Reflection by Amanda Miller
WORD WATCH: BODY, honoring somatic wisdom
Are you anybody? Somebody? nobody?
Are you in your body?
For many of us, our relationship with our own bodies is a complicated lifelong love (and sometimes hate) story.
In early 2006, I attended a new student orientation at The School of Healing Arts in San Diego, where I was beginning a massage therapy certification program. The school director stood at the front of the room and, before greeting us, slammed a binder against the podium. Then, she asked, Where do you feel that in your body?” She was demonstrating the way our bodies absorb experiences, how they communicate to us, and why massage therapy is such an important tool for healing.
In my twenty years of working as a massage therapist, I have witnessed repeatedly how releasing tension in the physical body restores the mind and spirit. Our bodily sensations are our internal messaging system, telling us to forge ahead or make a change. But first, we must pay attention.
The word “body” originated in Old English to mean the trunk of a person or animal. It evolved to also mean the “main part” of anything, and later expanded to encompass “a mass of matter,” with phrases like “heavenly body” to describe a cluster of stars. The expansion of this word’s meanings mirrors the expansion within ourselves when we pause to cultivate reverence for this vessel we inhabit. Western dualistic thinking espouses, “This is my body, a machine to bend to the will of my mind”. But when we stop and tune into what’s happening inside, we realize our bodies often knows things about our experiences and needs before our conscious mind. The gut, often called “the second brain,” is a particularly potent messaging center. We have 200 to 600 million neurons embedded in the lining of our gastrointestinal tract. It may actually be our primary source of wisdom. Attunement to this sacred messaging can help remind us that we are star matter, heavenly bodies on earth created from the same substances as the heavenly bodies above.
This time of year invites us to realign - body and soul, our own heaven on earth, healthy body and mind -- can we treat the word body with as much reverence and as lovingly as we want our bodies to be?
The shift: Take a break from hauling your body around so you can accomplish mind-motivated tasks. Carve out time to sit in a quiet space and really listen to your body. Close your eyes. Breathe. Slowly, perform an internal scan from the top of your head to the soles of your feet. What is your body telling you?
