Not long ago, my attention was caught by an article written by Rabbi Akiva Mann. It addressed the problems that a modern Jew faces trying to keep the vitality of that ancient religion alive in our present day society. The article interested me because Rabbi Mann was writing about an issue of spiritual observance using a body perspective, and in doing so was creating an example that I feel clearly illustrates the problem of relationship between body and mind.
According to Rabbi Mann, the ways of our largely Christian and secular society have so insinuated themselves into Judaism that they have subverted the very ways of praying that distinguish the Jewish form of worship. Even the physical motions of Jewish prayer have given way to Christian forms.
"Were I to say to you right now, 'Let us pray'," writes Rabbi Mann, "our immediate response would be to bow our heads in Protestant fashion. Not one of you would adjust his hat, feel for the prayer sash, reach out for the little laver at the synagogue entrance to wash his hands, and get ready to assume the proper Jewish prayer stance. Our minds may be Jewish but our bodies are Protestant."
What Rabbi Mann describes here is something that we have come to call body language; non-verbal and largely unconscious communication through movement and posture. The study of body language has found that it is not uncommon for our bodies to be saying one thing when our minds are conscious of another. In fact , with just a little observance we can look around us and see people whose bodies are fidgeting while their owners seem calmly engaged in quiet conversation; people who act as if they are quite comfortable with each other except that their bodies are turned away as if protecting themselves; or in the example that Rabbi Mann brings to us, heads that feel definitely Jewish while the body shows that it has come to accept a religious view that is uncomfortably Christian. In each case, there would seem to be a separation between the experience of mind and that of the body. The mind is saying one thing, and the body another.
As Carl Jung and other students of human behaviour have realized, a conflict in expression between mind and body inevitably points to conflicting messages coming from within our own being. Although this split is something that we all experience, at a deeper level it can produce a profound fissure that runs into the depths of the human psyche. Explorers of the body/mind relationship such as psychologist Alexander Lowen have also found that identifying the existence of a separation between our experience of mind and body plays a critical role in the recognition and treatment of schizophrenia. In this 'split', as Lowen describes it, our sense of identity becomes divided, with each part drifting further and further away from the other. Our sense of internal wholeness fades with the diminishing contact and we are left feeling out of touch with a part of ourselves.
In this culture, in this time, we all live so much of our lives in our heads, and are so terribly ignorant of life as it is experienced in the body; the non-verbal, or body enactment of our lives. Yet in every thing we do, our bodies act as mirrors, living mirrors of our lives. The shape of the body and its motion are the living, created form of human expression. Through the gestures that accompany talking, in the postures and movements that make dance and theatre come alive, and in the body language that tells so much about our natures to those about us, we continually read the commonly understood but seldom acknowledged expression of our inner lives, that is the body.
But the body not only expresses the image of who we are as human beings. More wonderfully, through the body, we feel our experience as human beings. For it is not until we are moved by the expressive form of the body that its value and meaning truly come to life.
So it is through both the imaginal expressiveness of its form and the emotive depths of its content, that the body brings the richness of life to us. And just as it is for the Jew who tries to keep traditional spiritual practise in our modern society, the body not only is an accurate portrayal of our deepest, and often unconscious relationships with life (and one that may be very different from our conscious views), it also fixes that information at a very physical level, feeding that inner self perception back to us, and so strongly that we cannot truly have said to have changed our responses to life relationships until we can see that there is a change in their expression at a body level as well.
Obviously, there is much value in being in touch with body information, and yet learning to understand the language of the body is not all that easy. In fact, I have found just talking about body experience to be a most difficult task. If anything meaningful is going to be said, we want not to talk just to the head, but to the body as well.
Finding the right language when speaking to the body is important. It seems to be a language that does not have a lot in common with conscious, rational thought. "...the language of the body is proprioceptive and not conceptual or logical...", says Rabbi Mann. "It is a language not for the reason but for the imagination; and it is not for our imagination as it becomes translated into thought, but for our imagination as it becomes translated into muscular responses."
Because of the body's capacity to both express itself and to be understood through image, I will use imagery; and so that the images will not speak only to reason, I will hope to invoke the feeling content of imagery as mediums through which to bring the living experience of the body to you. To this end, we will explore our relationship with the body through the metaphorical world of fairy tales. Through their stories we will bring the human experience of the body to life; experiences that can be imagined, and felt.
Why should a gap arise in the relationship between body and mind? In searching for the answer to that question, let us start with a story, the tale of the Frog Prince. The 'Tale of the Frog Prince' begins by telling us that there was once a princess who had a golden ball. One day, while she was playing with it, the ball bounced across the lawn, and down the well. Horrified the princess ran to the well and peered down into its dark depths, but with growing despair, for it was clear that she had no hope of getting the ball back herself. But as it is the luck of such things in the world of fairy tale, there was a frog who lived in the well, and the frog could talk. He would get the ball back for her, he said, but at a price. If he was to give her back the ball, she had to allow him to return with her to the castle, so that he may sit at her table, drink from her cup, and sleep by her side.
Well! She never takes him seriously. Nevertheless she makes the bargain. But as soon as she gets the ball back, still dripping from its fall into the waters below, she turns her back on him and hurries back to the castle, alone. He is left, hopping slowly behind, calling out to her to remember their agreement. She thinks that she will never see him again.
