So I’m lying in bed, scanning through
my body. It’s the start of a meditation
practice I picked up from Arnie Mindell but today I’m not meditating, I’m just
observing. Yup, the torn muscle in my
arm is still twinging a bit and there’s my Achilles putting up its, er, ankle
to wave its discontent. My jaw is
clenched and my shoulders are tight (I’m not sure I relax even when I
sleep). And my arms are aching from
yesterday’s kettlebell class (but that’s a good ache). Mainly though I’m feeling dehydrated and my
heart is beating far faster than usual.
Why? The bottle of wine I downed
yesterday in the sun. For the third day in a row.
And I wonder, again, why do I do
stuff to my body that it hates? Why do I
put stuff in my body that makes it weak and makes me feel crap?
I know it sounds a bit health Nazi-ish but pretty well all of us eat or drink
stuff that we know isn’t great for us and it makes me wonder... Do we have some kind of unconscious (or
conscious) death wish? I’m sure my
father did. The doctors told him that,
if he wanted to live, he needed to lose weight, he needed to cut out the heavy fatty food and
the alcohol, and he really should do some exercise - but he chose to carry on
regardless and dropped dead of a heart attack.
It was his choice of course. He’d
given up. And, okay, so it’s selfish of me to think this way but
it still hurts. It hurts me because he could
still be alive today; I could still enjoy his company; we could still be sitting
and laughing; we could still be arguing and fighting (how we loved to disagree –
on everything from politics to music).
And, you know, I’m not one for telling anyone how to live their life,
what to do, what not to do, but it does strike me that when one is seriously cavalier
about one’s health, it doesn’t just kill them, it hurts those who love
them. So much. But I guess that’s our problem, not theirs, isn’t it?
Of course, you could argue that we’re
all going to die anyhow, and so why not enjoy yourself with food and drink and
whatever? Why die healthy? J And, again, what kills one person will slide off
the cells of another. It’s not just food
and drink, there’s a complicated equation of genetics and environment and mind
that comes into play.
But really, we all know, at heart/liver/lungs,
what suits us and what doesn’t. I know
my body doesn’t run well on wheat – every time I eat it, I feel my pulse
race. It’s the same with wine. Sugar and caffeine buzz my adrenals. Yet I love them. Curious, isn’t it, how we crave the things that
are bad for us?
Try the scan thing. It’s interesting, if nothing else. Back in bed, I’m stretching out the fingers
of my right hand. Every morning I wake
to find they have become stiff and sore (thanks a bunch, Italian guinea pigs)
and I have to wonder. Why my right
hand? My ‘write’ hand (and right/write now
it’s so hard to write). My ‘rite’ hand
(and I have lost my belief in magic so that is right/rite and fitting). Because bodies often talk in metaphors and,
if I do slide into a Mindell body meditation my hands… clench into fists.
What does your body say to you?
