Body

❤ Body ❤ (2009)

Ive been rereading 'Women who run with the Wolves' and one of the parts has really inspired me to begin a new project...a book of poetry and artwork called Body that chronicles my life up to this point, from the perspective of my body. I want to try and capture what i felt for example, as a child, thru my bodys eyes, and as a teen, etc, thru preg and birth and afterbirthbody...etc etc. I am very excited to start this because it really gives me a focus for creativity, which I have been trying to get fired up again lately. I know that I may not 'complete' this for a long time, but the structure of it gives me a little framework to pour my soul into. And I would like to welcome anyone else who wants to share their own creative voices of Body.... 

The Body theme is very important, especially now, because so many people are suffering due to the way society views and treats the body, and has done for so long....Also, from reading others' posts and blogs, especially mamas, I see how many people deal with issues related to the body, for different reasons. One way or another, Body is something we all take for granted, yet spend a huge chunk of our lives obsessing about. 

Here is a passage that I found very beautiful. 

"...The second awakening involved a much older woman. Her hips were, according to common standard, too pear-shaped, her bosom very tiny in comparison, and she had thin purply little veins all over her thighs, a long scar from a serious surgery going around her body from rib cage to spine in the manner in which apples are peeled. Her waist was perhaps four hands wide. 
It was a mystery then why the men buzzed about her as though she were honeycomb. They wanted to take a bite out of her pear thighs, they wanted to lick that scar, hold that chest, lay their cheeks upon ther spidery veins. Her smile was dazzling, her gait so beautiful, and when her eyes looked, they truly took in what they were looking at. I saw again what I had been taught to ignore, the power IN the body, The cultural power OF the body is its beauty, but power IN the body is rare, for most have chased it away with their torture or embarrassment by the flesh. 
It is in this light that the wildish woman can inquire into the numinosity of her own body and understand it not as a dumbbell that we are sentenced to carry for life, not as a beast of burder, pampered or otherwise, who carries us around for life, but as a series of DOORS AND DREAMS AND POEMS thru which we can learn and know all manner of things. In the wild psyche, body is understood as a being in its own right, one who loves us, depends on us, one to whom we are sometimes mother, and who sometimes is mother to us." 

from Clarissa Pinkola Estes' 'Women who run with the Wolves' 

I think that especially for a mother, loving Body and being Body is very important. Imagine trying to explain to your little baby or child that you dont like or appreciate the body that they adore, that they take so much delight in, and find their sense of comfort and warmth and strength? 
Until I had my son, my body was this abstract thing, really...I was never very connected to it, certainly wasnt EMBODIED...and actually seemed to hold in higher esteem being OUT OF BODY or OF THE SPIRIT...It took pregnancy and childbirth to fully connect me to my body and to really understand Body...as a force as well as a form. I spent years trying to get away from Body, hiding from Body, denying Body...and now it seems to me to be blasphemy...in some sense...Things that I thought I understood back then were just intellectual gropings....now I have True knowing, True Feeling, True Selfness....not a delusion of grandeur...but a participation in something that is so immense and whole and wonderful in so many ways, and that Body is here in order to take this Isness into Herself and Express it in ways that could not exist if Body Were NOT... We as a culture have degraded flesh for so long, and it has led to so many problems on many levels... People seem to believe that if you allow the Body what Body wants, you will be 'led astray'...haha...but I have yet to meet more than a few people who have actually been embodied in the full sense of the word. And there is nothing to be led astray from. Body will lead us home. Body is our ability to relate to other selves and worlds and ideas and vibrations and realitys....Body doesnt hinder us in the pursuit of 'enlightenment'....Body IS enlightenment.... Its not so much that we need to bring awareness into the body, but to allow the bodys awareness to LEAD US OUT of our preoccupation with our prison walls, which we have built around ourselves because Feeling is so damn intense and so completely overwhelming that living a half life is preferable for most. And body gets blamed for keeping us 'beastly' or 'dense and profane'...etc etc....I believe this is all backward. I think that only the truly courageous and those who dearly want to become as conscious as they can be, even attempt to understand and honor Body, because to do so would make most everything else we know seem very insignificant. 

So here is to Body. 
In all her forms. 
In all her force. 
And with all her faces turned to the earth... 
because Body does not need to seek the light....the light seeks her... 
for it is the joy of the universe which dances in her thighs... 

And here is to all the Mamas 
who have been thru the primordial creation 
thru her own body 
here 
now 

Smiles, 
Charleen Johnston 
2009