next year you'd better learn you

the delicate curriculum of the self

Last week, I did body acupuncture for the very first time. I lay down on the table, tense, though I wasn’t sure why. I went to work out where I’ve been holding tension the hardest… (jaw, neck, and shoulders, if you’re curious). And well, “when in Rome!” (Or Los Angeles, which is full of people lying on tables with needles in their skin.) The therapist reminded me to breathe. Like, fully. Off the table, she told me what my body already knows.

1. Breathe. Deeper.

2. You are compensating in small, expensive ways with your posture.

3. Continue with your fitness, but make sure to enjoy it.

4. Again, breathe.

And it’s true. We often forget that the body is an integral part of the art. Posture, breath, and where you hold tension are all information. One of the things I try to come to terms with in life are the (past) years of everything unsaid. Pointless really. Best to move on. But my body had been paying the bill in small instalments. Years of yes when I meant no. Years of swallowing words that wanted out.

There’s a library under your skin. Volumes and volumes of embarrassing data. How your stomach turns over (or does not) when you lie. The way your jaw locks when you agree to something you don’t want. The cravings that arrive right before you betray yourself. Often, we look away. We refuse the study. Instead, we throw our energy outward. Online, it looks like endless discourse; the backbiting, the petty fights, the performance of who’s the better activist, who’s purer, or who’s more right. Would it happen so viciously if we were studying ourselves? If we understood our own triggers, our own shame, our own nervous systems? Perhaps that’s the curriculum.