Breathing the Body Whole Meditation

Last night I was thinking that my toe hurt.

“My toe hurts,” is what I thought. I was annoyed. I had taken my toe to the doctors four times already. When was it going to be done hurting.

Then it hit me: my toe is me. It wasn’t that my toe was hurting—it was that I was hurting. By making my toe separate from me in some way, I could distance myself from how it was trying to communicate with me. It wasn’t my toe’s pain. It was mine. We were in this together after all, right?

When I was studying anatomy for massage school, there was one anatomist who argued our body (he was working with cadavers) is only seen as parts because of the scalpel that makes them so. His argument was that everything is connected.

This made me think of adopted people and their first moms. It made me think of adopted people and their relationship with their bodies. So many adopted people I work with struggle with physical pain, with chronic muscular holding.

What if I took my toes as my own. My feet. My hands. What if all of me is me?

Anyway. I created a meditation based on this thinking.

Let me know how it feels if you…feel like it.