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There
is deep wisdom within our very flesh,
if we can only come to our senses and feel it.
- Elizabeth A. Behnke
He who feels it, knows it more.
- Bob Marley
The human body is not an instrument to be used, but a realm of one's being
to be experienced, explored, enriched and, thereby, educated.
- Thomas Hanna
Without the body, the wisdom of the larger self cannot be known.
- John Conger
Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together.
- John Ruskin
When you touch a body, you touch the whole person,
the intellect, the spirit, and the emotions.
- Jane Harrington |
There are days when my body cries out for movement. I'll wake up and sense a restless urge to run up against something, to feel the rush of wind in my face, air whipping across my arms and legs. To do push-ups on concrete ground and feel the earth support me as I strain against it. When this inner urge comes, I know it's my soul calling me to dive in, to participate in life. Perhaps I've gotten lethargic of late. Perhaps I've gotten caught up in mental gymnastics and need to turn off my mind. Movement makes me feel alive. It balances me. It reminds me that, while I am essentially a spiritual being having a human experience, the very nature of the world I participate in is physical and sensual. And thus, many of the lessons I am here to learn are lessons of the body, of physicality, of physical limitation and physical potential.
Some of these lessons have come through dance. I love to dance. Not the shy, side-stepping, bob-your-head-to-the-music kind of dancing, but BIG dancing - the go-all-out, bare-your-soul kind of dancing that stretches each muscle fiber, each body joint, from the top of my head to the tips of my toes, to the ends of my outstretched fingers. Janet Jackson. Madonna. Alvin Ailey. Twyla Tharp. Give up the soul to the music. Fly. Feel infinite! Once I let go, I become one with the pulse of life. That's what the body is there for, after all. It is an instrument of transcendence. To feel the pleasure of motion, the pain of injury, the sweetness of each living, breathing moment, we need the body. The trick, of course, is to NOT get attached to either the pleasure or the pain. It's easy enough to see why we get addicted to pleasure, but there are those who glorify the pain. The trick is to live the moment fully, give thanks for it, and let it go completely.
The body is the crux upon which we experience our earthly existence. It takes in the physical world's sights, sounds, tastes, touches, smells, and translates them into - "red light", "loud engine", "sweet bread", "shining eyes", "funky smell", "cool feeling". The body communicates. It emits sounds, odors and signals to others, letting them know who we are at this very moment. It also takes any abuse we give it. It has no choice. And despite what we have been taught about good health, nutrition and exercise, we tax the body daily. We torment it daily. We do not always treat it well or lovingly.
Ask any serious ballet dancer. She will tell you of physical pain endured for art's sake.
The nature of a ballet dancer's art subjects her body to critical scrutiny and physical injury. That's why warm-ups take half the class time - muscles need to be prepared to do the big leaps and jumps, the pirouettes, balances and intricate footwork that advanced floor combinations require. Most ballet dancers' feet are a mess - especially women's. Pointe shoes peeled off throbbing feet expose calluses, bunions, blisters and torn toenails. Hobbling around, dancers relieve the pain by soaking their feet in warm water with Epsom salts or applying ice packs and heat packs alternatively to injuries. Fractured toes, fractured wrists (from falling down incorrectly), tendonitis, pulled ligaments and torn muscles, and bone spurs are standard-fare dancer injuries. And then there's the whole discussion of body image. What is the perfect dancer's body? Skinny and tall? Skinny and short? Shapely and tall? Shapely and short? Muscular? Lean? Angular? Curvy? Androgynous? I put away my pointe shoes long ago when I discovered jazz and modern dance. Freer, sexier, and more forgiving on the body, these dance styles allow me to enjoy my love affair with movement without the accompanying injuries to body or spirit.
As we grow and change, our bodies change with us. If we listen closely, our bodies "talk" to us. We can learn to sense things with our bodies: our honest feelings about a thing, the feelings of others, the energy in a room, the vibration of a particular person, whether we are holding back or pushing past our limits. This ability to sense things in the body develops as we become more attuned to this practice. Opening ourselves up to our bodies' intelligence, however, can be difficult. In the Western world, we have learned to close our bodies down - to hold stress and tension within and ignore their existence. It's a habit that becomes automatic. When a person we dislike enters the room, our lips purse together and our shoulders and necks tense up. If a situation makes us uncomfortable, our solar plexus ripples and churns. The thought, "I'm not comfortable; I need to get out of this situation," results. If we stay unaware, we endure the discomfort, or flee the situation. Hours later, we are left to deal with knotted muscles and tension as after-effects. Conversely, if we sense no imminent physical danger and simply find ourselves in a tough confrontation with no way out but through, we may register the discomfort and say, "Breathe, honey, breathe. Stay with this moment. You're okay. You will learn something from this. Go through it." After the event, if we are still holding onto the tension, we can become aware of its location, breathe energy into the tension, wherever it manifests, and then work on releasing it. Learning to work with energy and the breath in this way, we can keep our instruments free of emotional toxins and blocked energy. When we learn to listen to our bodies as tools of intelligence and heed the messages they have for us, life comes more easily into balance.
When I woke up this morning and heard my body calling out for movement, I listened. I went running for half an hour. I returned, refreshed. My body could have just as easily communicated a need for a different treatment such as getting a massage, or meeting with friends in a social setting and having fun. Modalities abound for renewing and regenerating the body and its energy field - exercise, yoga, massage therapy, hot baths, Rolfing, Reflexology, Craniosacral therapy, chakra cleansing, Reiki, Polarity therapy - the list goes on. All are designed to help restore the body to balance, release energy blocks, and relieve stress. I've also found that meditation, commonly used to center the mind, promotes well-being of the body. For with a centered mind, we can more accurately sense our bodies' needs and grow more attuned during times when we are out of balance.
Most of the people I work with know that I'm a dancer. I can't sit still for long periods of time. Once, during a particularly taxing day, a coworker poked her head into my cubicle and caught me in a strange position, arms up, head rolling side to side, eyes closed, breathing deeply.
"What are you doing?" she asked, perplexed.
"Neckrolls," I replied. "Trust me, it helps."
In life's constant balancing act, keeping a healthy body contributes enormously to our mental and spiritual well-being. Releasing tension in the body often releases tension in the mind. Letting go of knots of worry, in form, we let go of knots of worry in intellect. Worry free, we can enjoy more deeply the sensuality of our physical world and participate more freely in the great dance of life.
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