I can’t believe it’s June already. I’m reaching the end of my tolerance for this in-between period. It’s mainly small, first-world problems - like I want not to have all my clothes spread across 4 different bags and cases and cupboards in my mum’s house. Or I want to be able to cook in the messy way I like, with easy access to all my ingredients, and without worrying about creating a mess in a kitchen that isn’t mine. It would also be nice for Karl and I to have a space to share that’s bigger than a double bed. I also really fucking miss my cats. Mainly, I want to stop thinking about the future. Being present is hard enough for me on a good day, but it’s been almost a year since we put our house on the market, and that, coupled with all the highs and lows of the 3 years before that, and then the uncertainty of the 5 years before that… well, it’s fair to say that I’m OVER IT.
When my brain is mixed up like this, my connection to wonder and joy and the big picture goes straight out the window. I have a low-grade feeling of ‘wrongness’ that I can’t identify but also find impossible to let go of. I can’t see what’s in front of my nose. I watched a video of Charles Eisenstien speaking a couple of nights ago though, and it was a timely reminder of things I already know but am prone to forget: namely that the reason I’ve been feeling so off base, isn’t because something awful has happened or there’s something specific that’s ‘wrong.’ It’s because I’ve been completely disconnected from my body, and as happens so often, my mind has taken over and is running the show. I forget this vital information regularly. I wrote about something very similar here a couple of months ago, but it still didn’t occur to me until a couple of days ago (perhaps I should just rename this blog ‘Forgetting about the body and lessons I’ve learned” and be done with it).
In the Charles Eistenstien video, the moment of clarity came right at the end: the very last question of the Q&A. We were listening in the car so I wasn’t watching the screen, but the person asking the question was wobbly - you could hear it in his voice. He told the room that he works for an environmentally conscious company and feels like he’s doing ‘good work’ but he also feels tortured: torn by an obligation to duty, an obligation which directly contradicts the knowing that there is more to life. He’s ‘paying the bills’ and cognisant of his privilege, but something is off. He said the words: ”my body can’t handle the two right now.”
I’ve transcribed a little of Charles’s response here:
“Your body is an unusually finely tuned exquisite instrument that is absorbing information that your mind has not grappled with [...] Your body is telling you something, and that doesn’t mean to quit your job right now but to take that information seriously. Your idea of duty is sometimes a mechanism to override the information that your body is telling you. Your mind is seizing on duty to maintain the status quo.”
As I listened to him speak, I felt some of my dissatisfaction from the week fall away. I knew (again) that I’d lost my connection to my body (again). And my body also knew. It resonated because it was like music to my body’s ears. It knows I’m not taking the information it’s sending me seriously. In the longer term, it’s probably pissed off because I started paying attention to it, and then changed tack, and turned back in the other direction. Although I know that this period of my life is winding up, it was still a kicker to realise that the reason I feel so shit - so tired, so uninspired - is likely because of this simple fact. And rather than giving my body what it needs (healthy food or a regular yoga practice, for example), I’ve been eating badly, sitting more, and spending more time on my phone. It all makes sense but I’ve been too caught up to see it, trapped as I am, always, in the whirlwind of thought.
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I’ve always been a mind person. I did well at school and was praised for it, so, like most of the people I know, I prioritised this way of operating in the world. Learning about mindfulness and meditation in my thirties taught me that thoughts weren’t facts, that it was possible for me to separate myself from my thoughts, yet despite doing many body scans, it was years before I started to become aware of the chasm that existed between my mind and my body. I first became truly aware of the mind-body connection back in 2018 when I worked with a coach after years of debilitating pelvic pain. I learned a lot, and I was able to understand and work with my pain in a different way that caused my symptoms to lessen dramatically, but I was still operating from the mind, seeing the exercises and meditations as things I needed to ‘do’ - techniques or fixes to help the situation - rather than perceiving my mind and body as a fully integrated whole.
Later, learning about Ayurveda and feminine-form medicine taught me more about the body. I learned about the 5 Koshas, and understood that my mind and my physical body were only two parts of a more beautiful and complex way of viewing the human experience. I learned what embodiment was (although I didn’t quite get it). I had the most wonderful experiences - with myself and others - on our weekly Zoom calls, but while I experienced moments of connection with my body, I still wasn’t “integrating” the knowledge. People around me would always talk about integration, but I never really understood it. I was having powerful experiences, but I wasn’t joining the dots. I knew how I felt, but as always, I was moving so quickly, always pushing forward, looking towards the next thing, that I missed noticing what was actually happening in the moments where I properly dropped in. In my mind, it was just a really good meditation. When we finished Level 1 of the course, a lot of the younger women opted not to go straight to Level 2 - because they “needed time to integrate.” “Integrate?” I thought, “Who’s got time to integrate?”
