The Slow Way: On Coming Home To Our Bodies
Our bodies are telling us the truth. Are we listening?
Three stories:
When I was in Minnesota in early July, I spent several mornings hiking a trail around Lake Sagatagan on the St. John’s University campus. One of those times I decided to take a dip in the lake, which has a small beach next to a wooden dock. It was morning and the lake was still and reflective: No one else was around. I spread my towel on the dock and set my bag beside me. As soon as I sat myself down I was surprised to find a few small silver fish gathering below me, looking up at me through their distorted water vision. Is this what fish in Minnesota do? Do they like my swimsuit? I hesitated to drop my feet in the water, afraid they’d scatter if I moved, but they followed their leader, a four-inch-long, beady eyed silver fish who sat silently in the middle of their gang and gazed up toward me. More silver fish gathered until I counted over twenty in a semi-circle around my hovering reflection. I put my toes in. They moved back three inches as a collective, but as soon as the water stilled they were back, holding vigil around my feet. I kept my toes as perfectly still as I could until one fish ventured up for a nibble (or a kiss, who can say?) You guys, I try to be cool, even with natural creatures. But I screamed, kicked my foot involuntarily, and watched my fish friends dash away in fear. I wanted my foot to not be me. I wanted it to float happily among the fish, no concerns. But my foot is me. And when the brave silver fish touched it, I jumped. I ended our connection.
Another story: Richmond the Pup stayed with my mother in law while our family was in Texas and New Mexico last week. When I picked him up from her house this past Thursday, he had accompanied her to her administrative job at her church that day. He’s a very helpful friend at work, laying on the carpet beside her desk, greeting priests and fellow administrators, offering support for the all-staff chapel service. And when he stepped through the door of her home, where I was already waiting, he ran immediately to where I stood in her kitchen before I’d even said his name. He smelled me. When I say “me” I mean my body. My dog smelled my body. That’s kind of a weird thing to say, isn’t it? Culturally we don’t talk about our bodies a lot, especially not our smells. I don’t necessarily want you, reader, to think about my smells. But my body isn’t the other half of me that keeps my head floating. It’s me. My dog smelled me.
I got a tattoo while I was in my hometown a week and a half ago. I made an appointment for my mom, my aunt, and I to do it together. All three of us were looking for a way to mark this moment in our lives. My mom got a heart on her arm, my dad’s handwritten “Love, Mike” filling in on line of it. My aunt got a beautiful tiny cotton plant in honor of losing her mother, my grandmother, nicknamed “Cotton,” last August. And I marked myself with the outline of my childhood home, a drawing I took from my dad’s architectural renderings of the house before he built it in 1978. All angles and lines. My favorite of all the spaces he created. I can’t carry him in my body. I never could, even when he was alive. But I can mark myself on the outside as a way of saying, “This shaped my life.” My house tattoo is just another place for my love to go. And love working to find a new home is grief, isn’t it?
Three stories about my body. I’ve had Hillary McBride’s book The Wisdom of Your Body on my shelf for several months but finally pulled it out this week, hoping for some clarity on a story I’ve been learning for a while now, brought home by my 2019 concussion and the migraines and life-change that followed. My learning to rest. The loss of my dad. The shocking revelation that my body is actually me! Once upon a time, I ignored my pain, my exhaustion, my weaknesses as long as I could, preferring the work-hard solution as an antidote for bodily needs. But wisdom eventually brings us back to ourselves. And ourselves are whole bodies, not minds with some annoying connected tissues attached at the base of our brains. My body was tired, and I had to learn to let it rest.
“Most people forget about the body until pain, aging, illness, trauma, incarceration, or impending death brings it to the fore . . . The body tells the truth — the painful parts, the joyful parts, and everything in between,” McBride writes. Our bodies are not our appearance, McBride says, any more than the front yard is our house. When she talks about our bodies she’s talking about our personhood. Many of us were raised in religious traditions that taught us to see our bodies as inherently evil, something to control, something that holds back our minds or souls from spiritual growth. To listen to our bodies is to undo a lifetime of messages that told us our bodies weren’t to be trusted, that they weren’t kind to us. It’s a long way back to the intuition we felt in our child-bodies, when our bodies told us that touch was good, that safety is important, that tiredness and hunger are signs that we should meet our basic needs. And that our pain or lightness or anxiety might actually tell us something true about who we are, what’s good or dangerous, and what stories we carry with us.
I’ve been thinking about the tightness in my neck, how long I’ve held my anxiety in my shoulders. How learning to sleep eight hours a night has transformed my spiritual life. How so much of my work with therapists has been spent helping me believe that I can acknowledge my own weaknesses and be kind to myself.
What is the truth your body is wanting to tell you?
