Body Betrayed

Summer 2016

A few months ago I was in the hospital having my right knee replaced. Even though so much time has passed, I am still having a hard time with this – not with the surgery; the results couldn’t be better – but with the fact that my knee had disintegrated. In fact, both my knees have. To some extent this is my own fault; I have banged my knees around badly. Still, I blame my knees! I think they have, quite literally, let me down.

I saw this as my body betraying me. And I was soon not just feeling betrayed by my body, but angry with it.

Into this cauldron of anger and betrayal, came the voice of a friend who phoned right before the surgery: “I’ve been thinking a lot about your surgery, Teri, and I think the time when you are recuperating is really going to be a time for you to really love your body. Be good to it. Thank it for everything it has done for you. See it as the friend it has always been.”

Really? I thought. A friend? What a pile of BS! A friend wouldn’t do this to me. Of course, I didn’t say this. I thanked her for her insight and – my ego poking up its ugly head – slipped in a few words to subtly remind her that I know my body; I am the big expert on “being in your body”. I had, after all, been writing about this topic for years!

I hung up. Then, slowly, slowly what she had said began to get to me.

I have indeed written a great deal about being in your your body. But it has not, I realized after talking to her, ever been about literally loving the body.

If you read the column I wrote in this space about two years ago called Body Love you’ll know I have struggled with a terrible body image all my life. Because of this I have always equated the work I need to do on loving my body with accepting the way my body looks – coming to terms with all its outward imperfections and being not exactly happy, but at least content, with it as it is.

This has blinded me to another whole level of body love – one my friend talks about with exceptional authority. This friend of mine has suffered from an extremely severe form of rheumatoid arthritis almost all her life. An exceptionally talented pianist and vocalist, this devastating disease hit her not long after she obtained her Bachelor’s degree from the Royal Conservatory. It immediately put paid to any hope she had of carrying on with a career in piano. Eventually the crippling in her hands became so severe it even made it impossible for her to teach voice as she could no longer accompany her students at all. Beyond this, she has endured multiple surgeries on her hands and feet and unimaginable, unrelenting pain for decades. She has been hospitalized countless times and has sometimes been bedridden for months on end.

In spite of all this excruciating physical suffering – or perhaps to some degree because of it – she is able to appreciate her body for simply being her body, being the vehicle that allows her to live on this earth, to enjoy life to the fullest, and to accomplish an extraordinary amount in her life. She does not feel betrayed by her body; she is not angry with it. She appreciates it; she loves it.

Over the years I have paid a lot of lip service to the idea of the body being “one with the spirit” – a sacred temple that needs to be cared for and honored with healthy food and exercise. Yet I have never carried this thought one step farther and actually appreciated, let alone loved, my body. Instead, I have wasted a lot of time being angry at a body that has actually stood me in pretty good stead. What’s more, I now find myself even angrier at a body that is doing nothing other than following the laws of nature. It is simply aging.

What a shame that I have spent all these years learning to be “in” a body that I didn’t love! And what a gift my friend’s insight has given me. Clearly I have a lot of work to do!

In the meantime, I am sure my friend would wish for all of us – whether we be aging, be old, or be battling physical illness – to be in bodies that we love.

Here is some art that came out of a workshop when participants were playing around with art materials. The creative writing brought out during the weekend was just as wild and wonderful! For more information on workshops click here.

Creativity Exercise

Prāna-shakti as

The Source

Back in the day when the big circulation newspapers had huge budgets for advertising I worked at The Toronto Star as a copywriter in their Creative Communications department. In those days it didn’t matter to me so much what I wrote as the fact that I was writing. I churned out print ads, radio commercials, subway posters, and slogans promoting The Star and, whenever possible, freelanced articles that would appear in the paper as I tried to earn my chops as a journalist.

My boss was a hard-core, old-fashioned newspaper man and former managing editor of the paper. He probably wasn’t very happy with the side-ways “promotion” that had stuck him in Communications and Public Relations; regardless, he was going to make damn sure anything that came out of his department was well written.

Early on he hauled me into his office and said, “What do you do when you get stuck? When you can’t write?” This was clearly a rhetorical question – he was just gearing up to give me a lecture on what he did when he got stuck. But before he could speak, I answered him anyway. “I pray,” I said.

I will never forget the look on this guy’s face. He looked at me like I was some hideous creature from outer space that had been accidentally beamed into his world. I had left him literally speechless. Unfortunately, this – and my quick dismissal from his office – meant I never learned what he was going to tell me about getting “unstuck”. It also meant that I didn’t get a chance to explain to him that “praying” for me had little to do with what we were taught in the religions of our childhoods. There was no begging or beseeching. Just a simple opening up to the Divine that lives within – a Divine that is accessible because it does indeed live within.

Over thirty years of being a writer has taught me that simply opening yourself to this cosmic, creative force – known in yoga as prāna-shakti – and allowing it to flow through you is the most powerful creativity exercise you can do. And this is so whether you are wanting to get unblocked or to just begin. Prāna-shakti is the creative force of the universe, and she is the creative force within you. This is why all the activities on these pages begin with Exercise One. If you’re not using this technique – or one like it – give it a try. The results will speak for themselves.