So at Isabelle’s request, every night, as I ebb and flow between sleep and wakefulness, revved up on prednisone while savoring the sweet taste of each breath in my lungs, I do the practice Nia teaches us.<\/p>\n
I address my body by first saying, “Body.” \u00a0Thus I awaken my relationship with my body, I ask for my body’s attention and I let my body know I’m now giving her my attention.<\/p>\n
I speak aloud, so my body can hear me, but softly, so as not to disturb my sleeping husband, Richard, who, angel that he has been through all this, needs his rest, too:<\/p>\n
“Body, I love you. \u00a0
\n Body, I love you. \u00a0
\n Lungs, I love you. \u00a0
\n Bronchi, I love you. \u00a0
\n Bronchioles, I love you. \u00a0
\n Alveoli, I love you. \u00a0
\n Alveolar capillaries, I love you. \u00a0
\n Cilia, I love you.
\n Immune system, I love you. \u00a0
\n Prednisone, I love you.
\n Body, I love you.”<\/p>\n
And even,
\n “Pneumonia, I love you.”<\/p>\n
This practice carries me every night like a small boat, guiding me through what David Whyte<\/a> in his poem, “The Well of Grief,” calls the black water, the place we cannot breathe and the source from which we drink.<\/p>\n It’s a peaceful practice and a profound practice, a loving and heartbreaking practice, a hopeful practice. \u00a0It’s a practice about learning to approach the holy temple of the body again and again. \u00a0Learning to approach the body with more and more courtesy, more gradualness, more respect. \u00a0It’s a practice of letting go and receiving more intimacy with the body, more intimacy with the moment, more intimacy with the Mystery.<\/p>\n Strangely and humorously, this serious and beautiful nightly ritual of\u00a0blessing and navigating is regularly punctuated by Michael Jackson singing in my head, “Man In The Mirror” (click here<\/a> to listen). \u00a0It’s literally part of the wake up call, facilitated by speedy prednisone. \u00a0Wake up. \u00a0Look at myself. \u00a0Make that Change.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Man In The Mirror<\/strong><\/p>\n Gotta make a change That’s why I’m starting with me You gotta get it right, while you got the time It’s gonna feel real good\u00a0 You got to stand up, stand up, stand up You know it, you know it, you know it, you know — Michael Jackson<\/strong><\/p>\n What is the change?<\/p>\n It is unfolding, and as it does, I will do my best to witness, see, learn and move.<\/p>\n The essence of the call to change is this: \u00a0To sense, again and again, the space of the infinite moment that exists between the exhale and the inhale.<\/p>\n The call to change is this: \u00a0To remember, again and again, that the infinite moment between the exhale and inhale is itself the very threshold between life and death, nestled naturally within in the body. \u00a0That life and death are the same, brother and sister, warp and woof of the fabric of the sweet breath of the holy. \u00a0That we naturally dwell upon the threshold between life and death\u00a025,000 times every single day.<\/p>\n The call to change is this: \u00a0To receive in the body the gift and the invitation that the body itself is offering us every two seconds. <\/em><\/strong>The infinite moment after exhaling is a still point where the dynamic homeostasis of the body — itself a mysterious dance — resets. \u00a0The nervous system, and hence the whole self, can renew. \u00a0The parasympathetic nervous system (or relaxation response) comes forth to balance our habitual fight or flight away from where we are. \u00a0We are brought completely into the present of all that is.<\/p>\n The call to change is this: \u00a0The still point is\u00a0a biological and spiritual field in which to rest, to be, to die and be reborn again wholly new, whatever that means, wholly changed, perhaps utterly transformed.<\/p>\n The call to change is this: \u00a0To feel the sensation of a\u00a0shabbos<\/em> that arrives at the completion of each breath 25,000 times every single day, inviting us to stop — to land and rest beneath the wings of the Mystery, before the next holy breath arrives in the lungs to fill the wings of the heart for the body, for the soul and for the world.<\/p>\n The call to change is this: \u00a0Shimmering holy amnesiacs that we are, let us remember that we forget, that we are dutifully pulled, for better and worse, into, as\u00a0William Stafford<\/a> said, “a pattern that others made . . . in the world,\u00a0and [so] following the wrong god home we may miss our star,” and in our busynesses or distraction or well-crafted grief-defense mechanisms may cast off the gift the body is giving us.<\/p>\n The call to change is this: \u00a0To practice ever-deepening courtesy to the body. \u00a0To choose to approach the body with gradual and loving sensory awareness. \u00a0To unchoose the terrified and terrifying conditioning of the last five thousand years that has told us the body is a slave to be ridden to work and leisure and to choose instead to sense, feel and be the body.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2689\/4061128357_c9a9a5f3c0_o.jpg\" "\\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2689\/4061128357_c9a9a5f3c0_o.jpg\\"")
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\n For once in my life\u00a0
\n It’s gonna feel real good
\n Gonna make a difference
\n Gonna make it right<\/p>\n
\n I’m starting with the man in the mirror
\n I’m asking him to change his ways
\n And no message could have been any clearer
\n If you wanna make the world a better place
\n Take a look at yourself and then make a change<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2429\/4061879382_2a96241fa8_m.jpg\" "\\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2429\/4061879382_2a96241fa8_m.jpg\\"")
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\n ‘Cause when you close your heart
\n You can’t close \u00a0your mind
\n Then you close your mind
\n Oh no, Oh no, I’m gonna make a change<\/p>\n
\n Sure mon
\n Change!
\n Just lift yourself
\n You got, you got to move<\/p>\n
\n Make that change
\n Stand up and lift yourself, now
\n Make that change<\/p>\n
\n Change!
\n Make that change.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2466\/4061878082_8107471179_m.jpg\" "\\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2466\/4061878082_8107471179_m.jpg\\"")
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