Students of myth and legend know the wonderful way in which the story can parallel real life experience, often at a surprisingly deep level. The story of the frog and the princess has strong parallels to the relationship that we often have with our own bodies. Like the princess, we too continually make bargains with our bodies to get what we want from them, never thinking that we have to keep our side of the bargain. Too often, once our bodies have performed to the level they were expected to; whether that is shedding fat for the summer's beach, or lessening pain levels after an injury, we forget, and like the princess, put our awareness of the body aside for the moment. But if we have forgotten, the body is faithful and never forgets. Slumbering, it only awaits the right moment to be awakened again.
If expectations of the body are seldom heard and often ignored, from our mind's perspective what is expected from the body/mind relationship is easily understood. Commonly, we ask for no more than that the body should function well for us, look better than we could possibly hope for, and not bother us too much. Unfortunately, our bodies seldom live up to this short list of expectations, and at times they positively assail us with their imperfections. In fact, in spite of our wish for positive messages from the body, often the only time we get strong signals from our body is when something is not right.
What this all adds up to is that for each of us, the relationship between body and mind could usually be much better. It is not surprising that our relationship with our bodies should be fraught with tension. It is one in which we usually have a low background noise of tensions, or aches; it is a body that could ambush us at any moment with a torn ligament, disease, and inevitable death. It often requires attention when we don't have the time, and it can seldom keep up with the daily pace that our minds would like to set for it. It would seem that it is our minds, and seldom our bodies that set the level of expectation in our lives, and yet like the frog, as we shall see, the body's needs are seldom far from us.
As much as we would like our bodies not to bother us too much, at the same time we do depend on them for sensory awareness. In fact, our ability to sense through body awareness is a survival skill at the most basic level. Through what we feel in our bodies we know if we are too close to a fire, if we have cut ourselves, whether a pain is heartburn...or heart attack. Our bodies give us a way of monitoring our physical world, and a guide that tells us how to most correctly respond to it.
But our bodies tell us more. Our bodies also tell us about the quality of our world experience, and of its effect on us at a much more subtle level than our minds alone would ever be aware of. When we touch another, it is through our bodies that we can tell if this is the touch that thrills, or one that leaves us cold. And it is through touch that we know ourselves, that we feel our very existence by the sensations our bodies bring to our awareness. Through the body we feel the pathos of life; not just the pain, but perhaps also of some time when we lay on a beach, or on a windswept hill top, and felt at peace with our body, and ourselves. We are moved by the touch of the world. And it is through touch, experienced in the body, that we are finally truly touched by life itself.
In all these ways, the body brings us information that is vital to us, and that speaks deeply of what it is to be human. But too often, because of the nature of the information they give us, the responses of the body are exactly what we don't want to feel. They reveal us, and tell us and others things about ourselves that we would rather not feel, or like the princess when she must explain to her father the frog's arrival at the castle gate, something that we might not want known. A blush at the wrong time, a racing pulse and dilated pupils, even the flicker of an eye - we all are to some degree adept at reading the body language of those about us, despite the best attempts of the bearer of these tell-tale signs to repress their expression.
While hiding body expression from the discerning eye of others can be difficult, we are all potential masters at denying ourselves full recognition of their reality. And for good reason. There is a common theme that winds its way through our experience of body information that often we would prefer not to feel, and hear, and that is the experience of pain.
The attempt to control discomfort and pain is a major factor in why we relate to information from the body in the way we do. Whether its source is embarrassment or bruise, we invest a tremendous amount of energy in controlling the pain of life's wounds. The instant discomfort is felt, we activate a whole array of defense mechanisms whose job is to control the influx of pain signals and armour the place where the injury has made us feel vulnerable.
Many of the ways in which we try to control the full brunt of pain are easily recognizable. If you fall and hurt yourself, you brace, wince, and tighten up - face, body and all. Control over breath and body movement by bracing is amazingly successful at controlling the intensity of pain. This can be seen in bodywork when often a client will stop breathing the moment they feel discomfort. From early in life, the lesson we learn is that the more we stop body movement, the better chance we have of diminishing the pain of injury.
Physical injury is body pain that we all know too well. It is pain like this that we pay the most attention to because this is the pain that calls out most for our attention. But there is also pain, like the pain of embarrassment, that is more subtle. The source of injury is not as easily seen; its wound cannot be as easily discovered. And if this kind of injury is so subtle that it has only slight impact on our consciousness, or if we have learned too well how to dull our awareness of it, how can we be sure of what effects these injuries, and our responses to them will have had on our bodies. How will we know what is happening in the experience of the body if we are so busy denying the messages that it sends us. Yet whether we acknowledge them or not, like the spider that spins its web strand by strand, the effects of defensive control still quietly move into our lives, and will inevitably have their influence over us.
Even when we successfully subdue awareness of our body responses, the impact of that experience on our lives is no small matter. In fact, our very attempts to control the discomfort of injury increase the long range effects of body trauma and the stress it puts on our systems. The result is a mental stopping of body processes, so that defensive bracing becomes lodged in the body, affecting metabolism, movement and posture, becoming the physical reason for the growing implication of stress in diseases of both body and mind.
Our talent for silencing body signals makes unravelling the language of the body no easy task. Even when we decide that we want to understand its language, we are still so entangled in the very ways we originally masked sensory information that it becomes difficult to understand what we are hearing. Bound up in a trap of our own making, like a spider caught in its own strands, it is truly a tangled web that we weave.
