A Conversation

The good news is that I'm keeping up with the meditation challenge better then my Lenten commitment to blog! The last two days focused on the role of our body in health. We must begin with recognizing the Intuition of our body, or how it speaks to us. Women are often credited with the ability to tune in, or be intuitive, in our every day lives. But the examples that are often used are a recognition of intention or circumstance that occurs outside of our body, and sometimes not even to us. Thoughtful focus can help us make a connection with our own body. Once we recognize that our body speaks to us, we can go a step further, speaking to our bodies and engaging in a conversation that is healing, centered and unites the parts of ourselves that create our well-being. So apparently the  saying about you can talk to yourself, as long as you don't answer, is not necessarily true!

The lessons weren't new to me. I have for years controlled a formerly debilitating, painful condition through diet and exercise. When symptoms flare and pain returns, it is my body speaking. By now I have figured out what it is saying. Move more, eat less, cut the stressors. When I first began making the mind/body connection I had just read the book Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom and begun practicing yoga. Through the book I made the connection between the area in my body that was not functioning properly with the nature of the issues or stressors that I was ignoring. These connections happen to be related to Chakras, so my yoga practice provided a natural first "treatment" of sorts. During this process I became aware of the next step in my path to wellness. After learning to listen to my body, I realized that I could, in turn speak. I had been so focused on how my body wasn't functioning properly that I missed all of the amazing this my body was still doing. As I became more flexible and meditative in my yoga practice I shifted from sadness and frustration in the pain to gratitude for a body that, while unwell, could balance a beautiful tree pose or proud pigeon. I thanked my body every day for what it did well and treated it as the vital life-sustaining force that it is.

One would think that achieving a return to well-being, especially in regards to pain, that the formula

of exercise, eating and mindfulness would become a way of life. And it is. Until "life" gets in the way. While I experienced years of being symptom free, the last couple of years I have experienced recurrences of symptoms. I now live with a shared experience of grief that has profoundly changed me. Grief can take hold, overwhelm, and demand immediate attention that disregards fundamental practices of wellness. Symptoms return.                                

For a while, I was disappointed. I had an almost smug attitude of "I did it" when it came to my disorder when I exhibited no symptoms. My Evangelical experience demands healing. If I live right; do the right thing it follows that I can demand healing. But I'm not healed. At least not yet. So the meditation of the last two days reminds that when my body speaks, I must listen. And as it is speaking to me, I must speak back with gratitude, encouragement and belief in its ability to be the functioning complex conglomeration of systems that it is. When will I achieve the state of health that is truly more than just a management of symptoms? Probably when I deal with the issues at  its root; when I honor this body with the exercise and nourishment it deserves and speak gratitude and wellness to it for what it does, not what it should do. For now, my focus will have to be becoming still enough and quiet enough that when my body does speak, it will no longer have to shout to get my attention!

View from the mountain top! Hiking in Yellowstone.

For our conversation today, how have you learned to listen to your body? What is the message that you send your body every day? Should our message change?