There is a connection we have with our bodies (and our bodies have with our mind) that is convoluted, dialectical, impatient, loving, and downright complicated (See Part 1).  Sometimes, things go catastrophically wrong with that connection and we are left wondering what is wrong with us.   What does a disconnection look like?


1) There are the people that don't know they have a body.  I'm not kidding.  They get dressed in the morning and eat every day and exercise and hug people, but never do so from a point of actually being IN their body.  Their bodies are full of pain that that is just about the only thing they know about it.  They have cut off their bodies and don't really feel much.  They often don’t even realize that they don’t realize that they have cut off their bodies.  When they start unfreezing or something gets through their tough and numbed exterior, they are often surprised that there is a whole world they never knew existed.  These are the people that say things like my world became alive or full of color after falling in love or recovering from depression or finally getting relief from a debilitating illness.  



2) There are the people that change their bodies in extreme ways to fit into an ideal image.  They get surgery, take drugs, sculpt themselves at the gym, and watch or count everything that enters their mouth.  They feel like their body doesn't match their internal image of themselves and are so dysphoric they are willing to do ANYTHING to not be what other people see them as on the outside.  Their brains quite literally have an image (or a map) of what their bodies are supposed to look like.  In fact, there is a whole section of the brain called the parietal lobes that integrates information from your senses and your experiences and expectations of what it means to be a human and what a human is supposed to look like to give you an internal image of what you are supposed to look like.  You hear these people spending the majority of their day preoccupied with “improving” themselves.  This disconnection between what you think or feel you should look like and what you actually look like is what causes why skinny people to say they feel fat and transgender individuals to say their bodies don’t match their gender.



3) There are the people that abuse their bodies in ways that poses a threat their own health.  Something has happened that is so overwhelming emotionally that self-abuse and self-harm through pain, abstinence, denial, and more is the only way to get a break from the weight of the emotions and thoughts.  Abusing their bodies seem to be the only thing that makes life REAL.  Everyday life is like walking through a movie watching someone else, or is so horribly hellish that they feel completely and utterly isolated and alone.  Physical pain and denial is a way to gain control and mastery over their own lives.  The only time they feel alive is when they are getting that adrenaline rush or consuming food and drink that is making them sick or cutting themselves to make sure they are still alive.



How do you heal from a disconnection when we never acknowledged there was a connection, or even recognize that the problem is the actual connection?


Check back tomorrow for Part 3 of Thoughts on Bodies: Healing the Divide

Bodies.  Our bodies define us in so many ways, yet we disown them in so many more.  Our uniforms, our haircuts, our styles and the way we showcase ourselves signify everything from socio-economic class and race, to gender identity, to the community we identify with and our "tribe".  At the same time, we disown our bodies and disconnect with them in profound and sometimes abusive ways.  Our relationships and experiences with our bodies, whether it is dragging them around and making them wait while we think or learn, or taking them out for a walk, or getting frustrated when they get sick or break out in hives or whatever, define our core experience.  We struggle each day to feed them the right way, rest them enough, and exercise them enough.  We become so shameful about them that we try and force our bodies to conform to an ideal, and we get frustrated that they can't keep up with us.  


We tend to treat our bodies as something separate from our "self".  We are embarrassed by them, dress them up, hide them, sculpt them with weights and dumbbells or plastic surgery, ink them, mutilate them, starve them, or overfeed them.  At the same time, they are what make us and helps define us as "who I am".  It is exactly the way we dress them up, or hide them, or sculpt them, or ink them, mutilate, starve, or overfeed them that sends a message about "this is who I am".  


Underneath all of that, though, is another dialectic.  We insist that our bodies are different than our minds and in many ways they most definitively are.  You can't think up E=mc2 by putting your body in a pink tutu or running around a tree (although you might be able to do those simultaneously), yet our bodies also create and define how our minds function.... and vice versa.  There is a connection between our minds and bodies that is so profound that we get pits and butterflies in our stomachs or feel like our hearts are breaking.  When we get angry, we clench our fists and when we get scared we lock our knees.  There is an intricate connection between mind and body that is so obvious that we often deny it exists at all.  In fact, the concept of separating our bodies so much as to talk about taking them for a walk or making them wait around while we learn seems ludicrous.  We are fundamentally intertwined with our bodies.


What happens when things go catastrophically wrong with that connection and we are left wondering what is wrong with us?  How do you heal from a disconnection when we never acknowledged there was a connection, or even recognize that the problem is the actual connection?  What does a disconnection look like?


These are the people that don't know they have a body, change it in ways to fit into an ideal image, or abuse it in ways that poses a threat their own health.   


Stay tuned for tomorrow on "Thoughts on Bodies- Part 2: Catastrophic Disconnection".  

This past week has been a hard week for many Americans.  As some of you know, my primary interest as a Massage Therapist is to work with Post-Traumatic Stress and PTSD.  This is what led me to go to massage school and specialize in massage in Integrative Health settings and to study Body Psychology.   After the events in Boston last Monday, my first thought was to reach out to help. So, I have teamed up with Massage Without Boarders, a non-profit founded in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, to set up a program to provide massage therapy for those affected.  A lot of Massage Therapists across the country with training to work with PTSD are now stepping up to help out.  Its been amazing to see!  

It makes me feel so good to see people interested in how to help those who have experienced traumatic events.  Just two years ago I wrote a Continuing Education Course for Massage Therapists on how to work with PTSD with a website outlining much of the material.  Since Monday, my website page has gone viral!  If you want to read it too.... check it out here.... http://www.squidoo.com/massage-for-trauma-survivors-ptsd