Staying Close To Your Body

 

Last weekend I was in the mountains hiking with a friend. Recounting some of my history with hiking and why I feel the way I do about it, I was brought back to the early days of getting out onto the trail. At the time I was in my mid-twenties and living a very destructive, disconnected, and I would even say, abusive, relationship with my body.

Really, I could not even call what I had with my body back then, a relationship. It was more like I was some foreign exchange student visiting a frightening and overwhelming country where I didn’t know the language; leaving me confused, scared and frustrated a great deal of the time.

But out on the trail, and by necessity in order to be able to do what I was doing, I had to learn to be with my body in ways I never had before. I actually had to pay attention to it if I expected it to be able to get up and down a mountain in one piece. I actually had to stop overriding the messages it was sending me to be able to keep going.

What did that look like?

Paying attention to basic signals of thirst, hunger and physical sensation. I had to notice before I got depleted physically what my body needed by way of food and water. I had to tune into the twisted shoulder strap, the crinkled sock or the fact that I was overheating or cooling down too fast.

Otherwise what was something small and manageable in the moment, became too big and unmanageable to compensate for later on. The body is amazing in its endurance, resilience and redundancy out on the trail, but pushed beyond its limits in uncaring and unthinking ways, you will pay the price. Every single time.

Because I was first getting into hiking well before cell phones and from a time when we were all a lot heartier, the expectation was that, except in the most dire of circumstances, you got down under your own steam. It wasn’t just you out there. It was also those you were with, as well as those who might risk coming out to rescue you. So you better be able to do what needed doing.

This meant that I had to learn fast how to stay close to my body because attending early to something calling for my attention got me one kind of a hike, while waiting until the messages had become wildfires that were out of control got me another kind of a hike.

For me, and from the very start, hiking is and always has been a metaphor for life in a body. Not just with myself, but also in terms of what I “owe” to others. What I need to pay attention to out there is not unlike what I need to pay attention to in the day to day. Both for myself, and others.

Here are some simple “trail” instructions:

Stay close to your body and its most basic needs, while attending to imbalances and physical urges early and often. Remember you have a duty to those you are traveling with. A duty to hold up your own end.

Which can only be done if you know how to take care of your own end to begin with.

Be Nice

 

Two weeks ago, I saw a yard sign that read “Be Nice.” I let it go. Sort of. But then yesterday I saw it again on another lawn, and the rage that had started to simmer a few weeks ago, burst into full boil.

What’s the big deal you might be wondering? I mean come on, there are far worse things someone could post for all those driving by to see. Right? And I might agree. Except for one teeny, tiny problem.

I know better. More to the point, I have lived a great deal of my life under the oppressive rule of nice. As a woman, I know intimately the dark magic behind insisting that a girl be a “nice girl.” A deadly, suffocating and soul-sucking insistence that insinuates a kind of “be nice or else.” Or else what, you might ask?

You will be left, shamed, ostracized, attacked and ridiculed. Along the way you will be told that it is all your fault because you just didn’t behave nice enough. A deep-seated cultural, familial and relational “hidden curriculum” that makes it all but impossible to challenge what you are being conditioned to believe. Whether it is good for you, or not. Whether the request is valid, or not.

Because here’s the question that never gets asked inside the mind of that girl: “Nice” according to whom, and for what gain?

Talk to any woman who is willing to be honest with you, and she will tell you of the scars she still bears by being groomed in nice. She will tell you of the control and the manipulation that one little word inflicted on her life. She will tell you of how she turned against herself to stay nice in another’s eyes. Even when what they were insisting upon was harm-based. How she tolerated and allowed the worst of behaviors from another in order to keep anyone from thinking she wasn’t nice enough.

A moving target of being “nice” according to this person, then that person, and then that person… According to that system, that school, that community… An ever-vigilant effort on her part that she poured her very life force into to live up to what was being demanded of her. No matter the cost.

No matter that what she was being asked to live up to, was never right or true to begin with. How she would risk depression, anxiety, a loss of self-esteem, an obliteration of her truest Nature, an erosion of a kind and loving relationship with herself, a thwarting of her life-giving instincts and intuitions. All done to avoid the repercussions of being labeled not nice.

Being nice, when legislated by someone outside of you, is a form of slavery. It is a way to shut you up. A way to keep you quiet. A way to shame you into something that may not be in your best interests.

