The conversation came to a dead stop. My friend who was previously attempting to have a discussion stood silently, disqualified to speak. It’s impossible to have a conversation with someone who lays claim to their total rightness on a topic. I attempted to pipe in with my two cents and was quickly dismissed by the omniscience in the room. At that moment, I could have spewed angry words but instead, I drew a quiet boundary around myself and left the room.
In the guest room, I was surprised at the immense physical response I was experiencing. My heart was racing, and my hands were shaky. I sat in the dark quiet, taking deep breaths. My mind couldn’t find the words but my body knew exactly what was happening. Unsafe! It screamed. Get out of there! Baffled by my response, I took the next few hours to regulate, attempting to put words to what I was feeling. All I knew is that I needed to hold my boundary and give myself time to feel my way through the tangled mess of symptoms I was experiencing.
My body feels my truth first.
It always has.
Yet growing up in a church tradition where the body was labeled as evil, full of lust and our hearts were deceitful, not to be trusted, I leaned heavily on intellect. I became really good at problem-solving, strategizing and Googling, never stopping to consider the wisdom that lay within my skin and bones. Much of my spiritual life has been disembodied, littered with devotional books, Bible studies, and lectures, um… I mean sermons. The how-to’s were endless: How to pray, how to read your Bible, how to have a quiet time, how not to lust after my boyfriend. My shelves were filled to the brim with books telling me everything I needed to know about myself and God. If I had a question, I would simply grab the appropriate text or study guide to find the answer. Yet with all this knowledge, I knew very little about myself and the small frame it was confined to.
When I eventually began learning but it didn’t come through books or a growing intellect, it came through grief. All the knowledge I had acquired up to this point failed me because nobody tells you suffering will be your greatest teacher. After years of loss, ranging from the death of my sister to ten years of infertility, my theological storehouses of doctrine and my robust knowledge of scripture eventually ran dry. You can’t Google enough information or read enough scripture to erase your pain. As much as the brain wants answers, sometimes there are none. After many failed attempts to see a plus sign on a plastic pregnancy test, my mind had exhausted all its efforts to problem-solve my way to a baby. I was burned out, anxious, and broke from all the medical bills. I was also angry with God. Unlike what I had been taught for many years, faith didn’t equate to earthly blessings and supernatural peace.
* * *
When emotional pain occurs, our bodies feel it first. As the beginning story above reveals, I was experiencing my flight or fight response. Many of us know about the fight or flight response. It is our protector, built into the very core of our humanness. It is woven through nerves known as the Sympathetic nervous system. This same system controls things we often don’t think about from heart rate to blood pressure. It is not a rational system, when we feel fight or flight it is a visceral, gut reaction. This system can offer us incredible insight if we are willing to acknowledge it. There are actually three stages to this response mechanism:
Alarm: The mind senses danger and signals to the body to respond. This is so fast our rational brains cannot put words to it. We simply respond in our bodies.
Resistance: Once the danger has been eliminated, the Sympathetic system is working hard to get the body to calm down and regulate. For me, this is where I feel symptoms such as shakiness and shortness of breath.
Exhaustion: Experiencing fight or flight exhausts the body and it needs rest and tenderness after the danger has been eliminated.
As I read about the Sympathetic nervous system, I am amazed at how it functions automatically, offering us a glimpse into the hard work our bodies are doing to simply keep us alive! There is wisdom found in this system. We can learn from it and understand ourselves more deeply if we are willing to listen.
One thing I love about the Enneagram is the heart, body, and mind are considered “Intelligent Centers”. I am an Enneagram 6, my primary Intelligent Center is in the mind (thinking center). Learning this was radically new for me. My church tradition taught very little about our bodies. When I did hear teachings about the body, it was centered around sexual purity. For years after, the only understanding I had of my body, is that I was a sexual being and I needed to save myself for marriage. We were never taught to listen let alone follow the wisdom of our bodies. That would have been ludicrous!
After that first failed IVF, I tried acupuncture to improve my chances. Though this practice has proven positive effects on fertility, my months of treatment didn’t produce a pregnancy. It did, however, help me connect to my body for the first time. I researched clinics in Portland and landed on Blossom Clinic in the northeast. The practitioner was a combination of kind and straightforward. I appreciated her candidness. I didn’t need anyone bullshitting me about my chances. I began treatments in a state of hope and grief, and began going once a week. You would think that lying on a table for an hour, not able to move due to the many needles scattered over my body would be a prime opportunity to process. It wasn’t. I was too exhausted trying to think (or even pray) my way to pregnancy. Instead, I did embodiment meditations. For each session, I took the full hour to pay attention to my body. From the crown of my head to the tips of my pinky toes, I tuned in, taking time to listen. Sometimes I would imagine my body pregnant and spend time connecting to my womb. A few times, I listened to scripture but often I would put on some new-agey meditation centered on embodiment and spend an hour being in my body.
During this time I discovered two things about myself: First, I needed to cut out caffeine to ease my level of anxiety. I was clueless about how anxiety was affecting me. I also ended up quitting my very stressful job and learned how to draw boundaries to keep toxic people at a safe distance. Second, I learned what shame and anxiety felt like in my body. I first heard of the concept from Brene Brown but it never resonate with me. When I first heard her teachings on shame and vulnerability, I couldn’t relate, believing I didn’t experience shame. After connecting with my body, I learned that shame revealed itself in my body first, it was the fight or flight response! (Mindblown) Shame wasn’t some rational thought, as I had once believed. It was my body telling me: Danger! Take cover! Get small! Or fight like hell!
* * *
Our bodies are woven with wisdom.
We are not brains with legs, encased in a flesh sack. Our bodies and hearts want to teach us and learn alongside our rational selves. A friend once told me that tears often come before the answer. That is the body offering its wisdom to us and yet, we often miss it because we become busy attempting to rationalize it or even apologize for it! I can’t tell you how many times I have apologized for crying. Never again. If my body needs to speak, she gets to have the floor, dammit! Because when there are no words to express, the body gives us sensations and tingles that communicate deep truths. If we are able and willing to listen, we can learn the wisdom that comes not in words, but in racing hearts and teary eyes.
Discussion
What truths have you learned from listening to your body?
Photo by Romina Farías on Unsplash
This is so well articulated my friend. Like you suffering has been the doorway in to learn and value my body.. I found yoga the most helpful thing to learn to see the goodness of my body. It is so weird that our faith celebrates incarnation and yet struggles to teach positively about the body. I'm still learning , still on the journey to a health