March: Our Wondrous Vessels
The body is a multilingual being.
—Clarissa Pinkola Estés
I once had a client call themselves a brain in a jar. When they said that, I laughed. Not at them, but with them.
Living from the neck up (a form of dissociation) is an experience I have known well for most of my life. I’ve never been a regular practitioner of yoga, but in the classes I have attended, instructors would often talk about “being in your body.” When I first heard that phrase, I had no idea what they were talking about, nor did I have any sense of how to get out of my head and “into” my physical being.
In last month’s blog post, I discussed working with the breath. And if you’ve been doing any kind of breath work, then you’re already working with the body, since the breath is a mechanism of the physical self. But in this blog post, we’ll go further into working with the body beyond the breath.
Once, several years ago, it occurred to me that we can regard our bodies like space ships. Since this is the one vessel we have, we can try and have the best possible relationship with it.
For the Star Wars fans, think of your body like the Millennium Falcon and you—the captain of the ship—are like Han Solo. Han has an affectionate relationship with his ship. He relies on it and sometimes pushes it to the extreme, but he also supports it, speaks encouragingly to it, and takes good care of it. And he frequently expresses pride and gratitude for it.
Although the Millennium Falcon is inanimate, it is almost like a character, alive and engaged, part of the plot. We care about its wellbeing and safety because Han does. We can have that kind of relationship with our physical vessels, too.
For those of us who experience chronic pain, disordered eating, and other mental and physical health conditions, it may be complex to regard our body as a friend or trusty space ship. For many people, like my brother who suffered from degenerative disc disease for many years before passing in 2014, living in our bodies is an often painful, frustrating, and scary experience.
Even those of us with highly functional bodies can get caught up in an adversarial relationship with our physical vessels, just wanting them to look or behave in a certain way.
So, I don’t want to assume you have a friendly relationship with your body. If you do, that is truly wonderful and something to celebrate. For those of us who don’t, it’s an opportunity to take an inner backward step and notice how we think and talk about our bodies.
How would we talk about our bodies if they could hear us? (And by the way, there is research that indicates they can).
Interoception and Body Scans
One way I like to work with the body involves bringing our attention to the inside of our physical vessels. Neuroscientists have named this practice interoception, which is, essentially, the awareness of what it feels like inside our bodies, what is and isn’t happening in there.
When we practice interoception, we consciously bring our awareness from our external environment (the book we’re reading, the computer screen we’re looking at) to our internal environment (lungs, stomach, calf muscles). Bringing our awareness inward allows us to focus on what we feel inside. These can be “negative” sensations like a tense stomach, but we can also find areas that feel good or neutral.
We practice interoception all the time without being aware of it. When I notice that I’m hungry or need to go to the bathroom, it’s because I’ve become aware of the inside of my body.
One way I like to practice interoception is by doing a body scan. A simple way to do this is to sit and close your eyes, and then starting with the top of your head, just slowly bring your awareness downward into each body part (ears, shoulders, arms, hands, etc.) all the way down to your toes, noticing any areas of tension, neutrality, or pleasantness. (Practicing body scans, by the way, was how I figured out how to get out of my head and “into my body,” like the yoga instructors talked about.)
In her book, The Source: The Secrets of the Universe, the Science of the Brain, neuroscientist and MD Tara Swart discusses the research which indicates that high interoceptive awareness is correlated with mental and physical well-being. In addition to practicing body scans to improve interoceptive skills, I encourage you to try one of my favorite practices, yoga nidra, which includes a very in-depth body scan while lying in bed or on the ground.
In his book The Body Keeps the Score, trauma therapist and psychiatrist Dr. Bessel van der Kolk explains that although we may not have any explicit memories of traumatic experiences from the past, our bodies will often remember and hold onto these experiences and, in the present day, we still live with these memories in the form of physical sensations and responses.
As Clarissa Pinkola Estes and many others explain, the body has a language. It is not a lexicon of words like the ones we use to communicate verbally, but if you get to know your body’s language, you will find it has a way of telling you about these held memories, as well as what it does and doesn’t want and need.
Learning to partner and work with our bodies can amplify and accelerate emotional and psychological healing processes. There are many therapy models, like EMDR and Hakomi, that center the body in the therapy work. While I do not practice therapy from these models specifically, I believe talk therapy can be infinitely more effective when we involve the body, even in simple ways.
