Living in Devotion to the Body
or, why I hate the language of self help "tools".
This week, a word has been ringing in my ears and encircling my thoughts.
Devotion.
Devotion.
Devotion.
It’s been with me as I walk through the woods to my godmother’s house where I facilitate my night groups.
It’s speaking to me as I kneel in front of low burning candles and the smell of myrrh in the mornings.
It’s calling me as I dip in the cold creek near my home.
Devotion.
Devotion.
Devotion.
I’ve been in a long process of de-tooling this year (which my friend Ruthann and I will discuss on an upcoming episode of the Body Grieves, Spirit Calls podcast). I was so filled to the brim with other people’s teachings and perspectives that I had to empty out in order to come back to the truth that lives in my own body. I largely stopped buying courses, going to trainings and generally investing in time spent with any form of healer that wasn’t by nature calling me back to myself.
And in the process, I think I have started to feel what it is to live in devotion to my body. To my flesh. To my slightly disproportionate boobs. To my twinging left rib cage. To my rounding tummy. To my broad shoulders. To my creaky ankles. To my boogers. To my period blood. To my rumbles and shakes and morning groans. Not to the idea of my body, but to this actual living and breathing flesh.
This level of devotion is becoming the deepest and most abiding guiding force in my life. I move towards what my flesh desires-relationships, environments, food, activities etc-more readily, and move away what it rejects with fewer attempts to reason or talk my way out of it. I listen to. I touch it. I sing to it. I hold it. I ask it questions and it tells me answers.
I will do my best to detail what it feels like, but before I can it feels important to name what this devotion is not.
Devotion is not and cannot be a tool for feeling better.
Rather, it is what happens when we open ourselves up to feeling more.
Popular culture will tell us to rush through times of transition. Again and again we are told that if we you must feel, then it is necessary to gather as many “tools” as we can to buffer the space between us and our bodies as possible, things designed to squelch emotion and sensation.
Which would be fine, if you/I/we were building a house. Something clear cut and dimensional and tangible. Reach into the tool box and get a particular hammer, saw, screw. A particular tool to meet a particular need. Straightforward and clear cut.
But human beings are not houses. We are deep caves. We are spiraling tunnels. We are aging patchwork quilts with well worn stitching. We are not linear and most of what we hold is not tangible. What is tangible is the body. The thing that houses the rest. The idea that the smartest thing to do to move through difficulty is to find ways of divorcing ourselves from this flesh that holds us is not only misguided, but dangerous.
So much of the language around “tools” feels so divorced from the reality of human experience. Extractive and capitalistic.
Whether it’s anxiety, depression or grief, we are consistently sold the idea that if we do a particular yoga pose, take a particular herb, tap in a particular way, we will feel better as quickly as possible. None of these things are inherently wrong, but it is necessary to interrogate what you are being told and if it aligns with your desires. Discomfort of any kind is seen as a problem, and many people make bank on selling solutions that never get to the root cause of where the discomfort lies in the first place-the body.
I rarely give my clients tools that I say will be good for specific aches and pains because I don’t know what it feels like to be inside of their bodies. Rather, I invite them to touch their own flesh, inquire into their own souls for the answers.
Unfortunately or fortunately, I am not here to calm sensation or even to make people feel better. I am interested in the process of expanding to hold, feel and be more than what we thought was possible. I am here in devotion to the body and it’s capacity to transform.
Here’s what I do that feels fundamentally in service to this devotion:
Move at my own pace. Sometimes this is slow and sometimes it’s fast and often it vacillates between the two. I have intentionally structured my life so that I am able to set my own schedule and wake up slowly.
I eat what I want. As in, what my flesh desires, not what my brain thinks is a good idea.
I let relationships go that are not for me anymore and build new ones more easily. I pay attention to how my body feels around people, and if there is a feeling of closing or turning away that is a clear sign of no. Similarly, if there is opening, lightness and ease that is a clear yes.
I spend time alone every day. My body needs time to listen to itself without outside input in order to communicate clearly.
I make time to move and be outside. This is essential.
The beautiful thing about devotion is that it’s a way of living life rather than a one and done activity. It is directional and organizing. Seen through the lens of body devotion, life becomes an alter to my flesh. I do not shame myself for anything I feel, nor do I subject my body to anything that feels like punishment.
More than anything, this body craves softness.
And this desire is safe guidance.
What are you in devotion to?