As we lean into the end of summer, some of us eking the last few weeks out of the sunshine and late nights on the porch, some of already back in the motion of school and schedules, I hope we’ll practice a simple but transformative slow way: Listening to the stomach aches, the tight muscles, the sensations of joy or pleasure, and reminding ourselves that our bodies are ourselves. They are not separate from our minds. And they have something to tell us about what’s next and where God is in our story. Coming home to a body that wants to help us know ourselves, and ultimately, know the Spirit of God.
“I want this to be an invitation to come home to yourself,” I heard McBride say in her interview with Kendra Adachi (or maybe it was Emily Freeman? Either way, both interviews are worth listening to!) “I want it to be an invitation for us all to be reinhabiting our bodies in a way that allows us to be safe with ourselves, gentle and loving toward to people around us, connected to the earth, and ultimately, moving into a position or a space in our lives where we are flourishing because we are more whole than when we started.”
Here’s to becoming more whole than when we started. Our smells, our feet in the fishy water, or marked bodies holding our grief. Our bodies are telling us the truth. Are we listening?
A Slow Practice
I first discovered the body scan prayer practice through Tara Owens’ book Embracing the Body, which came out seven years ago. It’s a gentle and beautiful way to become aware of your sensations, needs, and perhaps the whispers of what your body’s trying to tell you, in the presence of God.
Take a deep breath with me, and invite the Holy Spirit to your body. Maybe there’s a place where you have felt the presence of God in your body before. For me, it’s always my chest. Maybe it’s your stomach or your mind. Set your hand in that place as a reminder to you that the Divine is here with you.
Spirit, help me to hear the truth my body is telling me.
Begin to move your attention from the top of your head down. First feel the sensations of your scalp, then your ears, your jaw, your mouth. Notice if there is any tightness and make note of it. As you notice any tightness, pain, or sensations, say them quietly to God, aloud or in your mind.
Spirit, help me to hear the truth my body is telling me.
Attend to your shoulders. Where do you hold your stress? What does your stress want to tell you about the choices you’re making in your days? This isn’t a moment for making big changes or promises to yourself. You can come back to that another time. For now, it’s acknowledging what’s true in the presence of God. What do your shoulders have to say about your life right now? What about your chest? Your upper back?
Spirit, help me to hear the truth my body is telling me.
Move your attention to your stomach, your lower back, your hips. Your body’s digestive system, your bladder, your pelvis. Is there tightness, pain, distress?
Spirit, help me to hear the truth my body is telling me.
For those of us who don’t speak often about our sexuality, acknowledging it in the presence of God can feel strange or awkward. Let yourself do that. Move your attention to the sexual center of your body. Acknowledge your need, your longing, your joy. Allow yourself to offer that truth to your Creator who made you beautifully and wonderfully you.
Spirit, help me to hear the truth my body is telling me.
Let your attention move down your legs, your thighs, your knees, your calves, your feet. Thank God for the muscles that hold you up, the feet that allow you to feel the earth and the water.
Spirit, help me to hear the truth my body is telling me.
You are your body. Take some time to reflect on what this time of prayer revealed to you about the stress, anxiety, joy, lightness, grief, or even trauma you may be carrying with you. Commit to coming back to this practice, and asking the Spirit of God to help you process what it means to listen and learn from your body—which is to say—you.
A List of Things
My break from this newsletter and the podcast was restorative. Thanks for waiting patiently for my return! I’ll be back every Saturday with the newsletter as we head into the Fall. I love connecting with you and I’m so grateful you’re here with me.
My co-host and friend Heather Avis just released her second children’s book this past week. Ace and I just read it together for the first time last night and he is a total sucker for rhyming books. He giggled all the way through it. This book features a boy who talks using an electronic device, just like Ace, which completely lit him up. Go get yourself, a child in your life, or your local library a copy of Everyone Belongs, please! And cheer on Heather Avis who is working to make our world a place where everyone does actually belong to one another.
So much to say about the news the last few days. Especially the Justice Department’s move to investigate the Southern Baptist Convention. The Church must be held accountable for the ways it has abused and caused harm in the name of Jesus, and I’m grateful that the stories of victims are being taken seriously.
The Slow Way Podcast will be back this week. Tune in and subscribe if you haven’t yet. Excited to be back in the swing of things with you!
This resonated with me so much! Thank you for writing such a beautiful piece!
Thank you for the attention to body work! In the last months I've distinctly heard a clear voice say: "get back into your body"! It happened months ago when I was stressing over something yet to come. My mind easily leaps into future anticipating big or small events coming down the road which inevitably leads to stress. I believe the holy spirit within is inviting me to "stay inside my body" which has been created to dwell in the present. Like a horse that tries to gallop away from the cart, the Good Driver (The holy one) pulls on the reigns and gently says: "Whoa, girl, Slow down to a gentle trot so you don't wear yourself out and let me hold the the road ahead."