First thought this morning: my body is letting me down, again.
It’s not cooperating. I am sluggish, filled with waves of nausea, at times absolutely have to close my eyes or feel as if I won’t be able to breathe. Second thought: today my body is telling me that despite my plans, despite what I wanted to do, “Get Done” and cross off my list, that today in this moment, quiet time in stillness, restful, physical restoration is what needs to happen. My body, my whole being desperately requires it. The first thought is the one most familiar to my mind loop. It’s the belief I grew up with, the set of words set on repetition imprinting themselves into my internal spaces. They squeezed between coral tissues and tender vital organs, slowly building a wall, stone by self-loathing stone, separating me from my body. Luckily, and I do feel blessed about this, today I know better.
Let me be very clear before I go on. I have done the work to get here. The emotional and mental excavation required to delve into cognitive patters, dysfunctional behaviors, and dangerous self-limiting beliefs; this is both a miracle and a whole helluva lot of work to do.
Recently, due to various medications and health circumstances, my energy has been erratic, my sleep patterns unpredictable, and the emotional swings I feel, like a landscape passing beneath me at great speeds. Somewhere in my center a deep well of understanding lives. It’s here I’ve been feelings something akin to a beating heart. It is rhythmic, consistent, yet gentle as a beloved’s whisper: lie down, rest… stay and breathe….it’s okay just to be, dear. It’s relatively easy to ignore such a voice. I have years of experience doing just that and am quite skilled at it. Even if that whisper is terribly persistent, it can be pushed away. Briefly acknowledged than a swift refocus on task at hand. Dishes, giving Minnie her medicine, making a difficult phone call. But… I know what happens at the end of all this pushing, refiling, shutting off of internal messages. This willful ignorance. The body’s intelligence is divine. Or so it feels to me. We are made to survive, to be resilient so we can learn, adapt, do better, make different choices. Live a life that is integrated; where the interwoven facets of our emotional, mental, physical, energetic/spiritual selves create a dynamic fabric. This is where we grow more fully into the shape of who we truly are.
But I’ve been, doing doing doing when I have the energy because it feels so much better than being physically sick and/or depressed and imprisoned in my bed/room/couch or whatever I happen to be sleeping on (which is finally a bed again, thank god). Then Monday happened. What I determined later in the day to be vertigo (I wrote a very long piece on it in my blog about it; a long rambling classic me-style that I finally just had to let go and hit “publish”. I still want to delete it), brought me and my body all the way to the floor. I remember dragging my yoga mat onto my porch, hazy headed, heavy-eyed. The wind played around me, making the heat balmy, the solid wood floor beneath me felt even more stabilizing, a comfort. After changing positions several times, I landed on my belly. Here is where I remembered my breath; remembered that it lives in me, animates my movements, takes up space inside my body; that I can choose to feel it, pay attention to it, even change it if I wish. Or I can go long periods forgetting that it happens without me giving it permission. My breath doesn’t need me to acknowledge it in order for it to fulfill its purpose: to keep me alive.
Keep the energy that is me plugged into the energy that is around me.
The sun was beating hard, but here on the porch I was encased in shade. My plants encircled me, positioned as they were to take advantage of the space, whether they preferred the morning’s sun or shade. Flowers, leaves, the grass two floors beneath me all spoke their own language of abiding by nature’s song. To resist would be to break. Right now, the wind was endurable. Right now, my pain was manageable. I had finally landed right where I needed to be from the very first whispers I heard: restoration, a time of non-doing and stillness. My body had so craved this, poor dear. It had tried to tell me, tried to use its language; it knows I’ve been learning. Because I failed to listen, it resorted to its very last measure: illness, pain, some kind of physical distress signal. Finally, because I had no other choice, I listened. And that day, we both got what we needed.
Today I must need the same lesson. Sometimes I need to learn things over and over again, in a multitude of ways, until the fullness of their truth impacts me enough to illicit change. A new behavior.
To my body I say this: I will do a better job at listening to your needs. For most of my 41 years, I have believed you to be my enemy. That the space we shared, though common, was ground upon which a battle waged. Now I understand you are both my protector and my teacher. You have housed all the pain I was not ready to feel; have buried all that I may never be ready to know. For this you deserve no less than absolute and unconditional love. I will do my best day by day, moment by moment, to be your student. To honor your needs, your desires, your experiences as valid, relevant, and essential. You are not just my vehicle in this world, not just my temple divine; you are the instrument of my living, the way I choose to connect or withdraw, to engage or isolate. Transform, or stay static. You help guide me to my purpose, to discovering and employing my gifts. I hope that little by little, you will not have to raise your voice for me to listen to your words.
I promise to practice listening.
my body speaks 