September begins my month of talking about Bodily Healing. This is part of my Year of Healing, in which I tackle different topics of healing each month. During September, I will touch on physical and sexual healing, accepting ourselves no matter who we are. As usual, I wanted to kick off the month with a poem. This one is related to the body.
Body – A Poem on Body Image/Self Image
A four-letter curse
Treated like a hearse
Hated and excluded
No wonder we’re wounded
Scorned by humanity
Temple of divinity
Vessel of glory
An intricate story
Beautiful and mysterious
Inside, the whole universe
***
I wanted to kick off the topic of the body and physical healing with a poem, because the body is a work of art in and of itself. And yet, it’s probably the most misused, exploited, and abused work of art in the entire world.
The topic of the body is complex and controversial. And no wonder. It’s the vessel of glory. It holds our minds and souls in a divine temple. Not matter what your religion, every one teaches that the body is made by God. If you have no religion, you still grow up with an intrinsic knowledge that this body—well, it’s pretty important. This body gives you life, and without this body, you’d cease to be on this earth. (At least in the current way we exist now).
To have no body is to meet death. So it’s pretty sacred, important.
And yet…we so often hate our own bodies. We are in a war within ourselves. We scorn our bodies and neglect them. We eat unhealthily and don’t take care of our bodies, and then we shrivel up in old age because of the misuse. Or we obsess over our bodies, whipping them into shape but never letting them enjoy life or slow down to rest, to love, to simply be.
We can even starve our own bodies. Or damage them. Turn against them, hate them, destroy them….end them.
It’s clear that the relationship we have with our own bodies is crucial to health and healing.
Physical healing. Healing of the body. What does it look like to find peace with one’s own body? To accept it, embrace it—flaws and all? To understand the link it has to every other unseen part of us: our minds, emotions, memories?
That’s a topic I’ll be exploring this month in September on my blog. Stay tuned for more…
Photo © Maryia Bahutskaya on Adobe Stock