A way to keep you from questioning bad behavior from the powers that be. One little word with the power to keep you from being you and from questioning what is most decidedly, questionable.

I will not be nice if it means I must give over my life to something controlling and manipulative. This is too great of a price to pay. Do we need to find ways to be with each other in more respectful ways? We do. Are there certain character traits that lift up all of us and that we would be wise to cultivate in each other? Yes.

But how dare you use nice to enslave others to your will. How dare you add another brick to the growing social credit system we are heading towards where outside sources score you on how nice or not you are. And then decide what you get to have in life by way of movement though a culture based on whether or not they think you and your ways check the “nice” box.

We must learn to recognize when virtues are being co-opted and used against us. The very same sacred and life-affirming virtues that already exist within us, and need only trust, patience and encouragement to bring them forward. Otherwise, we are condemned to live as a culture of goody-goody’s wagging their fingers at each other; ready to rat out anyone who does not conform.

We have got a very big question before us as a world: Do we want to live with each other based on the very best in us, or do we want to live according to the smaller version of ourselves where we use distorted versions of human virtues to control one another?

P.S. When I looked up “nice” in the dictionary and the thesaurus, here’s what I found: foolish, wanton, silly, simple, trivial, old-maidish, persnickety.

Devotion

 

I was talking with someone recently struggling to take better care of herself. Despite “knowing better,” she just can’t seem to get there. Each time she “fails” it seems to solidify something negative about her in her own mind. I think we can all relate.

How many promises have you made to yourself around health and self-care, only to break them?

I would tell you that it is not due to a lack of willpower, or that your intention was not a good one to begin with. I would tell you that it’s not that you don’t have the right diet, app or gear. Or that the program you were trying was faulty somehow. I would tell you that any of the above, as well as any like them, is not why what you’re doing is not working.

What then?

I would tell you that it is a lack of devotion to the preciousness of your own life that stands in your way.

OMG! Are you kidding me? That’s too much. Too esoteric. Too sad. Too hard. I’d rather go back to having the wrong outfit or signing up for the wrong diet! I get it. Changing something external about our lives seems so much easier, faster and more convenient. But it’s a lie to believe it will be the fix for a broken sense of how precious you are.

More than that, Why has it become so difficult to really, really devote ourselves to the value of our own life?

The truth is, if you keep avoiding the fact that the very reason why what you’re trying isn’t working is because down deep, you don’t think you’re worth it, not valuable enough, you will forever stay on the miserable, ineffective and shame-inducing hamster wheel of seeking external solutions. Ones you will have to try, over and over again. Ones that will cost you; both monetarily and in terms of how you feel about yourself.

More than that, you will miss the beauty of you and what you are really all about. This blindspot will also have you missing the sacred preciousness of Life all around you.

But if you can see that the reason why external attempts fail is because denying yourself the necessary devotion you have a right to, will always undermine your efforts, you are starting in the right place. If you can see that the external fix mentality, capitalized on now by a multi-billion dollar wellness industry, banks on you failing to keep you coming back for more, you begin to free yourself.

There is no external fix for a belief system that says I’m not worth it. I don’t deserve it. My life is not precious.

Learning how to honor, value and love yourself is the very foundation for self-care, and it is non-negotiable. Once you begin to engage with yourself in this way, the specifics of what you’re doing more naturally fall into place through an organic alignment with what is devotional and life-affirming. In other words, when you are no longer bouncing around from “solutions to solution,” you are instead guided to what you most need.

This is a powerful and far-reaching orientation as the long-term health of your life and those around you hangs in the balance. And it is as close and immediate as your next choice. That’s the place to start.

Your very next choice. 

When you’re about to decide the next thing to put in your mouth, the time you will go to bed, that person you will spend your time with, the outfit you put on, how much you give to work, the way you spend your money, whether you go for that walk or not, spend time on yourself or not, ask yourself these essential questions:

Does this choice reflect the preciousness of my life? Is this an act of self-devotion?

And if it’s hard for you to devote yourself in this way, find a picture of yourself when you were little. Look at your younger self and pose those very same questions while giving yourself all the time you need to catch up to what is, and always has been, Truth.

Your life matters. You matter. You are precious. A life lived with devotion to that knowledge changes everything in ways they most need to be changed. From the inside-out.