Is my body my friend? My teacher? My guide?
A trickster?
Can I create with my body? Communicate through my body? Express my inner self?
Can I love my body?…love with my body?
These questions have pursued me throughout my conscious life – in and out of relationships, in and out of the church, on and off the dance floor.
At this stage of my life, I am beginning to acquire perspective. Fading social agendas, diminished performance anxieties and hormonal pressures are creating a space to attend to my body’s wisdom with clarity and discernment.
Ancient Wisdom tradition teaches that spiritual understanding comes when we can listen to the head, heart and body in balance. (Cynthia Bourgeault, The Wisdom Way of Knowing.)
This is a life-altering perspective for someone who has spent most of his life demonizing his body, attempting to wrestle it into submission: mind over matter, willpower over passion, logic versus imagination, spirit against the flesh, smothering sensuality and passion with so many do’s and don’ts, drowning courage in so many fears and taboos.
Of course! The path to heaven does not lie down in straight miles
But in our imagination with which we perceive the world
And in our gestures with which we honour it.
Mary Oliver, The Swan
I let my imagination swim free. I imagine my body as an instrument of healing and a channel of wisdom. I don a cloak of strength and power. I nourish my spirit with pleasure. I sink deeply into the passion of a loving relationship.
I step out onto the dance floor. I trust the music to direct the flow and my craft to fashion something of beauty. I open my heart to the nourishment of a warm embrace. Suspended in time, head, heart and body meld into mindfulness.
The dance, a prayer to the heavens,
… eager to be wild and perfect
for a moment,
before it is
nothing, forever.” Mary Oliver, Peonies (adapted).