Today’s prompt: This year, when did you feel the most integrated with your body? Did you have a moment where there wasn’t mind and body, but simply a cohesive YOU, alive and present? (Author: Patrick Reynolds)
Body integration? Say what?
This is a term I hadn’t heard before. The whole prompt feels like full frontal New Age mamby pambyism. The whole Reverb thing is pretty New Agey to start, but I thought this might be the point where I would have to become beautifully different and refuse to participate.
That’s not to say I don’t believe in Mind/Body/Spirit approaches to life. We need to value those connections if for nothing else than the rushes of dopamine when we experience something pleasant.
I live with chronic pain, though. When I read this prompt asking me about times when my mind and body were totally one, I thought “during a back spasm or an asthma attack or a migraine.” Sometimes the body takes the mind hostage and won’t let it go. The best times for a person who has arthritis like I do are the times when the mind can wander off on its own without regard to what the body is dealing with. If we want to be New Agey about it, let’s call this detachment. If I can detach myself from pain, I can do what I need to do.
Maybe if I went to yoga class every day I could answer this question. Maybe then I would reach some sort of Nirvana of positive mind/body totality. But as for here and now and the real life I live? No. The last thing I want is to be one with this body. We’re barely on speaking terms, this body and I.
