Take a few deep breaths. Ground yourself in your body. Bring your attention to your sternum and your hands. Your legs and feet. Do you feel electricity? If so, where? Do you feel warmth or coolness? How is your heart? If you’re experiencing an emotion, where does it show up in the body? What color, what shape does it take?
Enter into your body as much as you can and then write about the experience—what you noticed, what you encountered, what you learned.
Dear Ruthie,
Thank you for the prompt; in many ways I empathise with your experience and have myself been ruminating on our personal relationships with our bodies. I take a breath in, never really a breath deep enough, and feel a tightness lining my upper back joining my sternum-- it takes a little wrestle for the air to flow in. It took an incident a few weeks ago to really draw it back to my consciousness; when a simple sneeze found me grimacing a few moments later, trying to figure out how I had never been aware of this particular muscle that clung round the bone shaped like an 'L' (how ironic) in my upper back. It was not a superficial strain, it was a muscle that ran deeper and almost disconcerted me with how close it came to the core, that which I somehow thought inaccessible and thus was in someway protected, one of the few things about my physical body that was buffered from impact. I correct my posture, pull my hips inward and my shoulders backward, do a twist to the left,, to the right, and hear the dull cracks of my spine and the relief released through my throat. For the next three days I could barely look over my right shoulder or do a 360ยบ rotation of my head without holding my breath and even tearing up. On the third day I walked out into my neighbourhood, deserted hawker centres, cordoned-off playgrounds and all, hoping that a TCM clinic was an essential service and able to offer me some assistance. I do this a lot; make circular motions with one of my feet, it is now creating sweeps over the toes of its companion; sometimes I think it is a subconscious self-reassurance, but could simply be a random habit that takes a certain detachment from the usual preoccupations to recognise. Unfortunately the venture was to no avail, and by that point I was ready to give up on any possible thing, compulsory essay or not, that required me to be sitting upright. My mother insisted I visit the regular doctor and I silently reproved myself for resisting her the days before.
Turns out it was an "acute strain" of my trapezius muscle, likely caused by days in front of the computer (necessary with the recent classes online) which caused tightness and spasming in my back, and which was aggravated by something as harmless as a sneeze. So imposed on my attention was the complete submission we have to our bodies. It is both what grants and what denies, and I imagine it has to be a pretty complex, powerful thing to be able to be largely giving in to whatever it is that we put it under. It was tempting to be hateful, critical of my body for not putting up a good enough fight against The Sneeze, for making me go through so much pain, for disallowing me concentration on my work. But it was difficult to maintain such a grudge because of the knowledge that I don't have the best posture (although I've been trying to correct it!!!), and all the masseur/masseuse can ever say while straining his/her knuckles into my back is "you're so tight!".
I tuck my hips in again, this time standing with my laptop propped on two boxes and two Game of Thrones books. I try to grasp on to the relief that the past hour of Deep Stretch Yoga with Adriene has done for me, recognise that my breaths are that much less laboured, that there is less gravity on the two bricks that have become of my shoulders, that my lower back has less of that uncomfortable incongruent-need-to-crackstretchpull-feeling. I take a big gulp of water and remember its importance, the bright satiation it brings to my mouth. It will probably take a while and a lot more self-discipline than I dare to acknowledge to release my body from the habits and pre-existing conditions it was born into which have unfortunately warranted pain and physical fragility. But one thing that I think has been an essential step in the right direction is the simple recognition of its necessity. More than ever I am conscious of the unforeseen weight of my habits, my cramming and holding my body in far too odd positions in far too long a time, and this awareness manifests in my mind sometimes as "how much pressure is actually exerted on you right now by air and you have no idea?!" or more recently Nietzsche's almost personal attack on me -- "But you do not comprehend this? You are incapable of seeing something that required two thousand years to achieve victory [irrelevant - elle][omg irrelevant in this context SO relevant to Nietzsche that is super important please i admire Nietzsche's w-][literally you're just doing this to yourself- elle]?-- There is nothing to wonder at in that: all protracted things are hard to see, to see whole." And so it dawns brighter on me that there are so many things that seem natural, seem 'alright', simply because I could have done them, lived with them for so long a time. My awareness grows and sensations stand out to me, almost seem to cock a challenging eyebrow, develop a larynx and linguistic abilities and question "am I supposed to be here? am I really?" But knowing me, I can see the threat of this wavering awareness, impetus to so much potential, being muffled by the million new interests, duties and goals to come. At least I have written it all out, spent a good enough time trying to tuck in my hips and push my shoulders back wHilE writing this out, and I hope this might be a physical reminder enough for me to do yoga every once in a while, to use my massage ball often (when I do get it, is Decathlon an essential service?), and to appreciate my body enough to make sacrifices in whatever way so as to heal it.
Thanks again for the prompt, Ruthie. Writing has always been about more than just its content.
Love,
elle
P.S. (mostly just for myself)
Sometimes I get so tight and incongruent-need-to-crackstretchpull-feeling that I desperately crave a deep crackstretchpull that I can only imagine to be like in one of those carwash machines that the evil step-sisters in 'A Cinderella Story' go through. It looks like it really gets in there.
So yes, here's for a laugh and a little less gentle warning that elle, you don't want to end up like them.
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