Day 15
body
For the first thirty-some years of my life, I avoided thinking about my body. I relied on the gifts of my mind, and on my empathy to get me through. But middle-life has challenged this. Now I have to deal with the chronic pain that follows twenty-years of desk work. I have to face that I never developed an exercise regimen, paid too close attention to what I eat or how much I drink. It all culminates and suddenly I find myself thinking about my body all of the time.
There are so many aspects of this that challenge me, from self-image to struggling with the idea that I can’t physically do whatever I want to do. On a deeper level, I am realizing that there is something about being in my body that makes me profoundly uncomfortable because it brings me closer to this planet and the people on it, and therefore closer to so much suffering.
I am grateful for good health and the use of all of my limbs and senses, but sadly I miss being able to take all of that for granted and I dread spending the rest of my life thinking about how to preserve these gifts.
It is odd that in this moment, the crisis of COVID-19 is a crisis that takes place in our bodies. It is not a natural disaster that we must figure out how to clean up. The fear we feel is for our own bodily well-being and that of others. This invisible threat has caused us all to live more intensely in our bodies, and for me that is problematic.
Breathing helps, and allowing myself permission to disembody by reading or watching TV; but, I also feel an urgency to get comfortable in my body. I see the need for us all to live more consciously in our physical selves, in our physical space. I think that our tendency to leave our bodies and enter other worlds has created separation where there should be unity; between ourselves and others, between ourselves and the Earth. There has been much talk of the gift that all of us staying home has been for the planet, but I hope that we can also discover the gift that being home gives us. It is an opportunity to live with less distraction, to enter our bodies, to eat and sleep, hurt and heal, with more awareness. It is challenging, but there is no doubt in my mind that it is necessary.
