It feels both that today’s post follows on from last night’s – and that I am somewhere very different – and that today comes partly from a conversation with my lovely friend Gerry yesterday – and from an inner conversation going on within me for years…
Today I decided to work towards living more in my body … I am someone who lives in my head … I work with bodies, I look after my body, I probably have more awareness than most of my body … and yet, listening to a patient talk yesterday about her Pilates and yoga classes and her pleasure from them – I got so clearly that some people live IN their bodies, are connected to the physical experience of being alive – in a way that I am not … and today is the first day of a new intention to learn to live in my body, to enjoy my body, to experience the physicality of living in a body in a way that I have increasingly lost as I have grown older …
When I was a child I used to spend hours dancing to ballet music – I was allowed to shut myself up in our big “through lounge” and I would hurl myself round the room with enthusiastic abandon … I loved anything to do with water, I loved baths , I loved the sea, the rain – swimming in the rain was a peak experience … I was a committed masturbator … I loved my body, I loved having a body … but somewhere along the way I have become more and more distanced from my body – and if I am in the second half of my life and don’t know how long I’ve got – then I think I need to start living more fully and not letting anything go by without experiencing it fully …
I have no idea how to do this – but I’m going to do it anyway … 🙂 So far this morning I have pedalled on my exercise bike, been for a run, shaken myself on my chi machine, and hung myself upside down on my inversion table… 🙂
Before, deliberately bringing more exercise, physical activity into my life has always had a feeling of “ought” or “should” about it – I have been doing what I felt was good for me, or trying to fix myself in some way – make myself thinner, more supple, more fit … but today I am coming from somewhere quite different – I just want to be more fully me – when I was born, when I was a baby, a child – I had this connection to my body – I want it again – I want to live fully – for however long I’ve got – I want to regret nothing, feel everything – and be grateful for every second 🙂
