POEM: The Body Is Not An Apology

by Sonya Renee Taylor
(thebodyisnotanapology.com)
(sonyareneetaylor.com)

The body is not an apology.
Let it not be forget-me-not fixed to mattress when night threatens
to leave the room empty as the belly of a crow.
The body is not an apology. Present it not as disassembled rifle
when he has yet to prove himself more than common intruder.
The body is not an apology. Let it not be common as oil, ash, or toilet.
Let it not be small as gravel, stain, or teeth.
Let it not be mountain when it is sand.
Let it not be ocean when it is grass.
Let it not be shaken, flattened, or razed in contrition.
The body is not an apology. Do not give it as confession,
communion. Do not ask for it to be pardoned as criminal.
The body is not a crime, is not a gun.
The body is not a spill to be contained. It is not
a lost set of keys, a wrong number dialed. It is not
the orange burst of blood to shame white dresses.
The body is not an apology. It is not the unintended granules
of bone beneath wheel. The body is not kill.
It is not unkempt car.
It is not a forgotten appointment.
Do not speak it vulgar.
The body is not soiled. Is not filth to be forgiven.

The body is not an apology. It is not father’s backhand,
is not mother’s dinner late again wrecked jaw howl.
It is not the drunken sorcery of contorting steel round tree.
It is not calamity. The body is not a math test.
The body is not a wrong answer.
The body is not a failed class.
You are not failing.
The body is not a cavity, is not hole to be filled, to be yanked out.
It is not a broken thing to be mended, be tossed.
The body is not prison, is not sentence to be served.
It is not pavement, is not prayer.
The body is not an apology.
Do not give the body as gift. Only receive it as such.
The body is not to be prayed for, is to be prayed to.
So, for the evermore tortile tenth grade nose,
Hallelujah.
For the shower song throat that crackles like a grandfather’s Victrola,
Hallelujah.
For the spine that never healed, for the lambent heart that didn’t either,
Hallelujah.
For the sloping pulp of back, hip, belly,
Hosanna.
For the errant hairs that rove the face like a pack of Acheronian wolves.

Hosanna,
for the parts we have endeavored to excise.
Blessed be
the cancer, the palsy, the womb that opens like a trap door.
Praise the body in its blackjack magic, even in this.
For the razor wire mouth.
For the sweet god ribbon within it.
Praise.
For the mistake that never was.
Praise.
For the bend, twist, fall, and rise again,
fall and rise again. For the raising like an obstinate Christ.
For the salvation of a body that bends like a baptismal bowl.
For those who will worship at the lip of this sanctuary.
Praise the body, for the body is not an apology.
The body is deity. The body is God. The body is God:
the only righteous love that never need repent.

 

 

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GROUND by David Whyte

GROUND

is what lies beneath our feet. It is the place where we already stand; a state of recognition, the place or the circumstances to which we belong whether we wish to or not. It is what holds and supports us, but also what we do not want to be true; it is what challenges us, physically or psychologically, irrespective of our hoped for needs. It is the living, underlying foundation that tells us what we are, where we are, what season we are in and what, no matter what we wish in the abstract, is about to happen in our body, in the world or in the conversation between the two.

To come to ground is to find a home in circumstances and in the very physical body we inhabit in the midst of those circumstances and above all to face the truth, no matter how difficult that truth may be; to come to ground is to begin the courageous conversation – to step into difficulty and by taking that first step, begin the movement through all difficulties – to find the support and foundation that has been beneath our feet all along: a place to step onto, a place on which to stand and a place from which to step.

Focusing

October 2017

Inner Body Focusing – A Daily Journal Process

Focusing is a path of self-inquiry that welcomes nuanced experiences that we often overlook. We gently bring awareness into our bodies, which is where feelings and sensations reside. We allow and befriend whatever we are experiencing in a way that permits the stuck places to loosen …moving us toward greater peace, freedom, and wisdom. 

~ John Amodeo, PhD

Making the Implicit Explicit

For many years I have kept a daily “focusing journal.”  Focusing within my body has profoundly deepened my intuition. Focusing is also how I stay “emotionally fit” as a therapist. Focusing is a body-based inner listening technique that helps to confirm inner knowing.

Focusing psychotherapy, discovered by Eugene Gendlin, and further defined by Ann Weiser Cornell, helps to bring fuzzy, preverbal knowledge into conscious awareness. Focusing within the body invites what is unconscious to come forward into our awareness.

This way of journaling does not involve much writing. It mostly involves sitting patiently at the “growth edge”. This form of inner body listening requires sitting quietly while tending to vague physical impressions until they become defined and meaningful in the form of images, words, phrases, and felt-senses –  and then writing them down.

