Oh shit, I'm in a relationship with my body!

Photo by De'Andre Bush on Unsplash

I've been in an important relationship with my body my whole life and, for ages, I didn't even realize it. Don't get me wrong, I've known I "have" a body for quite a long time but I think I've treated it more like a possession that I wasn't sure I really wanted to own, rather than two co-existing "beings" that need to get along so that we can get the best out of our life together.

We have to share the same space, my body and I (my mind? my ego?), whether I like it or not, whether my body likes it or not. Changing from this perspective of ownership to one of relationship brings me hope and a feeling of expansion.

Treating my body as if it’s a thing I “own” (or that owns ME) is VERY different from treating it like an important relationship in my life. 

If we look at it as a relationship, it can be more difficult than our worst relative, boss or friend because we simply don’t have the power to end the relationship (barring suicide) no matter how much we may not like, appreciate or approve of the body we have.

Our bodies are like our prison cellmates! Haha - okay, or our soulmates... We won't be separated from them until we die but, if we can learn to know them, to negotiate with them, to make peace with them, to understand and respect their needs, the relationships can only get better with time. 

I know mine has. I have started taking my body’s wants and needs into account. I try to make sure that it gets good nutrients often, I do my best to “ask” it what it wants (a bath, a walk, to dance, some tai chi?) as often as I can remember. I am far from perfect and, yes, it’s a work in progress, but our relationship is becoming more harmonious with my efforts to include its preferences in my decisions.

Gratitude for Books, Reading and Google

I've been wanting to start a blog for a long time. Every once in a while, I will be riding home in my car, thinking about something I've read or heard recently and I'll start a discussion with no one in my head. Seems like a bit of a waste to have it stop there. So I think I'll start this out as a gratitude journal entry.

The first thing to mention is that I'm grateful to Google for making it so easy for me to get this underway.

The next thing that comes to mind is that I have had the privilege to read some absolutely amazing books over the last year or so related to healing; trauma's effects on health, what causes illness, how emotions play into disease, how we can heal ourselves. I'm just so happy and full of gratitude today that those books exist and that they have found their way to me. I'm looking forward to sharing some of them with you.

These are just a few to pique your curiosity:

• Mind Over Medicine: Scientific Proof That You Can Heal Yourself by Lissa Rankin, MD
• When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress by Gabor Maté, MD
• The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk, MD

I'm also really grateful that I know how to read. I don't even give it a second thought most of the time but I can't imagine what my life would have been like, would BE like if I couldn't read. I consider myself one of the truly lucky ones for that gift.

My mother was key in sparking and supporting my interest in books and my first grade teacher at Marie V. Duffy in Wharton, NJ was the one who taught me how to do it. I remember I couldn't stop reading billboards once I was able to figure out what they meant. So today I'm sending out gratitude to both my mother and Mrs. I-can't-remember-her-name as well.

I like to make a list of about 3 to 5 things when I do a gratitude journal entry, not too many that it will take too much time -if it takes more than 5 minutes, I probably won't do it at all- and not too few that I won't have to sit and think about my day for a little while.

What's in your gratitude journal entry today?