Our Fleshly Home

Our Fleshly Home

How do you feel about your body, your physical manifestation? Do like living in your body? Do you appreciate your body? Or are you critical about your body, and unkind to it?

What a big set of questions that is for us.

I sure didn’t like mine. For decades. My list of complaints about my body was long, from it’s appearance to how it felt. I felt betrayed. I felt abused. I didn’t trust it to do what I wanted. I felt a lot of icky stuff. And I did a lot of nasty stuff to my body, too. I obsessed about how my body felt, what was wrong with it, and how much I hated it. Oy.

I remember sitting down in front of a mirror to do an exercise I found in a self-help book. I was to look at my face and stay three things I liked about it. That seemed impossible. What a complex set of emotional responses and feelings I had to that assignment. It took me several tries, but eventually I was able to do it.

Chronic pain, chronic sick, chronic misery. I had the Chronic big time. I blamed and hated my body for it. I am sad to say that I hurt my body intentionally a lot during those years. It never occurred to me that it was trying to communicate.

When I was a kid, just learning to think about stuff deeply, I remember hearing a lot about the impossibility of the mind/body connection. It was too strange! How could they be connected? How could our mind impact our physical well being?

Instantly and deeply, as we are proving scientifically. Researchers are showing us that prenatal programming helps us cope with our own, personal family. Mind-generated stresses  and their related physical conditions like tension headaches and tummy upsets are mind-body concepts we are all pretty familiar with, and accept.

It’s not a long step then to the new research that shows us that each thought, one kind of energy, triggers a physical response, another kind of energy. Series of thoughts produce series of physical responses and we call these emotions, or symptoms, depending on what’s going on in our minds.

Curiously, our language uses these symptoms as idioms. We actually say it. For example, if we are feeling overwhelmed, we may be using the phrase, “Carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders,” and have a lot of tension and discomfort in our trapezius muscles in our upper back, shoulders and neck.

Following this line of thought, what kind of messages might your body be trying to send if you’ve had “the rug pulled out from under you,” or “Can’t see the big picture,” or “put my nose out of joint.”

When we start seeing our body as our ally rather than our nemesis, we start to learn more about ourselves, about what drives us, what scares us, what we might want to consider working on. When we consider our symptoms as messages from our unconscious mind sent to us by way of our bodies, we open a whole world of self-knowledge, and free ourselves to love ourselves.

How have I changed from hating my fleshly home to loving my body?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2015 all rights reserved 02092015

The Beauty in the Mirror

The Beauty in the Mirror

Who do you see in the mirror? Do you see a divine and infinite being? Do you see someone whose beauty shines through? Do you see a beautiful human?

I know you are going to find this hard to believe, but some of us look in the mirror and don’t like what we see. We disapprove of our features, we disapprove of the person who wears them. Poor we. We see our image, and we make a bad face, or have a bad feeling.

How do you think it makes us feel when we scorn ourselves like that? Yeah, kinda rotten.

Why do I like my looks? How do I feel attractive? What makes me so good looking?

This is another one of those things that’s all about attitude. When I don’t like me, I won’t see my self, but only my dislike in the mirror. When I don’t like me, the tiniest flaw will balloon into a deformity. When I don’t like me, I can take my own, lovely body and face and transmogrify them into something I see as hideous.

Saying no to my own self is the ultimate in resistance, the big clench. It is so hard for me to relax when I am rejecting my own body, the home of my spirit.

Why do I love me? What makes me appreciate my appearance? How do I like my face?

When I start seeing who I am when I look in the mirror, when I start seeing my own, sweet self, I start seeing that beautiful person looking back at me. And she often smiles a wonderful smile at the sight of me. I see a person who has thrived through many challenging times. I see a person who has cultivated a loving heart and positive outlook. I see a person I have come to love.

Many of us have physical stuff that often leaves us feeling disgruntled. What we do then is take it personally, as though our bodies are doing this to us, and we don’t like it. I hear some of us saying, “How am I not to take it personally? This is my body.”

We have bodies to support us. We wouldn’t get very far without them. Each of us has things to learn as we go through our lives, different things at different times, and our physical circumstances are here to help us learn some of those things. Seriously. When I can look at my physical situation dispassionately, with a little distance, not taking things personally, I can start to consider what my lessons might be.

Do I need to learn something about humility? Or acceptance? Is this an opportunity to practice going with the flow of my life? Or to love me as I am? Is it about spending more time being present? Or perhaps I need to pay a little more attention to my own well being. Only I can determine what my lesson or lessons are, only I can learn them.

When I look at the current situation as an opportunity for growth, everything changes. I am not saying don’t feel what you feel. Feel it, then let it go and get on with living. Notice your language. Be kind and respectful of the situation,

How have I changed from disapproving of my body to loving it as it is?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 06282014

Home is Where the Body is

Home is Where the Body is

I like to think about where I live from time to time, and to expand it up, into the Universe, and then bring it back; Earth, western hemisphere, North America, USA, Minnesota, all the way down to my body. I think it’s kind of funny to think that I live in my body, like it’s a residence.

We have three primary modes for processing the world, processing our information. We process visually, auditorily, and kinesthetically. Very simply, we see stuff in our minds, or hear words, or imagine physical experience.

We all do all three, but one will be our preferred, one our least preferred. My preference is auditory. I tend to process through sounds, think in words, play music in my head if I’m not thinking about stuff. Visual people are seeing pictures very clearly, and kinesthetics feel their experience. I am working on that one, very useful in my qigong practice.

I try to remember that “I” live with my body, like roommates or something. We speak different languages, and don’t always communicate well. My body tends to be more honest that I am. It never pretends to be full of energy when it wants to sleep, or that one bite is good when it’s ravenous.

Thing is, I make a lot of our decisions, up in my think-y part. You know, about how much to move around, what to eat and drink, when to sleep, when to get up. Body doesn’t have a lot of say in the matter.

I also have tended to treat Body very badly, deprived it, pushed it too hard, withheld water, nourishment, rest, fun. I have spoken to Body cruelly, actively hated it. Yikes. If someone else treated me like I treated Body, I would think about having them arrested for abuse.

Why do I love my body? Why do my body and I get along? Why do I treat my body with kindness and respect?

When I think about Body as hosting me, hosting “I”, I feel so grateful. I want to be a better guest. After all, if it weren’t for Body, I wouldn’t be able to do much of anything. But Body means I can do so much. Smell lilacs, hold a child’s hand, hear little cats purr, see my baby snails look at me, and come over. I can dance, and run, and kung my fu. I can fall asleep, and wake up. I can swim, and talk.

Why do I enjoy my body? What makes me take good care? Why do I like where I live?

Body has her own brain, in her guts. When I learn to pay attention to messages from that brain, my life gets better. Body can often process outside information way faster than I can, and will shoot me the word. If I am paying attention, Body will clue me in to all sorts of useful stuff. We make a great team when we work together.

Regardless of our circumstances, the better I take care of her, the better off we are. When I treat my body with loving kindness, she will respond with lightness, and love back to me.

How have I changed from reviling my body to loving where I live?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 05242014