Secret Wisdom Excerpt
Chapter One: What Are These Things Dangling at the End of My Arms?
Every Friday morning, I gather with a group of women in their mid-forties and older for a creative dance session called Free Motion. Guided only by my occasional prompts and ethereal melodies from a CD, we all swirl, sway, bend, roll, and tumble wordlessly in our own way, luxuriating in the pleasure of our bodies moving freely. The experience is meditative and playful, relaxing and refreshing. When we’re finished, we sit silently in a circle, still in a somewhat dreamlike state after slipping away from our thoughts and letting ourselves be moved by our bodies. We try to put into words something of what has happened for us.
Recently, Cecilia—a newcomer with long, stringy gray hair and a deeply wrinkled smile—spoke slowly into the silence: “Right from the beginning, when we were just lying there on the floor and starting to move, I thought to myself: where have I been?!” She added, “Everything in me kind of shook loose.” It was as if she had left home for a long time and finally found her way back—to her body, to the home of her spirit. After a moment of quiet, she sighed deeply and continued, “We’re so busy all the time doing so many things that seem so important, and they aren’t really that important.”
Most of us are getting smarter about our bodies as we age. To stay fit, we’ve learned how to strengthen core muscles and walk or bike for cardio benefits. We rely on mammograms and MRIs to detect abnormalities. We surf the Web for information about how our parts work, how to keep them tuned up, and how to fix or manage them when they’re not. But acquiring information and following wellness guidelines are not the same as knowing our body from the inside out—being in our body, living in it. For Cecilia, allowing her body to move freely, according to her inner impulses, brought her back to living in her body—and gave her access to its priceless wisdom.
Pay attention
What does it mean to live in your body? How does it feel? How do you know you’re alive?
Knowing starts with the simple act of paying attention. We routinely pay attention to our body in certain ways every day. We bathe, fix our hair, and trim our nails to keep our body clean and looking attractive. We eat to stave off hunger, ideally eating what is nourishing. Many of us exercise to keep in shape, and we schedule a massage now and then. We may take medications and supplements or follow other procedures to deal with specific health problems. So far, so good. That covers basic body care and maintenance—even some all-important self-nurturing activities.
But how alive do we feel as we go through these experiences? How conscious are we? How present are we?
Check this out for yourself. Do you hurriedly grab a bite to eat? Do you use the speakerphone so you can set up an appointment or share gossip while brushing your hair and putting on your makeup? Are you rushing through your body care as a necessary chore so you can get on to other things? Or are you fully, consciously, lovingly present when you’re tending to your body? If you’re like many people, you may give your body only passing attention when you’re taking care of it. And during the rest of the day, you may barely be aware of living in your body at all. What about right now? Notice your experience of your body at this moment. Are you “in” your body as you read this book? Or are you completely unaware of your sensations, your urges, your vitality?
Your body is worthy of your attention because it’s the precious home for your spirit. It’s how you experience being alive. It’s your avenue for taking in your world and expressing yourself. Thomas Moore, in Care of the Soul, describes the human body as “the soul presented in its richest and most expressive form.”
Too often, we’re hardly “in” our body at all. Our attention is wrapped up in our thoughts. Many of us tend to be compulsive thinkers. Our mind is in charge. If our body is doing anything, it’s acting in response to our thoughts. When our body doesn’t perform according to expectation, it’s common practice to give it a push with caffeine, exhaust it and make it ill with an overdose of activity, or pacify it with alcohol or pills or the promise of a golf game or yoga class soon.
What’s happening in your body right now? Stop reading for a moment and observe. Feel your feet. Notice what your breath is doing. Observe any effort you’re making in your jaw and facial muscles, your neck and shoulders—anywhere in your body. Notice what feels pleasurable. Be in your body. Give your attention to the physical experience of being alive.
As you continue reading this book, make a point to stop and do this body-awareness activity at least once during each chapter. You may find you’ll want to do it periodically throughout your day. The more you practice being consciously present in your body, the more you’ll feel like you’re coming home.
Feel your body from the inside out
Some years ago, I became acquainted with the Subtle Self Work of Judith Blackstone, who teaches the practice of conscious living. I remember the first time I listened to one of her recorded tapes and heard this instruction: “Feel the space inside your arms. Feel what it’s like to be live inside your arms.” I was intrigued by this suggestion and directed my attention to that “space” inside my arms. As I did, I was surprised by the expanded internal sensation I felt within my arms, almost as if someone had pumped air into them. They felt larger than usual, as if more of me were there somehow. I sensed my arms not as appendages of a certain size and weight but as buoyant fields of energy, pulsing with life. My arms seemed to be floating and almost boundary-less. It was a giddy experience.
I used to play this particular tape whenever I had a panic attack, a problem I experienced for many years. These attacks always came on suddenly. For little or no reason I could identify, I’d feel as if I’d nearly been hit by a truck. My heart rate would speed up. I’d feel dizzy, irritable, and short of breath. My thoughts would race and I’d become extremely fearful. This flood of physical and emotional responses sometimes continued for hours at a time. If I couldn’t calm the panic readily, I would listen to Blackstone’s tape.
After a few minutes of listening to her instructions and performing the activities she suggested, the attack would subside somewhat. When I got to the “feel the space inside your arms” activity, which was near the end of the tape, the panic would dissipate notably. The tape concluded with further guidance, inviting me to experience living “inside my body all at once.” That cinched the panic relief. Now my whole body experienced an expanded, energized, yet calm, state. The frantic thoughts, rapid heartbeat, and overall agitated state of mind that had been with me when I started the tape were now gone. I was indeed living “inside” my body instead of in a state of fear about the future. I was living in the now.
The spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle, best known for his book The Power of Now, devotes a whole chapter of that book to a similar notion of experiencing what he calls the “inner body.” He also talks about it in A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, in which he writes: “Your inner body is not solid but spacious. It is . . . the life that animates the physical form.” Tolle believes we can feel this spacious sense of the life within us by cultivating awareness of the inner body. “When waiting, when listening to someone, when pausing to look at the sky, a tree, a flower, your partner, or child, feel the aliveness within at the same time.” When you are conscious of your body, aware of both its form and its formless animating force, says Tolle, you are living here, now, in the present.
As an infant, your mind was not occupied with thoughts. Your life was an all-body experience. You were feeling, smelling, hearing, moving. You were fully alive. Some of that experience of aliveness may have been lost as you grew up and learned to subdue the body in service to your mind and the authority figures around you. You may have come to feel distant from your body and its pleasures and wisdom. It’s possible for you to regain the sense of fully living in your body, of being fully here. The exercise below will help get you started. It will allow you to acquaint yourself newly with your body through conscious attention. It will help you know what it means to feel alive in each area of your body. Test it for yourself. Discover what it feels like to be fully conscious of the experience of living in your body….