The Body Practice

Tonight, at dinner, I spent sometime at one of my favorite Mexican food places, Garabaldi’s.  The food is good; I didn’t spend all too much; and the waiter has a great sense of humor.  I had every intention of doing lots of homework.  But realized I had left the books I needed behind.  But, in my car, hiding under the back seat was a paperback copy of Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.  Frankl was a prisoner at Auschwitz.  A studied and practiced psychotherapist, he processed his experience in terms of the mind and its ability to adapt to even the harshest of circumstances.

I am familiar with his work because he helped to develop a way of looking at life that I have been studying in school.  His premise is that no matter how bad things get, you still have freedom of what and how you think.  He also talks about the power of love.

I have always known that my need for extra food was linked to times when decisions about my body were taken away from me.  This might be something as simple as my father and mother judging my wish to dye my hair red, something more painful like being punished with a belt or even worse, being too young to know to say no.

I have been to plenty of therapy, so that today I can look at my experiences the way someone views and old but familiar scar, knowing without a shadow of a doubt that your wrist or knee wouldn’t be yours without it. 

Frankl explains how the prisoners were able to do things they never imagined possible.  For example, someone who was accustomed to sleeping with just the right pillow found they could fall fast asleep using only the crook of their arm while sharing a twin bunk with 5 other men.  He also shares the deep spiritual possibilies that came from the torturous conditions.  He paints a picture of one agonizing morning when he was forced to march for hours in the freezing cold with only a misfitted pair of shoes to protect his swollen feet from the snow.  He remembers having his companion whispered that he wondered what their wives might think of them that morning.  Frankl’s mind raced to an image of his wife so perfectly clear and strong that he felt as if he were communication with her.  Now Frankl was not the type of man to uphold foo-foo spirituality, but he confessed that this made him understand the transcendent quality of love.

I call the journey I am on “The Body Practice”.  It is a practice of having a kind of relationship with my body, one that is based on being present and on loving kindness.  Sometimes behaviors formed in less safe times taunt me to follow them once more.  They were placed there by some inner wisdom of mine.  What would the abuser care about my body if it were unpleasing to the eye.  Marvel at how the feelings go away when my stomach is filled with this or that.  What magic exists in the repetitive craving for these foods; beloved preoccupation. 

 The Body Practice invites that inner wisdom into a deeper place.  A landscape where feelings are allowed to bloom and where the wind whispers out the careful utterances of hopes and dreams both new and those gone bye.  The Body Practice caresses the hurt, calms the storms, and witnesses the pain so that healing and the will to thrive may come in and rule the day.

I would never place the path I have been down as equaled to the torture and indignities of Viktor Frankl, and yet, I do find his thoughts on love to be a salve to my own hurt.  Only through Love am I able to overcome the past.  Only through Love am I made new.  Only through Love can I stand to be what I have been, what I am, and look toward what I wish to come true.

This blog is dedicated to all who have lost the voice to protect their bodies, even if for a moment.  This blog is not about being a victim, but about using the power of love to thrive.  Don’t feel sorry for me.  I am who I am because of all I have lived through.  I am grateful for my life.

Rae