While many psychological techniques involve releasing inhibiting habits and old beliefs, this body focusing technique is a way to attend to what wants to emerge for emotional healing. Everything we need to emotionally heal will arise in the present moment – in its own right timing – without fail – if we listen deeply within.

An Inner Body Journal Process

Below, I share my method of inner body meditation (based on Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy) to support you to process your difficult emotions. Typically, I sit for 15-30 minutes and jot down the impressions that arise from the edge of my awareness as a way to deepen my intuition. This is also a wonderful way to lighten emotional pain in a gradual way.

Listening to your body for just 15 minutes a day can help you to gradually process emotional pain and access deeper intuitive knowing. Start by sitting quietly with your journal on your lap. Close your eyes. When images, words and body senses arise, jot them in your journal.

1. Clearing a Space

Take a moment just to relax. Pay attention to your body. See what comes there when you ask, “How is my life going? What is the main thing for me right now?” Sense within your body. Let the answers come slowly. When some concern comes, do not go right inside of it.

Stand back from your problem, say “Yes, that’s there. I can feel that, there.” Let there be a little space between you and what is troubling you. Say, “There is something in me that….” Then ask what else you feel. Wait again, and sense. Usually there are several things happening in our emotional world at one time.

2. Felt Sense

Select one personal problem to focus on from what came. Do not go inside of your problem. Stand back from the discomfort of it and witness it in a friendly way. There are many parts to that one thing you are thinking about – too many to sort out cognitively. But you can feel all of these things together on a “felt-sense” level. Pay attention to where you feel this concern in your body, and sense how the entire problem feels. Let yourself feel the unclear sense of all of that.

3. Handle

What is the quality of this unclear felt sense? Let a word, a phrase, a gesture, or an image come up from the felt sense itself. It might be a descriptive word like tight, sticky, scary, stuck, heavy, jumpy or it might be a phrase. An image or a memory might come to mind instead. Stay with the quality of the felt sense till something fits it just right. Write this description of your felt sense in your journal.

4. Resonating

Go back and forth between the felt sense and the descriptive word (phrase or image) to see if it feels exactly right. Check how they resonate with each other. See if there is a little body signal that lets you know there is a fit – that you have just recognized and described it perfectly.

Hold the felt sense in your body and the word/phrase/image in your mind at the same time to see if they match. Let the felt sense change if it wants to. Also, play with the descriptive word or picture to see if it wants to change. Allow your emotions and the “handle” to change until they capture the quality of the felt sense just right.

5. Asking

Now ask: what is it, about this whole problem, that makes this quality that which you have just named or pictured? Make sure the quality is sensed again, freshly, vividly (not just remembered from before). At this stage you are asking the felt sense to define itself more – to speak more deeply to the root of the discomfort, dis-ease or “wrongness”.

Feel into your body and ask,”What makes the whole problem so ______?”If you get a quick answer without an inner body shift, just let that kind of answer go by. Return your attention to your body and freshly find the felt sense again. Then ask it again. Be with the felt sense until you feel a slight “give” or release in your body.

6. Receiving

Receive whatever comes in a friendly way. It does not need to make logical sense. Intuition often speaks in pictures and metaphors that feel just right when you identify them. Stay with the sense of inner relief or recognition for a while, even if it is only a slight bit of new information. Whatever comes, this is only one shift; there will be many others. Linger for a few moments in this body-shift that has come from offering deep attention to your growth edge.

Ann Weiser Cornell shares:

“The knowing that comes through Focusing is often surprising, and operates from its own logic rather than following in a linear fashion from something previously known. Its signal can be an intensification or a releasing. It can also be a sense of flow, fresh air, opening, expansion, or the like.

Tears are a strong confirmation: tears that have nothing to do with sadness, but rather with the rightness of the knowing–“truth tears.” In contrast, the body’s way of saying “No” is a feeling of something being “off,” an uneasiness, a wrongness, limitation, or contraction, or backing away.”

You may not always feel a body-shift. With focusing, the main aim is to spend time sensing into an unclear holistic body sense for a dedicated period of time. Emotional shifts come spontaneously when the time is right.

The Wisdom of the Body

Our bodies are wise. Our bodies perfectly reflect how we have lived our lives. Our bodies hold insights about what we need to be more fully ourselves. Our bodies also tell us about what has hurt us emotionally and how to heal it. Our bodies know which people around us bring out the best in us, and which do not. Our bodies know the right next step to take for our growth.

Focusing returns us to non-analytic knowing that connects us to our intuition. When we build a better relationship with our body we can heal a troubled emotional life. Focusing becomes an inner “compass” that points the way to the unique “medicine” we each need in order to emotionally heal.