Your Body Remembers
Photo by Alexander Krivitskiy on Unsplash
Our bodies remember.
I learned yesterday of a friend who had died. I hadn’t seen nor talked to this person in over 20 years. But in a situation like this, 20 years can seem like 20 minutes.
When I learned, it was a shock to my mind...but my body didn’t feel it. It was more of a “that can’t be right” type of reaction than a tear-inducing painfulness.
It remained as such for several hours. I remember thinking, “this is weird” as I discussed the loss, but didn’t really feel anything.
It happened in the car on the way home from the library.
I was thinking about the person...and suddenly the feelings lurched through my body as if I was going to vomit. Tears ballooned up and my breathing momentarily stopped.
My body remembered.
In the moment that I originally learned the news, the cells in my body collected the energy of that knowing. For whatever reason, in that moment and in order to do what it thought was necessary to keep me safe, my mind decided, “nope. Not going there.”
So onward I marched, feeling okay.
Until I didn’t.
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I guarantee this happens more than we realize. To me, to you, to all of us. We embody our pains, sometimes without even recognizing them. As my yoga teacher loved to say, “the issues are in our tissues”. And that of which we are unaware, we cannot process.
I’m reading a book now, “My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies” by Resmaa Menakem. I’d listened to several interviews with the author prior to being able to get my hands on the book, so I’m already entranced by his ideas. One bit of wisdom includes:
“The body, not the thinking brain, is where we experience most of our pain, pleasure, and joy, and where we process most of what happens to us. It is also where we do most of our healing, including our emotional and psychological healing. And it is where we experience resilience and a sense of flow.”
-Resmaa Menakem
There are many scientific sources that affirm that you hold “mental stuff” in your “physical stuff”. Our minds and bodies are not separate, and that mental and physical stuff is one and the same. To use a very common example: when you are mentally stressed, your body also responds and you often develop physical illness.
(Though it’s fascinating, I don’t want to go too far down this rabbit hole. I’ll write more about this later, but if your interest is piqued now, try Googling “Psychoneuroimmunology”, “mind-body connection”, or even research Ayurveda. Countless roads lead to new understanding)
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When we look around ourselves these days, we see a world in turmoil. Chaos. We see ever-growing hatred, division, the collapsing of what we knew.
Your body is collecting this data. You might register it every now and then, getting infuriated by a comment thread on Facebook, falling into despair after one more news story, feeling heartbroken after a conversation with an acquaintance.
But your mind is set up to keep you safe and protected, and it will zap you back to what it knows has worked for you.
Perhaps that’s staying busy and trying to ignore the pain. Perhaps that’s sinking into Netflix and eating and numbing it out. Perhaps that’s turning all of those emotions into anger and hatred in order to (attempt to) shove the blame on someone or something else. Perhaps it is all of those.
But your body remembers.
As Resmaa says,
“Our bodies exist in the present. To your thinking brain, there is past, present, and future, but to a traumatized body there is only now. That now is the home of intense survival energy.”
You are trying to function - make meals, engage in conversations, help your children - while processing this intense survival energy. Your body and your mind, they are always communicating, trying to keep you alive and functioning and as well as possible. So even if your body says, “I’m not well, things aren’t well”, your mind can only ignore that for so long.
(You know how loud your thoughts can go, “It’s fine, It’s fine, I HAVE to be fine, there are things to be done, I’M FINE”? And then your body finally responds - with fatigue, an illness, a cramp, heaviness, lethargy, - anything it can do to slow you down?)
Wellness is wholeness (all of your “parts”, working together as a whole).
Re-membering (bringing back together the members, or parts of the whole) is a practice of well-being.
Your mind and body need you to be well - it is their primary function.
When one part isn’t well, it will work to make you re-member.
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Right now, so many of us aren’t well. We march on, pretending that we are, feeling pulled by a world that seemingly forces us to do so.
I know it’s a big ask, but I truly feel it is time that we stop this pointless pointedness.
I’m going to be bringing this up again in many posts. The importance of being aware of your body, of learning to feel what is invisible to your eyes but held by your heart and your tissues and your cells, … it is so important if you and we are going to heal ourselves. If we are going to become well. If we are going to re-member our way back to wholeness.
For now, I invite you to begin with a full, deep, expansive breath.
Allow your body to remember the feeling of being alive.