For the last 15 months, I haven’t been able to dance – or at least, not without pain or fear of future repercussion. I’ve seen one specialist after another. Each has a different tactic, another solution. Yet still I am here not dancing. Still in pain. So what has been missing? Why is nothing working?
I have come to believe that nothing has worked because none of these solutions is coming from inside. Each is like a set of someone else’s clothes that I am putting on, and I haven’t actually found my own style. I haven’t figured out how to ask what I truly want to wear. In the meantime, I am copying – wearing clothes that don’t quite fit and aren’t exactly my style. I’m still not listening to myself.
Only just in the last few weeks have I stopped trying to make my body move based on how I think it “should” move, and started listening. And this listening requires such presence. It is so easy to shift back into my mind and impose another solution from outside. “I should do this stretch now; it’s this muscle that needs to be stronger so I’ll do this exercise”. And then, again, I am no longer listening.
Admittedly, it is subtle. Many times I’m not sure if an action is coming from my mind or from the messages of my body. In these times, I breathe deep into my belly, focusing all my awareness on my hara (the japanese word for belly, but interchangeable with the daoist term “the lower dantian”, and many other terms). In several Eastern traditions, this area – a couple fingers widths below and behind the belly button – contains the center of our embodied intuition. Like we say in English, “listen to your gut”. The hara is seen as the seat of our power, the foundation from which all authentic action can arise.
This is not to negate the importance of other aspects of our being, namely our heart and our mind (or “third eye”), but more so to highlight the necessity of grounding ourselves first in our intuition. Without this, the mind can run rampant – as mine has for the last year and a half (and truthfully much longer), trying to solve without really listening and feeling. So instead, I am learning to use my mind to focus on this space in my body, noticing whenever I start to think my way to a solution, and coming back to focused awareness on my hara. As has been quoted many times throughout history, “the mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master”.
And it’s not easy. Honestly it’s terrifying to feel pain and to feel out of control. It is so hard to feel powerless, not knowing when, or if, it will end. I feel tender in this moment, acknowledging my mind’s desire to help me escape this predicament. Of course I want to be free of this experience. But the mind’s solutions come from a frantic place, like a man desperately trying to turn off a car alarm, shaken by the harsh, insistent sound. And slowly, I’m learning that I can’t act or listen from that place. It’s too frantic, too agitated.
It’s painful to look back at how much of my life I wasn’t listening. Trying to just turn off the car alarm, rather than asking what it was telling me. The former approach puts me in a place of powerlessness, as I feel at the mercy of something outside myself. But the latter invites me into presence, a sacred conversation. Just notice for a moment how different these two approaches feel in your body:
“Body, would you just stop…how can I shut off this car alarm?” Pause and feel that. Read it again if that helps.
Now breath, and try this one:
“Body, I am listening, what do you need me to hear?”
What do you notice?
To me, the first sentence feels like a contraction, my whole system clamping down and rev’ing – a car with the brakes and gas going at the same time. The second feels expansive, soft, opening – a car in neutral, easefully coasting.
Again, I don’t blame myself anymore. I know that my mind – like any sane mind – wants to help me get out of pain. I am just learning that this isn’t where the true “solutions” will come from. So I bring my breath back to my hara, that spot just below and behind my bellow button, and wait. I try not to think, focusing instead on my breath arriving to this space, and I keep waiting. When my body next moves, I trust this impulse. My mind wants to jump in, to start to analyze, and I just keep coming back to my breath in my hara.
It’s hardest when I feel a ping of pain or discomfort. Then my mind really jumps in – SOMETHING IS WRONG AND I NEED TO FIX IT. And the mind isn’t wrong – there is something going on – but it often isn’t the problem or the solution that the mind latches onto. This is one of the biggest learnings and continued challenges for me – to honor the feelings in my body – yet remain diligent about the story that I am creating about them.
Recently I have been acknowledging how much anxiety I have around health. I am starting to unpack all of the various roots – many moments when I felt out of control, afraid of being sentenced to a life with some ailment, without some physical or mental capacity – and I must acknowledge how much I’ve obsessed, how often I lapse into the agitated guy trying to turn off the car alarm.
It’s so confusing when your body is sending signals – when you have a headache, when you can demonstrate an imbalance of bacteria in your gut, when the MRI shows a disc herniation in my lower back – to determine what to do with this information. It feels invalidating to say that it’s all in my head. I waiver – between my mind’s insistence in a structural problem or the stance that these sensations and experiences are all expressions of an overactive nervous system.
Yet all of this is happening in my mind – and this is what I am trying to escape. So I come back to my breath and I slow down. It is radical in this hyper-rational world that prioritizes efficiency and rapid action. But I allow myself to slow down enough to become curious, to not offer any solution.
If I might philosophize for one moment: it’s a little like Martin Buber’s turn from an I-it to an I-thou relationship. The body is no longer something to be fixed, not just an “it” to do something to; but rather, a sacred being, a “thou”, to be listened to and worked with. In this pivot, we could even recognize (as Buber does) the divinity of the other. When I start to listen to my hara, to the intuition of my body, I imagine that I am also letting God flow through me. This “knowing” that comes from somewhere beyond my mind feels both deeply mine and deeply divine.
So I listen to that moment of expansion, the surge of energy deep in my belly, and follow it no matter what my mind says. Perhaps this is the truly radical act: not just slowing down, but surrendering to an intelligence that is so outside the ways that we are taught to orient to the world (at least within Western society). My mind isn’t sure what to think – but my hara feels quite at peace with that. That’s what I’ll listen to.
And, because I certainly don’t want to leave you in your mind, let me offer a few ways to play with this:
- Talk to your Hara: just begin asking questions of your hara (or your gut, if you prefer a less spiritual term). These don’t need to be serious questions. “Should I make dinner now?” “Do I want to go to the movies tonight?” “Do I need to change therapists?” It doesn’t matter the content – any decision you are pondering. Then breath and feel your center – notice if one choice feels expansive or contractive. Sometimes I’ll state it as a declaration and notice how my stomach reacts (e.g. “I am going to the movies tonight”, and then if I feel a contraction in my belly that suggests it is actually a no). Try it out! Right now! Ask yourself, do I want to read the other ways to play?
- Dance Exploration: Put on a song, then become still in your body. Breath into your hara and focus all of your mind there (you can even visualize a little golden ball in that spot below and behind your belly button). Whenever you feel the impulse, just let your body move – trust the impulse – feel how your body wants to move and stretch. As soon as your mind jumps in, stop moving and come back to breathing into your hara. See how much you can let the body move on its own, without the mind intervening.
- Adventure with your Hara: head off on a walk when you have time and space to wander. At each intersection, pause and ask your hara which way to go. Wherever you feel the energy, head that direction. Don’t ask why, or think where you are going, just keep asking your hara whenever you encounter a crossroads. And of course, be sure to enjoy the ride from the passenger seat – it’s nice to not have to be in charge once in a while.
(Title inspiration Hat Tip to my friend Ethan who suggested slowing down as a rebellion against our current capitalist values)
(And big thank you to Cellular Transformation and Jennifer Millar for inspiring this reflection and the ways to play with your hara – https://www.jennifermillar.org/)