Then & Now is an endeavor to re-engage and redeem some of my older writings. I’d like to see what wisdom can be harvested from my early efforts to share my passion and insights of the body as beloved and the human experience as divine. Perhaps this is a way to soften around that fledgling writer without an overlay of indifference or aversion.
A synopsis of Then (2008):
By and large, our relationship with our body is a challenging one. Most of us wish it would just behave so we wouldn’t have to think about it. We often find the body to be cumbersome, complicated, and demanding. This distaste for the body is pervasive, not only in our culture. It also weaves its way through many other cultural belief systems as well.
To think about the body differently is to swim against the tide. The question becomes: Is it worth my time, attention, effort, and energy to view the body differently? Is it possible to shift my relationship with my body from adversary to ally? To explore the possibilities, consider the body as sacred – the “stuff” of the Divine.
This way of relating to your body holds many possibilities for falling in love with the human experience as Divine expression. Can you begin to feel the difference this could make in how you relate to your life? Can you move away from judgment and toward compassion? Can you stay open to what life brings and meet it with grace and tenderness? Can you simply allow for the ebb and flow of this life in all its wonder and messiness?
The great challenge we face is how to live life to the fullest, no matter what it presents – to give the body the freedom to flow freely, move uninhibited through all our experiences, and realize itself as sacred ground.
Now (2023):
In many ways, this article still feels relevant – and somewhat naïve as to what it takes to be in this body with reverence, respect, and mutuality.
In 2014, my beloved body, which could and would do anything, suddenly stopped. Full-stop. My low back, initially fractured when I was 10 years old, was now a full-blown issue. I was in tremendous pain for quite some time. Once I found my way through that and began to recuperate, a cyst cropped up at the site of the fracture, putting pressure on the nerves. I experienced debilitating sciatic pain, which took a long time to resolve. After that, my body would not, and could not, resume business as usual. It was tired. Fatigued beyond recovery. It had spent its life, my life, attempting to meet my demands to be thin, fit, and vitally alive – not a bad intention but executed without much compassion and, in some ways, without regard for the consequences to overall health. I certainly had the concept of my body as sacred – however, I used it to compensate for all the other areas of my life that felt like less than. My body bore the brunt of my insecurity and my self-hate. It was done serving me in that way. Full-stop. Time to receive my body as is and practice what I had preached for so long. No longer a concept, I was rigorously challenged to surrender to my beloved body’s wisdom – it had and has much to teach me.
Time – a lot of time was required to yield to the full stop. Even though I was through the worst of the injuries, I still felt full of demand, wanting what I wanted and wanting it now. My body was having none of it. Inertia, apathy, dullness – so utterly NOT thin, fit, and vitally alive. I gained over 30 pounds, became weak and inflexible – couldn’t do much of anything. Everything was met with fatigue – my body kept telling me it had nothing to give. Nothing. To. Give.
No amount of pushing, plotting, planning, or demanding had any effect. I had to abandon my agenda and let my body be as is – to cooperate, be patient, respectful, sympathetic – and yield to its wisdom. Very humbling.
It took many years, a ton of surrender, and learning to listen. Over time, little by little, I began to move again. It started with a daily walk around my neighborhood. Each morning I would ask my body if it wanted to take a walk. Most mornings, it was a yes, but not always. Curiosity was my new best friend as I inquired into my body’s current state of being – whether it wanted to move, how much, how long. I learned to pay attention and to respond to the current state.
The daily walk around the neighborhood woke us up (me and my body). Movement softly seeped back into my life. As the months went by, I incorporated more and more activities. It was initially hard, painful, and challenging since I’d lost strength, flexibility, and endurance. And it was clear that my body was disorganized. I kept meeting all that with compassion and cooperation, leaning into practicing non-aggression with my body. We became a cohesive team in this quest for health. A joyful union.
Over time, I re-engaged my beloved Gyrokinesis practice with online classes – a considerable struggle. It was another year or more before I could feel strength and ease emerging in my body. It was a long road back – but it wasn’t back at all. We were nothing like we had been. We were new. We were and are a cohesive team, cooperatively seeking health and communicating all along the way. I finally lost the weight. I returned to hiking and biking and fully engaged Gyrotonic.
I’m not back. I’m different – more present, more available, way less demanding, and in no way aggressive with my body. Love, reverence, intelligence, compassion, communion, and mutuality guide us. The body as sacred ground is no longer a concept; it is a practice, a holy practice. The wisdom was there way back when, but it took a total breakdown to break through into what I’d written so long ago.
from my heart, Carol
“What you do not experience in your whole body will remain merely intellectual information without life or spiritual reality.” Gerda Alexander