t we?
My crackpot theory is that, when thinking of our bodies, we spend 90% of the time plotting ways to fix ourselves. We’ll go to the gym, stop eating cake, apply exotic creams, dye our hair, get new clothes, meditate more, get a tan. Unfortunately, much of it never passes the planning stage. We may never do the things we intend. Is that a good way to spend our energy?
The other ten percent of the time we work with our limitations, even celebrate them, we build on our strengths, we seize the moment, we revel in our ability to live and love. We learn from our mistakes and turn them into triumphs, we see opportunity in chaos, we sing in the shower, we reach out and zap others with compassion. Sounds like more fun doesn’t it?
So here is what I suggest: reverse the percentages. Let’s spend 90% of our time having the glorious wonder of our bodyspirits, and 10% of the time trying to fix ourselves up. You don’t have to give up your self-improvement schemes entirely. There is little harm in those desires and sometimes they even pay off.
But meanwhile, you can have so much. More than you can imagine. Within any of your perceived limitations resides an infinite range of possibilities. They may not be the same set of options that you had 10 years ago, but they are still endless. Even if you are seriously limited by some sort of big body deal, there is so much potential waiting to burst forth.
The first step in this practice is to look for the good. Celebrate your gifts, your accomplishments, your relationships, your small and large triumphs. Notice them in others if you find it difficult to name them for yourself.
The second step is to notice what creates energy and grace in your life. Have more of it. Put yourself in the settings that give you a sense of liveliness, or peace, or ecstacy, or whatever state you desire.
The third step is to open your circle of concern past your own bodyspirit. Pay attention to the wonderful gifts around you. So much of the joy of living has to do with relationship. And when we can include others in our circle it immediately widens our own possibilities.
This would be a good beginning in the process of percentage reversal.
The number one excuse for not being in one’s body turns out to be self-consciousness. If we ask of ourselves anything more than the bare minimum, we might do something silly, and then where would we be? Fortunately, it turns out that our self-consciousness is a tiny speed bump, not a fortress wall. There may be a little bump there but step lively and you will be over it.
You have so little to lose and so much to gain.
Life is far too complicated and stressful to try to be living it somewhere other than in our bodies. We are bodies. To try to escape this essential fact is futile. Eventually we pay the price of denying our physicality—lethargy, illness, dull minds, dull spirits, lost opportunities for wonder or joy, for insight or information. To ignore the fullness of our physicality is to cut the threads in a many-colored, multi-layered tapestry of knowing.
The wisdom of the body is a huge resource for living. Of course, you must be in your body to access it.
Breathing deeply would be a good beginning. Try it right now—it is so immediately gratifying. I never fail to feel more relaxed after one simple deep breath, especially if I follow it with a nice sigh. From there we can shake ourselves loose, stretch a little, check in with the lively surface of our skin, massage our ears, and then breathe again.
This is only the beginning of being in our bodies. What follows can be an incredible journey. Are you packed? Ready to go?
Bodyspirits
Someone in the past, long since dead, or maybe a committee of the faithful, also long since dead, decided that body and spirit were mortal enemies that could never get along. That crowd may have just been having a bad hair day, but years of culture and language have propped up this point of view. We have even been led to believe that one is good and the other is suspect. (And you and I know which one is which.)
Where did this all go wrong?
Somewhere back there, human experience began to be divided up into neat little categories. I’m sure it was a good idea at the time. But we have mastered separation and categorization. What we need right now is to pull it all back together, to see how richly intertwined all of our experience is, to have it all together.
The term “bodyspirit” reunites body and spirit—back where they belong. It helps us name the basic reality that all of our experience is physical—that we can’t have spirit without body. How would we recognize a spiritual experience unless it were something going on in our bodies? For that matter, how would we know we were having feelings or thoughts if there weren’t some sort of experience—body stuff that we can recognize and notice (even if it’s difficult to articulate)?
Thoughts, feelings, and those glimpses of a bigger reality that we call “spirit” are all physical experiences, much like any other physical sensation we experience in our bodies.
Reprinted from The Slightly Mad Rantings of a Body Intellectual.
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