Wellness over everything
I have been compiling a master list of little adjustments to my daily routine that make me feel better. A wellness list. I have always wanted so badly to find out what was wrong with me, take an herbal supplement, and knock it out. What I have learned instead is that my body offers no easy answers.
In December, my acupuncturist told me, You have a spleen [points to spleen on himself], gallbladder [points to gall bladder], and liver [points to liver]. While I probably studied these facts and got the answers right on a quiz in human A&P, I literally didn’t remember that I had a spleen, and I had not realized the implications of all these organs that are related to my stomach. My body is not straightforward, and while I may think I have a stomach problem, the problem at this point is unlikely to have a name-brand solution. Even though I do better without bread, beer, or pasta, “keto diet” or “gluten intolerant” are less likely possibilities for my body than “spleen qi deficiency” or “the body keeps the score.”
Incoming book recommendo
Dear friends, I want to share that I finally read The Body Keeps the Score, the book that I keep hearing folks say their therapist recommended, and that exploded in popularity in the past handful of years even though it was published in 2014. It is a book that proposes something wonderfully countercultural that we’re all so ready to hear: traumas come in many forms, your body remembers traumas, healing them requires that you feel safe inside your body, there are no easy answers or medications, there are other interesting therapies like yoga and others that you haven’t heard of.
There’s a lot more to it, but I am finding so much freedom in considering the things my therapist and I have discussed in the past year in light of this book. It is hard to read, to be sure, yet it also offers answers—important ones pertaining to the great painful gray area of ourselves. We all know someone who lives there full-time, and I think we all live there part-time.
(Thanks to this book, I am also trying to make my language more embodied; just now, I edited “painful gray area of our minds” to “painful gray area of ourselves.” It’s kind of old-fashioned sounding, right? Which is fitting, since I’ve learned from the book that science has shifted to a pharmacological, brain-chemical-centric way of treating our minds since the sixties. Perhaps we saw ourselves more as bodies, before then.)
One thing from my list
So I was, off the record, looking at Facebook the other day, and I saw that someone posed a simple question:
What is the one thing that’s been the most helpful for your mental or physical health?
It’s Facebook, so they got not “one” but forty-plus answers delivered with perfect certitude. Taken as a whole, it was all good advice, like get a job that treats you well, cut out substances, and do yoga. Everyone was thrilled for the chance to express themselves and share their great personal triumphs, like quitting smoking.
Unfortunately, nobody said anything to help anyone feel better about their present sense of a lack of wellness. I hate that. I’m never well because I did a thing on my wellness list. What I need shifts every week, and certain things are more important than others sometimes. That’s why I need a whole entire ever-growing list—so when one thing isn’t working, I can remember the other things to try.
The past couple of weeks, it’s been a little exercise called “8 movement qigong” I learned when I spent a week at Blue Cliff Monastery in 2016. (Fun fact: its sister Magnolia Grove Monastery is located in Batesville, MS.) The movements look similar to tai chi, you don’t need a mat, and it’s only 8 steps. Qigong is mentioned a few times in The Body Keep the Score, which I find affirming. I’ve been doing it from memory for years, but I recently refreshed myself with this video from Brother Man Tue, who taught us at the monastery. I was missing a bunch of the motions.
Now, after our morning fetch, Dougie lays on his bed in the basement and watches me move my qi around for a few minutes. Now that it’s part of our routine, he resists if I try to go inside without first making a pit stop in the basement. We both find great solace and satisfaction in having a routine. Maybe I should add that to the list.