Making Friends with My Body
The last long while I have been learning how to be a whole body—okay, not just the last long while, rather my whole life! What I am trying to say is that during the last year or so the shifts in my awareness of how I hold parts of my body as separate have become more refined. I am more aware of the holding separate.
In metaphorical terms, the holding separate is a bit like when a part hurts and we look at that part as not cooperating or not willing or being difficult. I do this, we all do this, to some degree.
In terms of my own physical structure, one of the ways I learned to be a body was to separate my top half from my bottom half, so there is a bit of a mis-alignment between lower body and upper body. Working with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen the last few years helped me notice more deeply this disconnection and see if I can re-join these parts in a way that fits with current time of how I am.
More recently, I had an opportunity to study with Tony Richardson, my first Zapchen Somatics teacher, and his colleague Kathy L. Kain. The title of the class was “Making Friends with Our Brain.” A mysterious title! What I discovered was that the class was about being a whole body, including learning a variety of somatic practices to help us go back to this integrated place.
One of the things Tony and Kathy talked about was how all body really wants to do is be one whole body: do its complex dance with each part doing its part. But what happens is we over-use one part and then the other parts compensate to help out, which takes more energy and costs us precious resources. Body is designed to get along with itself and will do whatever it needs to do for the dance to happen.
So this thing that we do, of holding separate, making divisions inside, is actually not how body is intended to work. We are, as Tony says, “making” that competition or argument or this-one-is-not-behaving attitude of thinking.
A fundamental somatic practice (in many lineages, not just Zapchen) is body being in alignment—resting, nesting, relaxed down into itself with presence. I practice this every day. The last few years and in particular the last couple of months, the deeply held pattern of mis-alignment between top and bottom has been trying to find a way to unwind, a way towards more alignment with itself. Top part learning how to trust being upright while resting on bottom, bottom learning how to relax while supporting top. Each part doing what it is meant to do to help the other part.
The unwinding is both revelatory and unnerving. Feeling the disconnects inside teaches me the ways in which I want to change and show up in the world. Feeling how my body is shifting makes our partnership stronger, more trusting, and the “wow” factor of bodies’ capacities to change adds a dose of miracle flavor to the experience. And, I also have been physically uncomfortable as I work through these deep changes, as I learn, as a body, how to be a more aligned, more whole body. The adhesions in connective tissue loosening, stuck places letting go, this can hurt. Having extra support from healer clinicians I trust has been essential during this phase of my process.
I am not quite sure where all this is going to take me. I have hopes and preferences, and I may end up landing in another place entirely. So far, what I feel is true is that me, as body, is moving towards balance, moving towards a deeper living of what getting along with each other is, of what being friends is.
From my heart to yours…
