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Lisa says:
I love my body. I really do. It always tells me the truth. It never lies, it never hides how it feels, it never plays the martyr -”oh don’t worry about poor needy me.” It just is. In real time. My body says “this is what’s going on for me, this is how I feel. No matter whether you care or pay attention or dismiss or berate me , I’m just being and doing me.”
It took me 45 years to say that first line. More accurately, It took me 45 years to FEEL that first line and even imagine saying it. For many years that first line was so NOT my reality (probably not really 45 years because pre-teenagehood it didn’t occur to me if I loved my body or not, I just lived it and felt it and moved it.)
Let this sink in – it’s mind-blowing: my body never lies to me. My body is never in the future and it’s never in the past, it’s always now. It’s the most dedicated, loyal, honest, trustworthy and hardworking part of me.
At younger ages we are embedded in our bodies. Our minds haven’t developed enough to mentally stand outside our own bodies and see ourselves. There’s freedom there, but it’s an “unknowing” freedom, an undeveloped and innocent freedom, and yet we have to grow up.
In early teenagehood – to me it feels like 7th grade – this mental function develops more fully and we can discriminate our bodies from our minds. Not a problem until the process runs off the rails into hypermasculine dissociation – the spirit matter split. The mind rages like a frustrated despot and our cultural conditioning stokes the fire. “Oh that body,” the tyrant fumes, “such a problem! Too fat, too thin, not the right color, it’s speckled instead of smooth, curly instead of straight, sick instead of invincible, wrinkled instead of tight, clutsy instead of athletic, changing instead of perfectly plastically perfect.”
I’m learning more and more to FEEL my body in this process. And the more I feel ME, the more astonished and grateful I am for this living, changing body. Even when I’m sick. Even when I notice new stretch marks and funny dark hairs sprouting where they never sprouted before (“goat hairs” my sister calls them), even when I do the best handstand I’ve ever done – for 5 seconds, and even when my tummy hurts, my feet ache, and my eyes need those damn reading glasses (now where did I leave those?) . Yes, even then, my God, what a miraculous body.
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Apparently the whole mind/brain dichotomy started with Descartes (of the “I think…” fame). A whole bunch of now-disproven fallacies followed in his wake, like that the brain can’t change, that lost brain cells can’t be replaced and that the “mind” is somehow other than the brain..Recent brain research apparently suggests that there are “critical periods” for a brain to easily create new neural-pathways, but that those pathways can be formed at any time if the right conditions are present (meaning effort, diligence and proper stimulation). Unfortunately, centuries of repeated dogma solidified Descartian (Cartesian?) thinking into our lives and now we are left confused when stumbling over questions like these.
Apparently it is possible for the brain to change itself, with the habits mentioned previously and some will power. Creeping out onto a limb here, I suggest that “mind” is where that will power, that directed action, comes from; that “mind” is the sense of “I”, is what we are conscious of, and is the “we” that is conscious. My sense for this is only just growing, so don’t hesitate to argue, especially if you are one who can see the body/mind from the bigger picture spiritual side of things.
If I am right though, then mind falls clearly on the body side of the human-spirit split that Lisa asked about, the body side. But the developed consciousness that allows awareness of the body from within the body IS to be celebrated. I argue that knowing what is going on is not disassociating from it any more than is recognizing and soothing a pain in spite of being told that you are a spiritual being (and therefore can deny the body).
My hope is that the mind will accept the body and recognize its consistent truth in a friendly fashion, like an adult sibling
Comment by Dave March 7, 2010 @ 1:38 pm