Topic 6.01.01 The Condemned Body

Topic 6.01.01 The Condemned Body. VERSION CONTROL: 1 August 2017

We have lost our bodies. Our acculturation ignores the body, punishes it, blames it, pushes it, starves it, thrashes it, subjugates it, squeezes it into restrictive clothing to hold it bound and immobile or hides it under tents.

Traditional fitness and reform of the body are no longer the quintessential approaches to well-being.

A major problem we face is the quiet assumption that our bodies are wrong…wrong shape, wrong size, just wrong! Too fat, too thin, wrong breasts, hips, nose. The Spartan semi-sadistic atmosphere of our education gives us messages that the body is a machine, to be treated harshly, with furious discipline. To be sick is to be weak, to listen to the suffering of the body is to be a wimp. sissy, patsy…

Some religions refer to the body as a trap into temptation, evil, and the home of the devil! Body and sex hatred seem to have characterised and disfigured all the patriarchal and mystical transmission systems, creating a schizophrenic split in the psyche of humanity that has led human beings to feel subtly ashamed of having a body at all, and guilty and tormented about their natural desires, leading to radical alienation from, and blind to, the glory and power of nature.

The wound that this divorce between body and spirit has inflicted on the human psyche is the source of vast despair and violence that fuels humanity’s current destructive course towards self and nature. Our muscular armour, areas of the body we have tightened over and over in painful situations as a way to protect ourselves from life’s inevitable difficulties, and from the pain that arises from self-denial, self-rejection, and its inevitable avoidance, in the form of substance abuse, such as alcohol, drugs, and other over-indulgences. To ignore or abuse the body is mistaken spirituality. You cannot heal a body you hate. You cannot heal a life you hate. When we honour the body with our attention, we begin to reclaim our feelings, our instincts, and our life. The development of human movement mirrors the evolutionary process of life on Earth. Happiness is an attitude, not a payoff.