And then last year and Portugal: my Yoga Teacher Training. I had been looking for a 200-hour training for a while, and I’d found Authentic Flow through a buddy from my Ayurveda course who lived in Norway. When I saw Instagram videos of people moving their bodies around with abandon, I was immediately repelled - being attention shy, it looked like my worst nightmare - but I also knew right away that it was the course I needed to do. That was my body talking - although I wasn’t able to identify it as that yet. It was an intuition, a strong feeling of rightness, even as my mind railed against what I was seeing. I learned so much about my body during that training. I felt a lot of resistance, but slowly, surely, as we practiced all day, every day, I began to get it. The more I let myself get into my body, to feel the parts of myself that I had ignored for so long, the more emotions moved through, and the more aha moments I had. It was a new way of being and it was wonderful. Post-training, although I was going through a miscarriage, I felt as connected to life and to myself as I ever had. At that point, I was converted: I knew that cultivating a relationship with my body was one of the most (if not the most) essential component to my well-being.
For almost 6 months after I finished the training I was doing yoga every day, but then I went back to the office, and I lost it. I knew it was essential then, and I know it now - but somehow in the past 6 or 9 months, my priorities have shifted, and now I have to rediscover my connection again and again, like a kid learning to ride a bike. Every time I fall down into these dark holes of irritability and sadness, I come to the same conclusion, but I barely ever register what’s missing while it’s happening.
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After I watched the Charles Eisenstien video this week, I started thinking about another moment that changed my relationship with my body. The Charleston festival has recently taken place, and with it being only 5 minutes from my mum’s house, we’ve taken advantage and have gone to a few events. When I think about Charleston, I think about Virginia Woolf, and when I think about Virginia Woolf, I think about her diaries, and when I think about her diaries, I think about a pivotal experience that I had last summer. Up until that point, I knew what being embodied meant when I was doing yoga or meditating, but it hadn’t really gone beyond that. I was purely thinking of it in terms of practice.
It was mine and Karl’s wedding anniversary - we had been married for 11 years. To celebrate we went to Monk’s House, the last home of Leonard and Virginia Woolf. It’s a beautiful little cottage, in a downland village, filled with original furniture and paintings and books. I love the little writing desk set out with pen and inkwell and the two easy chairs facing each other by the big stone fireplace; a snapshot of a moment in time, as if they’ve just popped out for a walk and will soon be back for their tea. The grounds are special too. There’s a traditional cottage garden, with stone walls and roses, which gives way to an orchard, a vegetable patch, and a huge lawn, complete with a summer house that looks across the Ouse Valley towards Lewes and Mount Caburn. I love being there. I always think about all the creative minds who wandered the paths and sat in the chairs; I imagine the conversations they might have had. Karl and I always leave feeling restored, I think it’s something about the combination of nature and art.
That day, we were in the summer house looking at some presentation boards which showed photographs of Leonard and Virginia, and other members of the Bloomsbury group enjoying the garden, sitting in lounge chairs, and talking. Much of the information on the boards related to Monks House itself and included extracts from Virginia’s extensive diaries. My eyes caught on a passage, one I’m certain I must have read before, but I couldn’t remember doing so. It said:
“Back from a good week end at Rodmell - a week end of no talking, sinking at once into a deep safe book and reading, & then sleep: clear transparent; with the may tree like a breaking wave outside; & all the garden, green tunnels, mounds of green; & then to wake in the hot still day, & never a person to be seen, never an interruption, the place to ourselves: the long hours.” (1932)
As I read the words, my shoulders sank, and I felt a wave of softness wash over me. It’s hard to describe, but it was as if my whole body was saying yes; like I’d received the words on a cellular level. The body responded before my mind had a chance to put a narrative on to what was happening. It was a deep knowing, a feeling of ‘rightness’ that existed on a level away from my mind, and it felt like nothing else I’d ever experienced (at least consciously). I knew that the words were affecting me on a physical level, in the way that I felt myself drop (much like Virginia did into her book), but it was also something more than that: it felt like I was looking into the future and seeing a vision of what I wanted from my own life.
Of course it didn’t take long for my mind to catch up and for me to begin exclaiming to Karl: about how perfect these sentences were to me, how much like heaven it sounded. I’d heard the term ‘felt sense’ before and I’d never really understood it. But that was what was happening, I was getting a felt sense in that moment about what I valued: the stillness, the books, the green. As someone who has always struggled with nightmares and insomnia, the idea of clear and transparent sleep sparkled to me. And I understood too that it was intimately mine; that not everyone would read these words and feel the same, but that others would have their own version, the thing they would see or read or hear that would just feel right to them. And then it was over, someone else behind us wanted to read the board and we moved on quickly to the next part of our tour.
