I came to the rather profound realization, during my conversation with my friend J, that there is a deep disconnection in my life, a fracture which I can trace back many years. During my conversation with J, I tried to explain this disconnection as two opposite poles which at various times of my life I have straddled. I have never felt ‘big’ enough to occupy both at the same time. When we talked, I found it hard to identify what those two poles were, and all I could think of was ‘Intellect’ and ‘Relational,’ but that didn’t seem right.
Then during yoga, I had a conversation with my body. Before you think I’m totally crazy, let me try to explain. If you are a woman, you have undoubtedly read a thousand magazine articles or books that have told you the importance of loving your body. In yoga, we are often told to listen to our bodies. I have never really critically examined what it means for us to do either. But what is implied in both is that somehow our mind, our senses and our hearts are separate from our body. Perhaps they are housed within it, but it is with the mind that we know our bodies, with our senses that we listen to it and with our heart that we love (or hate) it. Now of course we know that our brain, our ears and our hearts are all part of our body, but still a separation remains.
But today, I imagined my soul and my mind coursing through my veins. No, I felt it. For a brief moment, I experienced a deep inhabitance of my body. I felt connected in a way that is difficult for me to now explain. But I liked it. A lot.
At the risk of giving you blogging whiplash, I want to turn back to the earlier conversation with my friend. I was trying to explain to her my reticence around dating and relationships. I believe my past relationship failures have had a lot to do with my inability to embrace, at the same time, the intellectual me and the relational me. Growing up, the struggle was whether to be smart or pretty, because I knew somehow that being both was not a possibility. So, with men, and often with friends, I made the sometimes conscious and other times unconscious choice to turn off the brain whenever I turned on my heart. Because somehow along the way, I learned a destructive lesson. I learned that when I opened my mind to people, when I spilled my brain along with my heart, I have often been rejected. Here, I am seen as ‘too intense,’ ‘too intimidating,’ or simply as thinking too much. And so, I compartmentalized.
I’ve lived my life on competing paths. I walk down the path of intellect, a lonely path if there ever was one, afraid of opening my heart or my body because I feel as if opening either will diminish my ability to be taken seriously. Alternatively, I walk down the path of the relational, where my mind stagnates while my heart skips a beat.
I know that I am at risk here of sounding like a patient on your couch of psychoanalysis, but bear with me just a little longer. At 2:00 am, I realized that the two conversations that I was having were essentially the same conversations. Both conversations were about the separation of mind and body. Now, I am not talking about the body as simply an empty, physical shell. I think, when I am talking about the body, I am talking about how I present myself sensually, playfully and openly, in a word, relationally.
So, at 3:00am, I had an epiphany of sorts, or maybe it was/is simply a foggy, lack of sleep induced delusion. You decide. I’m far too tired to make that decision. But, what I realized was that my mind has always inhabited my bloodstream, my nervous system, my muscles, my organs and my bones. What I felt during yoga class was not a new connection, but a recognition of what has always existed. I can no more separate the two, than I can peel away my skin and prance about free of its encumbrance.
And now it is almost 4:30 am and I must take my sleep-deprived mind/body to bed. But I want to leave you with one last thought. Both paths that I took, I walked in my physical body. Each path I navigated with my mind. It was only my delusions and sometimes my skillful deceptions that allowed me to think otherwise. Who I am and who I let you see are not always the same and that is what needs to change. I want to know deeply and love fiercely. Both mean risks and neither can happen unless I allow both to. So, here I go, brain bits floating through my veins. Don’t even try to tell me that isn’t the way it works, because quite frankly I won’t believe you. :P
3 comments:
this is the kind of reaction i was fingers- and toes-crossed hoping for. and i'm excited.
Thanks Jacks...It was a long night, but intensely worth it, I think. :)
ahhhh but you were always pretty and always smart. You have always been both. There was no choice, except in allowing people to see both at the same time. You're a great package!!
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