To be a body

I'm wondering how to embrace physical changes

I’ve been thinking a lot about my skeleton.

Over the past couple months I’ve rapidly gained weight, a side effect from the life-changing medication I’m taking for OCD. My clothes still fit, but they don’t look the same. Friends say they don’t notice, but I certainly do.

I haven’t yet figured out how much it bothers me, if at all. The medication works so well, I’d accept any side effect. If you felt like your brain was your worst enemy, taunting and torturing you for years, wouldn’t you agree to go up a size or two to make it stop?

As my body has expanded, my mantra has been, “There’s nothing wrong with this.”

And I believe that. There is nothing wrong with spreading out in softness. But it’s a change.

The time I think about it the most is during yoga. Many poses are less comfortable for me now that there’s simply more body to twist and bend. There’s a lot of…squishing. It feels funny! Sometimes it hurts.

I asked my yoga teacher friend if she had any tips for adjusting to this change, and she suggested focusing on my bones. If I concentrate on bone alignment, I’ll be less focused on the squishing and squashing going on with all my new body parts.

Thus, I’m imagining my skeleton more than I ever have in my life.

It has helped with yoga, but the primary benefit is that I’m thinking of my body in a more complete way.

When we talk about ‘the body,’ most often what we’re really talking about is body image.

“How I feel about my body” usually translates to “How I feel about the way my body looks.”

When my friend was telling her husband that she’s “working on her body” (meaning, working to alleviate pain), he instantly assumed she was trying to lose weight and reflexively insisted, “But you have a great body!”

“Body positivity” is much more about appearance than enthusiasm for one’s lungs.

“My relationship with my body” rarely implies “My relationship with my blood cells, my nervous system, my brain chemistry.”

But why not? The body is a large complex fascinating container with so much packed in that it’s freaky to think about. Do I actually have a spleen? My femur must be in there somewhere?

Thinking about my bones during yoga has prompted a completely different sort of friendship with my physical being. Now when I turn my attention toward “my body,” I’m imagining all the insides rather than the outside.

I cannot change the way I look, size-wise, at the moment. No matter my diet or exercise regime, I’m going to gain weight until I plateau, and I have no control over that.

And since I have no control over the way my body looks, I’m focusing on the way my body feels.

You may now address me as Enlightened Being Mari Andrew!!!!!

But for real: This has been a massive mental shift for me.

I’ve been increasingly bodily-aware the past few years ever since immersing myself in the work of truly enlightened being Dr. Hillary McBride.

She taught me that my body is a person and therefore uses my same pronouns: she, her. I now cringe when I hear “Pay attention to it!” in reference to the body. Nobody’s body is an it, an object!

And yet, we have it in our heads that our body must be an “it” because Western Society supports the distinction between the mind and physical form, as though we can somehow transcend our bodies by thinking our way out of them.

This is a relatively recent concept, developed by the philosophers of Ancient Greece. They came to believe that the mind was separate from body (a wild idea at the time) and therefore our bodies were just junk to schlep around and have to deal with.

Because women weren’t as easily able to forget about their bodies (with all the menstruating and birthing going on), the mind-body dichotomy ended up placing women at the time in this awkward category of “human, but not as human as men.”

Meanwhile, most other cultures around the world still weren’t separating the brain from its fleshy home, so therefore bodily intuition was just as valuable as mental logic. An inkling was taken as seriously as a proven fact. A feeling was as prioritized as an explanation.

To summarize Western history, then the Enlightenment happened, which was great in some ways but really threw the baby out with the bathwater when it came to care and attentiveness to the body.

Now, folks in almost all cultures have to re-learn the perfect insight of the body, which should have been supported and embraced all along.

ANYWAY. I know all of this. And yet, it’s too easy to believe that our bodies are objects to control, rather than the culmination of ancient wisdom to revere.

The only time before when I have truly listened to my own sweet glob of atoms on is when I was recovering from paralysis and basically had to learn how to move again.

I learned how to exercise according to what feels good.

I learned how to eat what my body wanted.

I learned to soak her in water, slather her in oils, greet her with grace, then ask what else she needed.

Learning to walk…for the second time (so far) in my life

I became waaaaaay more interested in my nervous system, perpetually curious about the sights and sounds and experiences that made my body wince or tighten or run away. I learned how to settle my nervous system through humming and caressing and other moves that are intuitive to all animals but forgotten by humans.

I got curious about where and how emotions showed up in various body parts, and learned to soothe them. Because of my desperation to simply take a pleasurable walk again, I had no time or interest in the way my body looked, but how she felt.

Then I forgot about all that!

Now I’m learning again because, if I want my mind to be free, my body is going to have to respond as she wants. I respect her, so I’m letting her decide, without forcing calorie restriction or daily cardio blasts upon her.

So we’re moving in all sorts of ways. We’re loving clothes that are a little looser. We’re doing intense workouts as a result of energy bursts, rather than doing them for specific results.

One of my favorite embodied experiences: dancing Flamenco!

A question I ask myself is, “Why did my soul choose this body?”

When I ponder this question I consider all my body’s characteristics: She gets sick easily, she’s fast and flexible, she loves sleep but especially in the afternoon, she gets too hot but loves sunshine, she hates noise but loves melody, she’s drawn to the smell of honeysuckle and she’s sickened by the smell of a car—any car.

She’s the vessel of DNA from centuries of reindeer herders and Vikings, tree-worshippers and Sámi. These were snow-dwelling, animal-loving people who were prone to depression, and healed each other communally. Is that why hyper-individualism grinds my gears? Maybe.

She’s the only person I’ll know my entire life and yet I sometimes talk to her like a useless appliance that doesn’t work, rather than a living thing.

I wouldn’t treat a dandelion as cruelly as I’ve treated my body, who is living and breathing as much as the trees I love and the kitty cat I cherish. Shame never works as a motivator for animals, so why do I apply it to my body?

So here begins a season (a lifetime!) of endearment toward her. I speak to her in a voice of affection and feed her like a pet: Oh you didn’t like that food? What about this! I take her on walks and nudge her to go to class, and tell her to go to bed on time. I let her sleep in, I order her a sundae, and I make her laugh.

She’s not an item to control but a person to experience, and some day when the facts of biology are breaking her down, I know my soul will miss her so much: skeleton and all.

Let me know: Have you come to any life-changing revelations regarding your body in this season? Do you also think about your bones during yoga? Have you found a way to transcend the Ancient Greek tradition that we should transcend our bodies? Can your body tolerate a car smell?

ALERT ALERT!

If this topic resonated with you, my favorite embodiment teacher Ruthie Lindsey and I will be teaching a retreat next weekend all about how to make friends/peace with your body! If you’re in the NYC area, just take the train up to Hudson (my favorite town) and get a 30-min cab from there to the retreat center. You don’t even have to take time off work! It’s just Friday night to Sunday afternoon! Register here!