Right then and there, I was so present. I think that’s another thing I’ve taken away from that simple little moment. That when I dropped into my body, it wasn’t possible for me to be caught up in my mind. In these moments, anxiety takes a backseat, and the desire to do, plan, and think, is dimmed. And when these things are dimmed, the rest of the world opens up. This was certainly the case on our anniversary last year. Following that moment in the summer house, the day unspooled like a golden thread; things felt like they were flowing so naturally: from our conversation under an apple tree, looking over at the panorama of the Downs, to our discovery of a village fete and the perfect slice of cake. Later we headed home, listening to a playlist of all our favourite songs, singing at the top of our lungs. We ended up driving past our house because we didn’t want to turn the music off, taking a meander along the coast road, the sea sparkling to our right.
I felt deliriously happy. The day glowed. In the van, our little snail shell that we love so much, I looked over at Karl and started crying. I felt so lucky to have him, and so grateful for our life: for our 11 years married, and 17 together. For this fucking great day we were having. I remember saying to him that it didn’t matter that we didn’t have children: I was so content in that moment that nothing else mattered. When we finally got back home, I called my parents and told them I loved them - I felt weirdly possessed with the need to do so (I think they were touched, but didn’t really know what to make of it). Later we parked the van by the forest and walked through the trees to our favourite pub. We drank wine and ate a baked camembert, and still, the feeling didn’t leave me. I remember looking around the pub garden at everyone eating their meals and drinking their pints, and just feeling love for them all: all these people, all their lives. Later, we called our friends in America, and we slept curled up in the van in the layby next to the forest, watching the twilight come in over the Downs.
As I’m writing this, I feel conscious of the limits to language. How reading about other people’s transcendent experiences is always a poor substitute for the experience itself. I’m not even really sure where I’m going with this - I planned to write about Charles Eisenstien - but somehow that moment at Monks House just popped into my mind, and I thought I better listen to it.
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I wasn’t aware of it while it was happening, but when I read that passage at Monks House, it changed the way I conceived of embodiment. Following our anniversary, I began to notice the little moments where I’d had similar feelings, but never recognised they came from my body. I thought about the cliche of buying a house because you just “had the feeling” when you walked in. Or the time Karl and I made the decision to move to Detroit, where everything in my mind was screaming ‘no’ but my body felt excited and ready. I’m reminded of the feeling I get whenever I go into a library, how my body responds to the environment: the quietness, the stillness, the peace, the books. I notice that it happens when I hear someone speak about something that I agree with, or that really resonates with me, or when I hear a particular piece of music, or I move in a particular way. It happened when I found out what being a Projector means in Human Design.
There’s a rightness to it. My mind and body aren’t separate, but function as a perfect whole. I can conceptualise what is happening through my mind, receive the download or whatever, but my mind isn’t figuring anything out - it doesn’t need to because my body already knows. I know I need to find a more consistent way to take my body seriously. It’s so simple, but I find it so hard. I know it’s not about berating the mind and celebrating the body, but rather, seeing them as one united whole. The mind in its place of power: spacious, open, creative, in flow, and the body able to speak, express itself, be heard.
One of the things that I’ve been pondering since I listened to Charles’s words is the seesaw between what our bodies need, and what the world needs. How can I embody peace and stillness and calm, if I live in a world where these things aren’t valued or prioritised? I’m not talking about when I walk on the beach, or sit in meditation, or take a drive along an empty road. It’s more in the general loop of life: at work, or sitting in front of a computer. Any time where ‘multi-tasking’ is applauded. Any time where my phone is in my hand. Any time where I’m juggling appointments, social engagements, calls.
And it’s not just about peace and stillness, because I know that we’re not made the same: not everyone in the world is craving the peace and stillness that I am; that others will read those words by Virginia Woolf and feel the opposite. What if it’s energy and conversation that you value? Or spontaneity or excitement? How do you embody these things in your day to day? What does your body say yes to? When you do feel these things naturally? How can we make sure that we carve out space in our lives for those moments where we’re tuned in to the things that really matter to us?
More and more, I’m coming to believe that the most important thing in life is to find ways to see past the chatter and the programming and the ‘shoulds’ in the mind, and to connect to what actually feels right for us.
The body is always speaking, we just need to give ourselves the space to quieten down and listen.