Meet Teppy; a fellow "coherent rambler" who writes personal, meditative, long-ish posts on her blog Walking, Talking Contradiction. On a recent post, she wrote about the secrets that our bodies keep.
Teppy was doing a yoga position that unwounded the knots around her shoulders and skull; “where I hold my tension (and where most of us do because of constantly sitting and driving around in cars slumped over).”
After while in that position, tears welled up from nowhere and everywhere. And when she couldn’t help it, she asked for permission. And started crying.
“[The cry] wasn't hysterical and it wasn't light. It was a continuous stream of tears of recognition (with a smile across my face from relief of just letting myself do what I needed to do: cry). Recognition of the pain I have carried around with me, of the negative words I have put in my head…”
Our bodies hear and listen and subsequently obey our words, remember?
* * *
I once massaged a proud, handsome gentleman who was in the advanced stages of his illness. He guided my hands to where it hurt the most. And when I touched him there, unfamiliar thoughts and feelings rushed into me.
“Lord, how could you do this to me? Lord, how I envy this healthy, youthful child. Lord, I’m spent.”
My hands, as they pressed and coaxed his knots to unwind, also released the pain and words they’d been holding. Those free thoughts of his, passed into me, and went straight into the ground beneath us, in tears. As I hid my face from them and cried quietly. For both of us.
[Maybe this is one of the reasons why I can’t/don’t want to keep secrets. I’m a masseuses. And a sucker for hugs.]
* * *
Now, if our bodies store secrets, and physical contact is like stripping (parts of) our masks, I wonder if that is the reason why collectivistic societies discourage unnecessary speech. And why individualistic societies crave so much privacy (the twin sister to loneliness).
Do the quantity of physical contact can reflect the quantity of words exchanged between people? Even abuse?
