There is a perfectly good sense in which my body and I are one. Without
a body I would be unable to meditate, to think or feel. I would perceive
nothing. Yet this unity of me and my body is disturbed by thousands of years of
negative thoughts about the body and its place in the Great Chain of Being. In
the Western tradition from which I write, a dominant strain of thought has
elevated the mind over the body. The corruptible body is debased and impure,
while the mind is non-corporeal and capable of purification.
This prejudice against the body makes it difficult for us to remember
to consult it in our busy conversations with our selves. But just because the
body is ‘dumb’ does not mean that it is unintelligent. For example, if one’s
feet could talk, they would say that wearing high heeled shoes is a bad idea.
So who is stupid, the body, or the person who becomes injured by choosing to
wear them against the feet’s advice?
The trouble is that the body has been conceived as an animal in need
of training. The body must be made docile to human purposes and habituated to
things that it would not, perhaps, choose for itself, like tight shoes, cold
showers and long dawn runs. The practices of the ascetics show us the lengths
to which this ‘taming’ of the body can go. By the time we start enjoying
physical pain, the purposes of the body have been totally perverted.
So, yes, I am my body; but no, we do not always remain in unity. My
body can ‘say’ one thing, my mind something very different. This sounds
dualistic, but dualism is a flexible notion. If you run into my car, I will
identify myself with it and say, “You hit me!” If you cut my arm, I will say,
“You cut me!” If I lose my arm, it is no longer ‘me.’ For some purposes we
identify with our bodies, and for others, with our minds, even though the
distinction between them is ‘thought-constituted’ and does not exist in
reality.
How, then, do we communicate with ourselves? What in us is talking
to what? Surely there must be internal distinctions between my living body and
other parts of my personality or ‘soul.’ Mind and body have been historically
singled out as opposing one another, but I would add that the aims, purposes
and desires of the body can differ also from those of the ego, heart or spirit.
Imagine that a living human body is structured by intentionality and
has its own intelligence and will. Is there wisdom or folly in the body? When
is it right or wrong to listen to body’s counsels? Do bodies have their own
agenda? If so, can we discover what the agendas of our bodies are and bring
them into harmony with our actions, thoughts and emotions? Can we use the
wisdom of the body to discover what we actually feel about things that we
already think we know? Does the body
sometimes grasp the situation we are in before the mind does?
The body cannot literally speak, yet it does communicate
non-verbally, in large part by introducing chemical compounds into our system
that tell us when we are hungry, thirsty, or need to accomplish other bodily
functions. Without these compounds, we would not know sexual desire, fear, hope
and despair, or elation, intoxication, and joy. In this fashion, the body can
respond to a situation before the mind can catch up to what is happening, as in
the experience of feeling the hairs on the back of one’s neck stand up before
recognizing the cause.
An example from my life occurred when a doctor remarked that one can
die from smoking related illnesses even years after quitting cigarettes. On an
intellectual level I understood this, but my body had its own reaction, which
was not to be philosophical about the prospect of death. I lost blood pressure
and became dizzy. It took quite awhile for me to recover my equanimity.
This experience made me pay more attention to my body, for I
realized that it does have its own agenda. The body wants to live, and reacts
to danger, or even the thought of danger. The body wants pleasure and hates
pain. The body loves its desires to be satisfied, but tends not to take the
long view. At times, the body’s
‘thinking’ may be shaky, but at other times, it is solid, warning us of dangers
we had not conceptualized, and advising us of pleasures not anticipated.
We live as bodies. We live them from a first person perspective; and
though the body’s form of communication is non-verbal, we ignore at our peril
the signals we continually receive from it. For example, the body tries to tell
us when we are getting sick, and that we need to stop what we are doing and
rest. Yet, as I know from foolish experience, it is easy to ignore such signals
and carry on as if nothing were happening. The result is an illness that is
much worse than it would have been had one listened to what one’s body was
saying.
So how can we bring our bodies into the internal conversations we
have with ourselves? Outside of direct imperatives, our bodies keep a relatively
low profile and may be forgotten in the routines of daily life. So we have to give our bodies a voice. We
must remember they are there, trying, as it were, to talk to us. We must, from
time to time, let ourselves feel our bodies without preconceptions. We must
quiet our minds, listen intently, and let our bodies teach us how to listen to
them talk.
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