In my 31st year, at the pinnacle of my career as an accomplished overachiever, I was busily creating a "perfect" life. (See Pirouettes for more about that.) One morning I woke with an incredible backache. I couldn’t sit through the length of an ordinary therapy session with any of my clients. Undaunted, for the next several weeks I stood, walked around or lay down on the couch while my clients sat and shared their lives.
In those days, like many East Coast Jewish intellectuals, I considered my body (if at all) as a conveyance for carrying my head/brain around in the world. I fed, exercised and tended my body to keep it looking good and in good running order–in much the same way as I tended my car. My mind was the valued center of my experienced universe.
Some weeks later, I began waking each day with a profound sense of dread. Deep in my belly, there was a feeling that I would die if I couldn’t get away from New York City’s dirt and noise, if I didn’t get to some place where I could be surrounded by green growing things. That got my attention. I really grasped that something about my life was being toxic for me, that I had to make changes, soon. Only years later did I realize that my backache was my body’s first attempt to give me that very same message.
I was 42 and in the midst of an enormously fraught year of working on ending a long, difficult relationship, when my body again called that emphatically for my attention. During endless, arduous and devastating conversations with my ex, pains deep in my left shoulder would grow so extreme as to literally take my breath away. I’d move, shrug, shake and massage my shoulder while we continued to talk, trying to ease the pain. By then I knew about bodywork. I scheduled many massage, Rolfing and energy work sessions to help unravel the mess in my shoulder. It never occurred to me hear the pain as my body’s message that something in those conversations was toxic for me.
Some time later in that very difficult period, I would suddenly -during those conversations- find myself off in the bathroom. I’d have gone there, without a conscious decision, right in the middle of my ex’s angry diatribes! That got my attention! I began to understand that my body was taking care of me, removing me from a bad-for-me place even when I hadn’t the conscious sense to know that I was in one.
It was a turning point in my journey. I finally understood that I needed to listen more closely to my body. I needed to start taking my body’s messages seriously. I had been overriding or ignoring those feelings for most of my life till then. These feelings/messages were my natural animal-being’s direct responses to what might be going on around and within me. Heeding my body’s messages would, I could see, help me to take better care of myself and help me to keep myself more safe.
In my 50’s, I had several experiences with body and energy workers during which I became extremely nauseated and agitated as they worked on certain areas of my body. I’d report this and ask them to stop what they were doing just then. Most listened and instantly stopped. Two of the practitioners, however, encouraged me to "stay with the discomfort." One wanted me to stay with it because she "was being guided" to what she was doing and I was "interfering with the guided process." The other wanted me to see that "staying with the discomfort would lead to it’s dissolving."
It didn’t matter to me what these "experts" thought. I now knew, unquestionably, that I needed to listen to my inner expert, my own body. And, my body was clearly telling me that the energy coming into it was either toxic or just more than it felt safe to let in right then. I honored the message and stopped the work both times, despite the practitioners’ considerations. (I actually stopped working at all with the worker who was irritated by my choice.)
There’s an awful lot that pressures us to ignore our bodies’ messages. Those of us who have histories of psychic or physical trauma or neglect in our childhoods have learned, early on in our lives, to cope with overwhelming circumstances by disconnecting, distancing from or overriding our body’s responses. The culture in which we live endlessly encourages us to override and dismiss our bodies’ natural warning systems. The "no pain, no gain" attitude, the enormous market for over-the-counter and prescription medications to mask pain so we can "get on with life," the widespread use of caffeine and other "uppers" to allow us to "get over" our body’s natural fatigue–all of these are strong evidence of that ongoing encouragement.
Still, our body and gut/belly feelings are the greatest barometers of what’s so for us in any moment. Our minds can always beguile us with endless stories about why we shouldn’t (or "don’t really") feel those feelings. We betray, ignore, override or dismiss our body and "belly" feelings only at great peril to our health and well being.
Developing our capacitiy to attend to these feelings and taking them seriously enough to act on their information are essential to our healing journey. As we can develop a practice of honoring our body and "belly" feelings, we gradually will have less and less room for our own minds or anyone else–whatever their expertise–to override, dismiss, invalidate or undermine these "belly" messages.
Consider listening more carefully to your body and "belly" feelings,
P.S. So many of your delicious e-mails send appreciations for the affirmation, support and nourishment you receive from the site. When I answer them, I don’t always remember to let you know that having your own deck of the Rememberings and Celebrations cards is a way to bring this same loving voice into your everyday world, to have it at hand as you need to remind yourself of the "real" truth moment to moment in the crazimakingness of the so-called real world!
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The card on this page is part of a set of 64 handcolored bookmark-size cards called the Rememberings and Celebrations deck. They can be used as an oracle, a meditation focus or a "book-in-pieces" to kindle and grow a compassionate, gentle, unconditionally loving, fiercely protective inner-Mother to help you carve safe healing space for your emerging self and for the wounded little ones inside.
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