Every Body Has a Story...

Photo via smashingmagazine.com

Over the past weekend, I spent 9.5 hours in classes with the amazing yoga teacher and anatomy-extraordinaire, Jane Bahneman. I was 100% impressed by her wealth of knowledge about the body and by her method of presenting this information--somehow she made anatomy fun and extremely interesting (!?!?)! But one of the things that Jane kept saying that really spoke to me was, "your body has a story." She would then go on to say something to the effect of, "this story is made up of all your experiences; your injuries, what you've been through emotionally, your job, your relationship with your family, etc...." She explained in a very tangible way that we take everything that we've been through--including the stress and emotional issues from our daily life--and we store them in our body as tension. This tension then becomes a part of our story.

Our story includes the fights that we got into with our mothers in high school. It includes the way that we sit at work each day, and the falls off of our bikes when we were little. It includes bad breakups, late nights out, early nights in, long nights of dancing, and long nights of deep sleep. Everything that we do becomes our story and it dictates the current state of our body. We know this intellectually, yes, but how often do we really stop and think about what this means?

The way I understand it, there are two important concepts that we should take from this idea. The first, we should begin to think about and try to understand how our story manifests itself in our bodies--and then do whatever we can in our practices and in our daily lives to counteract and balance out our story. The second, we should try to move beyond our story, to create a new, more healthy story for our bodies.  How would it feel we didn't let our stories define us? What if we moved past our stories, to a new state of being where we let it all go and started fresh? How would we see and relate to our bodies then?

---

Photo via smashingmagazine.com

So much of our time is spent explaining why we do what we do in our lives and in relation to our bodies--why we modify, why we can't run, can't lift weights, can't do particular poses, why we're overweight, overtired, overstressed, eating unhealthily--and apologizing or giving excuses for our bodies. But what if we spent this time looking for new ways to give back to our bodies, instead? Instead of explaining why we can't do a particular pose, why not begin to work with whatever modified version of that pose is attainable for our bodies, and see what happens? Instead of complaining that we don't have the time to eat healthy food, why not just schedule this into our weeks and make it a priority? Instead of blaming our bad posture on our job or on sitting at a desk all day, why not begin to practice yoga poses that counteract this issue on a daily basis? So often we let our story define us and then work to prove it right, instead of doing the opposite.

So this week, how can you begin to unpeel layers of your story from your body? During your practice, your run, your walk to work, how can you begin to move beyond the things that you tell yourself your body can and cannot do, and instead move into a place without fear or baggage? It takes a lot, but I think it's something worth striving for.

Think about it: what's your story? How do you let it define you?

Namaste,
Mary Catherine

---