Thoughts on the Body

Sometimes it’s easier to love what isn’t there. Sometimes it feels easier to live in your head instead of in your body. 

Sometimes when you lose somebody, it’s easier to stay committed to the memory of them or magical thinking that they will return and sweep you into their homes and claim you forever and ever amen. 

I say “you” but what I really mean is “I”. 

I’ve been listening to Jon Kabat-Zinn on Master Class and Audible recently. A lot. He has an hour-long body scan on Master Class that I have yet to finish. Have you ever done yoga nidra/a body scan? It’s heaven! You get to visit each part of your body and by the end you are floating, free, alive, tingling, at home.  

Feel, let go. Feel, let go. Feel, let go.

And yet I can’t (don’t/won’t) stay to get every last drop.

 Suddenly, at minute 42, 46, 50, I have to go check my emails, get something to drink, go pee. 

Bye, bye, Body. Hello, Brain. My hands are tight, holding on to fistfuls of the past, refusing to feel, let go.

Chatter chatter chatter chatter. 

Anything but feeling the moment. Put me into the past, the future. Let Brain think it’s at the wheel, steering me away from danger. Silly, frightened, reptilian Brain. That thing has me behaving like a lizard. Scuttle scuttle scuttle FREEZE. 

When you are a child and part of your brain thinks you are a princess who will one day be rescued from the life you are in and be carried into the one you were born to, you learn that what you have is never good enough because the other you, the other life, is right over the horizon, and so there’s no reason to attach to what’s in front of you (me) because it’s not real, anyway. It’s not really yours (mine). What is yours (mine—you get the picture with the pronoun business, right? It’s so much easier for me to talk about what other people to and leave my body out of it) is somewhere in the past or the future, anywhere but here.  

When you live like a placeholder, your breathing is lighter, your circulation less vital than the sytems of those who surround you, those who are invested in their lives as if this life is the only one they have. The others, the ones who were kept, talk as if they are actually in the room, actually saying things that matter, actually communicating to another human being while you, the placeholder, are there and not there at the same time. 

Space cadet.

One wonderful thing about working with as many adopted people as I do is that I get to see just how predictable we are. I get to see that if you take a baby from their mother ( I wrote “body” instead of “mother” by mistake—sometimes the truth looks like a mistake) the baby is more than likely to have gut issues as a child/adult. The baby is more than likely to have emotional issues as a child/adult. The baby is more likely to grow up as an adult who is not all there. 

This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This moment. This… 

I understood something the other day, the day I decided to live my life as if I’m on vacation: the body likes to go slowly. The body likes to be acknowledged. The body wants to be included. 

When I’m on my phone, texting, emailing, scrolling, my body is anesthetized. I might as well be a head in a box as long as I had someone there to scroll for me. 

The thing is, real pleasure is a full-body experience. If I’m amped up in my brain because someone liked a photo I posted on Instagram, for the body it can be like the time I was on a date and my date was reading the newspaper while I waited to be seen, talked to, acknowledged. The body gets lonely when it is left out, and when the body feels neglected, the body decides to leave the party. Hello, cancer. Hello, fibromyalgia. Hello, rash. Hello, chronic fatigue. Hello, stomachache. Hello, migraine. Hello, spinal degeneration. 

How do you convince Brain that it’s a good idea to include Body when Body is a field of landmines? Why check in with your stomach when all it’s going to do it hurt and tell you that you are in trouble and possibly about to die?

Because, I think, including the body is called living. Just because something overwhelmed us when we were a baby doesn’t mean we can’t handle it now. Just because the past made us feel frightened and small doesn’t mean that’s who we are today, but unless we are willing to go into the body and let the landminds express themselves, we won’t get the full experience of This Moment. It’s like going to some amazing restaurant and leaving most of your taste buds at home.

Feeling pain is not all that awful when it is actually a doorway to joy and wholeness. Being born isn’t exactly a feel good event, but it’s something we all have to do to show up and have some fun. Running from pain because it used to overwhelm you before you had language is exhausting and sad.

There is a better life out there for adopted people, I believe. For me. There is so much for us to feel, to share, to process, and there is so much for us to Be.

I’m reading a book I love called Productivity is for Robots by Corey McComb. He wrote,“To stay in flow, we need fresh water in our wells. And it doesn’t get there by doing the same thing and thinking the same way.” I think you could replace “to stay in flow” with “to be fully alive” and the integrity of the sentence would stay the same. 

Lying On a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm

James Wright

(who later killed himself)

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly, 

Asleep on the black trunk,

Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.

Down the ravine behind the empty house,

The cowbells follow one another

 Into the distances of the afternoon.

 To my right,

 In a field of sunlight between two pines,

 The droppings of last year’s horses

 Blaze up into golden stones.

 I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.

 A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.

 I have wasted my life.