One thing I do with many clients is to have them tune into how their body feels when they talk about a certain topic or imagine a past or future event. Then, I ask them to just place a hand on the area of the body that feels distressed (it’s often the throat, heart, or stomach area); this simple but effective practice lets the body know we’ve registered its distress signal. It’s a surprisingly effective soothing strategy.
Bilateral Movement
Another strategy for working with the body that I practice and often recommend is called bilateral movement, which is just a fancy way of saying “side to side.” It is one of the most effective ways to release stored trauma and everyday tension from the body. Walking, running, cycling, and dancing are all examples of bilateral movement.
This style of body movement stimulates the vagus nerve, which is like a bundled superhighway of nerves that runs through the midline of the body, from the base of the brain stem all the way down into the pelvic region. When you move your body, one side after the other, you stimulate this important nerve, which both soothes and enlivens the nervous system, resulting in a feeling state neuroscientists call “social engagement,” in which we feel calm but energized.
Open, Relaxed Postures
In this strategy of working with the body, you can lie on your back on the floor or in bed and move your head side to side until it settles into a natural position. Then, place your hands palm up at your sides and slightly out, while your feet turn outward, roughly hip-width apart. This can easily be done just before falling asleep.
In yoga, this posture is called Shivasana, or corpse pose. Neuroscience has proven what yogis have known for thousands of years: when we place our bodies in open, relaxed postures, our nervous systems begin to soothe. The prevailing theory is that this happens because we are exposing all of our vital organs when we are in such positions, so our bodies send signals up to our brains indicating that we are safe and can relax.
In thinking about the inherent wonder and wisdom of the body, I’d like to leave you with a poem by one of my favorite contemporary poets, Andrea Gibson.
I can’t imagine a more beautiful homage to our corporeal beings. It’s called “For the days I stop wanting a body.”
Imagine when a human dies the soul misses the body
Actually grieves the loss of its hands
And all they could hold
Misses the throat closing shy
Reading out loud on the first day of school
Imagine the soul misses the stubbed toe
The loose tooth
The funny bone
The soul still asks
“Why does the funny bone do that?
It’s just weird.”
Imagine the soul misses the thirsty garden cheeks
Watered by grief
Misses how the body could sleep through a dream
What else can sleep through a dream
What else can laugh
What else can wrinkle the smile’s autograph
Imagine the soul misses each falling eyelash
Waiting to be wished
Misses the wrist screaming away the blade
The soul misses the lisp
The stutter
The limp
The soul misses the holy bruise
Blue from that army of blood rushing to the wound’s side
When a human dies
The soul searches the universe for something blushing
Something shaking in the cold
Something that scars
Sweeps the universe for patience worn thin
The last nerve fighting for its life
The voice box aching to be heard
The soul misses the way the body would hold another body
And not be two bodies but one pleading God doubled in grace
The soul misses how the mind told the body
“You have fallen from grace.”
And the body said, “Erase every scripture that doesn’t have a pulse
There isn’t a single page in the Bible that can wince
That can clumsy
That can freckle
That can hunger.”
Imagine the soul misses hunger
Emptiness
Rage
The fist that was never taught to curl, curls
The teeth that were never taught to clench, clench
The body that was never taught to make love, makes love
Like a hungry ghost digging its way out of the grave
The soul misses the un-forever of old age
The skin that no longer fits
The soul misses every single day the body was sick
The now it forced
The here it built from the fever
Fever is how the body prays
How it burns and begs for another average day
The soul misses the legs creaking up the stairs
Misses the fear that climbed up the vocal chords
To curse the wheelchair
The soul misses what the body could not let go
What else could hold on that tightly to everything
What else could hear the chain of a swing set and fall to its knees
What else could touch a screen door and taste lemonade
What else could come back from a war and not come back
But still try to live
Still try to lullaby
When a human dies the soul moves through the universe
Trying to describe how a body trembles when it’s lost
Softens when it’s safe
How a wound would heal given nothing but time
Do you understand
Nothing in space can imagine it
No comet
No nebula
No ray of light can fathom the landscape of awe
The heat of shame
The fingertips pulling the first grey hair
And throwing it away
“I can’t imagine it.”
The stars say
“Tell us again about goosebumps.
Tell us again about pain.”
If you like, you can see Gibson reading this poem to a live audience here.
Thank you for joining me for this month’s blog post all about the body. I’ll be back here in April to discuss the topic of presence (or maybe trust; I haven’t decided yet). Until then, I hope you—and your body!—take good care.
