Remembering the Body.

“Human skin is porous; the world flows through you. Your senses are large pores that let the world in. By being attuned to the wisdom of your senses, you will never become an exile in your own life, an outsider lost in an external spiritual place that your will and intellect, have constructed.”  - John O'Donohue

Much of my professional practice involves trying to teach people how to come home to the intelligence of their physical bodies.  In our culture, this can be an extraordinarily difficult task for most people.  It seems that at some point (perhaps around the Renaissance) we began to devalue the body and glorify the intellect.  You may notice this inheritance in many of our cultural, philosophical, and religious ideals such as "mind over matter", "I think therefore I am", "the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak", etc.

There are many implications and consequences for this devaluation of the body's wisdom, which is easily noticeable in our modern society.  I imagine that we can all think of many times when we have mistreated or shamed our own bodies or the bodies of others.  However, I also believe that much of our personal and collective suffering is related to this pervasive sense of cultural disembodiment (mistreatment of the earth, improper allocation of resources, oppression, war, chronic pain, auto-immune diseases, addictions, eating disorders, diabetes, and other habitual self-destructive patterns).

This is a hard pattern to change because once we believe we are our minds, we become convinced that the stories we generate in our minds are absolute truths.  In order to avoid threat to our sense of self that any sort of cognitive dissonance would inevitably produce, we then feel compelled to act in ways that will reinforce the stories we're so busy telling ourselves.  Example: "no one will ever accept me for who I really am" becomes a devastating self-fullfilling prophecy when we let that belief convince us to keep secrets and tell lies.

But, what if we didn't have to believe all of our thoughts?  What kind of personal freedom would we experience if we weren't married to our own stories?  I think it's hard for us to imagine this in a cultural context that tells us we ARE our thoughts.  In fact, I think that the split between body and mind is so deeply rooted in our ideas about ourselves that we cannot address this chasm by simply "thinking" about it.  Einstein first famously suggested that we cannot solve problems on the level in which they were created.  Following that logic, I believe we must address this split by turning towards what has been split-off (i.e. the body) in an embodied way.

I've found that one of the most accessible ways for people to re-discover the body's wisdom involves practices that pair conscious physical movement with a simultaneous unknown goal.  This revelation is something that I've stumbled upon by accident after many blind leaps into body practices like yoga, thai massage, authentic movement, conscious breathing, rolfing, energy medicine, somatic experiencing therapies, etc. etc.  I'm not sure why I've never bothered to try to understand these things with my mind before I do them, but the gifts I've received as a result of "not needing to know" (i.e. figure out) what's happening have been immeasurable.  Chiefly, I have discovered this: embodied presence feels like Love.  ALL OF THE TIME.  Even when there's an experience of pain and discomfort, a larger field of loving awareness seems to permeate and contain it simultaneously.

Note:  I'm not suggesting that the mind is not engaged in this, but that it is simply free to stop trying to control and predict my experience, and can instead become open to some new possibilities.  In fact, it's precisely because the mind reflects the body and the body reflects the mind, that we can begin to understand how habitual physiological posturing is connected to habitual psychological posturing. Consequently, when we start to notice how changes in the body predict changes in the psyche, a really miraculous thing can happen:  reconnection!  (Fun side note: the word "religion" comes from the latin root re-ligamentus (i.e. ligament), and literally translated means "re-connection"). The reward for this kind of reconnection is a renewed access to one of our greatest sources of natural intelligence.  I have noticed that when we are able to reconnect to this embodied intelligence, we are then immediately drawn back into a deeper connection with our natural belonging.  As John O'Donohue reminds us, "our bodies know they belong; it is our minds that make our lives so homeless".