Over the course of this year I’ve taken to having little solo dates with myself, sometimes weekly or every other week, usually staying home and reflecting, resting, nurturing my mind, body, spirit. A few months ago on one such evening the thought came to me that ‘I need to spend a year in my body and in my relationships’. I wrote this down on a post it note and stuck it above my work desk, not really knowing what it meant but feeling its significance.
Around that time I was deciding if I wanted to return to my masters programme at UCL’s IIPP in Innovation, Public Policy and Public Value. I knew pretty early on that it hadn’t felt right on multiple levels which I won’t go into now (though I clearly had a bit of an inkling when I wrote this blog last year!), but I struggled to commit to not returning until this thought occurred to me. I think I needed a sense of what I would do instead and this gave me it. Instead of another year learning through an academic institution I needed to learn through my own body and my relationships. Perhaps this feels entirely bizarre to say and academia vs. bodies/relationships incomparable, but as the months have passed it has made more and more sense to me.
What does it mean to learn through my body and my relationships? I can share what I think it means for me, taking each in turn. For now, the body.
I’ve spent the last 10 years practising meditation and yoga. I’ve not really spent a lot of my conscious time wondering why and how they work and the logic/evidence for them, except to know that these practices have saved me multiple times over in countless ways. I’ve done them and just felt better. It's only recently I’ve wondered with more curiosity, what is actually going on when I disappear off to my 5th 10 day Vipassana meditation course or I switch on a Yoga with Adriene practice each morning and she encourages me to ‘find what feels good’.
Both are deeply embodied practices. Yoga repeatedly asking you to find a steady, deep and even breath in a range of physical postures and movements, increasing your body awareness, strength, flexibility, control and finding deeper levels of peace. Meditation, allowing you to be in stillness, observing breath and then bodily sensations, developing an awareness and equanimity to each sensation as it comes and goes. In both a sense of reuniting our minds with our bodies - becoming more attuned to them and responsive to their needs almost as if our bodies have really important information for us, if we would only just pay attention to them.
Over the past year I’ve heard over and over again this echo of the importance of our bodies, perhaps you have too ‘The body keeps the score’, managing our nervous systems, somatic practices, breath practice, saunas and cold therapy, people experiencing exhaustion and burnout, syncing up with menstrual cycles, all attempting to explore the connection between our emotional selves, our bodies and the wider world. The connection works in reverse too, the environments we live in and the psychological pressures we face manifesting in our emotions and then bodies, that flow from outside in and inside out.
Leaving a vipassana course, they tell you you should spend 2 hours a day meditating which I’ve always felt quite ridiculous, but perhaps framed as two hours reconnecting with my body I think makes a lot more sense now and I’m increasing each day with more consistency the amount of time I get back into my body.
Does it have to be in this spiritual leaning way, or are there other ways to connect with our bodies (not least because there are real risks to deep unsupported contemplative practice)? In the spring whilst working a shift at the Southbank Centre I spotted a group of dancers rehearsing in the mirrored space on L1. I could not take my eyes off them, watching them for hours. I had no idea what kind of dance they were doing at the time but the way they moved jogged a deep appreciation for the freedom of freestyle movement to music that has stayed with me ever since. I figured out eventually that it was house dance, and promptly fell down a rabbit hole learning about house dance emerging as an art form focused on freedom and self expression in the 70s and 80s in Chicago/NYC.
Now, I’m no house dancer, but I have started a little habit of sticking on my favourite tunes and having a little solo living room dance party multiple times a week. If someone could have peeked into my living room today, they would have caught me boogieing to I Feel Love by Donna Summers and Lost by Frank Ocean amongst other bangers. I’ve always struggled with going to the gym or running or any form of structured exercise aside from yoga. I hate being told what to do and spending money on something I find a chore, but I often lose track of time dancing around my living room. When Kelly McGonigal talks about the joy of movement, I think this is my version of it. Dancing with others too, a shared and multiplied joy.
Why is it so important to find moments of joy, pleasure and ease in our bodies? I think because how we experience our bodies is how we experience the world. If we can’t find and create it in ourselves, we will struggle to translate these hopes into the world around us. This isn’t about changing our bodies but knowing them a whole lot better and finding peace and acceptance in what we discover.
As a cis-gendered, able-bodied, neurotypical woman I’m perhaps more privileged than many in that I have a relatively uncomplicated relationship with loving and finding joy in my body. My body is more readily accepted and safe in the world. But everyone deserves to feel the same way about themselves and in the world. Whether it's adrienne marie brown advocating for the need for pleasure activism or Olivia Laing exposing the deep roots of violence against bodies and their power in the struggle for freedom in Everybody: A Book about Freedom, our bodies are a key source of transformation and change.
Perhaps more people living, creating and making decisions from a more embodied place would fundamentally alter not only what we did, but how we did it. I’m reminded of the wonderful Nat who founded the Feminist Wine Bar which is run on feminist business principles the first being… ‘You have a body’. I’m daydreaming and imagining what a world might look like built on these principles and I guess the best place to start is my relationship with my own body. Similarly, I’ve been a part of a gorgeous group following the All We Can Save flow of dialogue via regular circles which seems to me to spring from the same feminist wisdom.
I’ll explore my next teacher, my relationships next time I reach out. In the meantime some things that have brought me particularly embodied experience in recent times.
🎵 Kwes - Rye Lane (Original Score)
📕 bell hooks - the will to change
🎥 My membership at The Picturehouse Cinema and solo cinema dates
👩🏽🍳 Cooking and eating peruvian food
👶🏽 Cuddles with my nephews
🥘 Hosting friends for dinner
✈️ Trips with friends to Lanzarote, Cornwall, Berlin, Paris, The Cotswolds, Cardiff
🛼 Rollerskating @ Flipper’s Roller Boogie Palace
☎️ Long phone calls with people I love
👯♀️ Dancing the night away to excellent music
🎭 Seeing incredible art/music/theatre
🥙 Perusing recipes on the NYT Cooking App
🫂 Volunteering at the Samaritans
🚶🏽♀️Wandering around a place known or unknown without anywhere in particular to be
🎙️ Popping into an event at Kairos Club
☮️ Anything that Healing Justice London does
😴 Upgrading my alarm clock and waking up to Smooth Chill radio every morning
🧘🏽♀️The Wisdom of Yoga by Stephen Cope
What other forms of learning and absorbing knowledge have you explored? How does reading this post make you feel? How does your body feel today? When do you feel most at home in your body? I’d love to hear from you about your relationship to your body and any other thoughts that emerge. Sending you a virtual warm embrace. Until next time, R x