reverb10: Body Integration (this prompt was truly a gift...thank you)

Body Integration.

This year, when did you feel the most integrated with your body? Did you have a moment where there wasn’t mind and body, but simply a cohesive YOU, alive and present?

(Prompt Author: Patrick Reynolds)

~

I knew it. All these years I’ve had a suspicion that Mrs Koumas was hiding something. Yeah, she got us to dissect frogs and stick our fingers inside pig’s hearts, but I always knew there was something she was keeping from us, something she’d left off the curriculum. At the time, I thought it had something to do with the breeziness with which we covered the chapter on sexual organs. But now I know the truth. And now, so many things are starting to make sense.

Like, why my brain keeps insisting on walking three paces ahead of me, or why my tongue keeps diving in to other people’s lunches, or waking up to find my lungs spattered on the ceiling and the bedclothes (pulmonary alveoli are a bitch to get out of the sheets), and dragging my torso down the stairs in the mornings to find my legs, dead on the sofa, where they’d snuck off to watch bad TV in the middle of the night. And don't even get me started on my backbone. 

Why didn’t anyone ever tell us of the need to integrate? Were they worried we wouldn't have the guts to do it?  Well, it’s a gross oversight. It should be taught in all schools, everywhere, the earlier the better. Otherwise, it is left to the few earnest and caring souls, or to use the proper term, wellness consultants, like Patrick Reynolds, to spread the word.  Thank you Patrick, for enlightening me. I mean, I didn’t even know how close I’d been to NOT BEING ALIVE.

I don’t know about you, but the trickiest bit for me is keeping track of all the different PARTS that need integrating. So for the past 24 minutes, I’ve been working strenuously at finding a way to keep me nice and cohesive. I can tell you straight off that superglue doesn’t work. It made me a bit too cohesive with my clothing and furniture and toilet paper. (Even chanting at the same time didn't help.)  Cello tape is also ineffective. I just kept attracting dust and my limbs kept seeing it as a challenge to break free. The secret, I happily discovered, is to use the power of your mind to generate the power of distraction. What you have to do is find something for that unruly disintegrating body of yours to do! And nothing says integration like the power of dance.  (Stay with me, it's for your own good.)

Now, you might find it hard to keep up, but with a little bit of practice, I am sure you can do it. We can do this together.  If you have any children in the house, I advise you to get them involved too. It’s for their own good. Ok ready? Just let the words into your mind and your body will soon follow.  Here we go...

One, two, three…all together now…

Dem bones, dem bones, dem dancing bones.
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dancing bones.
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dancing bones.
Doin' the skeleton dance.

The foot bone's connected to the leg bone.
The leg bone's connected to the knee bone.
The knee bone's connected to the thigh bone.
Doin' the skeleton dance.

The thigh bone's connected to the hip bone.
The hip bone's connected to the backbone.
The backbone's connected to the neck bone.
Doin' the skeleton dance.

Shake your hands to the left.
Shake your hands to the right.
Put your hands in the air.
Put your hands out of sight!

Shake your hands to the left.
Shake your hands to the right.
Put your hands in the air.

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle.......wiggle your knees.

Dem bones, dem bones, dem dancing bones.
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dancing bones.
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dancing bones.
Doin' the skeleton dance.

For those of you requiring visual instruction, a wonderful video can be found on youtube here.

Now, you might get peculiar looks when practicing integration in public places.  Workplace practice could be especially problematic, unless you are an elementary or primary school teacher.  But remain true.  Be a strong and radiant ambassador for integration and make the world a better place.  All the doubters will thank you in the end. 

I just have one more thing to say about today’s prompt and the photo that accompanied it (which for those of you who don’t get the emailed prompts had the added benefit of a shirtless Patrick Reynolds staring off into the distance in a gaze reminiscent of Christ bearing the world’s burden on his big strong shoulders. Perhaps that is why his shoulders were bare. Or maybe he's just wondering where the bottom half of his body has gotten to.  I’d love to share the photo but I fear I would be infringing copyright law. Of course Jesus doesn’t seem to mind having his image plastered all over the place, now there’s a generous bloke, but one needs to be more careful with modern personages in this age of the media, especially with anyone honoured with the suffix consultant). Anyway, what I wanted to say was this:

Sam Davidson, all is forgiven.

reverb10: wisdom (give me strength...)

Wisdom.

What was the wisest decision you made this year, and how did it play out?
(Prompt Author: Susannah Conway)

~

Anyone else feeling the urge to self-harm in the face of such relentless urging to self-help? Only when I was going through the worst relationship of my life did I want to gouge my eyes out as much as I do now. And that’s what this is starting to feel like – getting into a relationship that seemed like a good idea at the time, but, with every passing day, feeling more like I unwittingly accepted an invitation to join a cult.

I went through a period in my 20’s when I’d just abandoned religion and was looking for something to replace it, something less damning, less blind and rigid, more truthful, joyful, real. I spent a few months reading new age and self-help books on numerous subjects which I have since blocked from consciousness. Thankfully I didn’t find what I was looking for and am much happier for it. But now I am having disturbing flashbacks.  I’ve since guarded my suspicion of self-help gurus rather fiercely and I haven’t yet found any evidence not to.

If I’d known that reverb10 would turn out to be SUCH a schmaltzy lovefest of self-appointed self-help gurus, I would have run the other way. I had such high hopes of being challenged as a writer and a person. And in some ways I have been, but it remains to be seen whether those challenges will ultimately be enriching.

So I am wavering. There’s a fine line between sticking it out to see what’s still to come and wasting my time. I do, after all, have other writing I want to do. For the moment though, I’m still on the sticking it out side of the line (though the perusal of the websites of the prompt authors to come do not give me any hope), if only because I hate to be a quitter but also because I feel the need to dig my heels in and rebel (or throw a tantrum) against the all the cheese that is oozing out all over the shop. If I’d had any doubts about the extent of the oozing, reading the reverb10 team’s three favourite posts from the project so far (links were emailed to us this week) completely extinguished them. All three posts were full of gushing admiration for the reverb10 team and how wonderful the whole project is. If they are going to continue in this vein, they really ought to be providing us with sick bags.

And now to today’s prompt. I find it, in a word, facile. First because, if anybody knew they were making a wise decision when they were making it, then it follows that they can only have believed that it panned out for the best.

Second, I don’t believe anyone but the grossest narcissist makes decisions thinking that they are wise. (And I am not talking about the use of the word wise to describe a thrifty purchase or some such act.) You can delude yourself into thinking that your choices are full of wisdom, or you can desperately hope that they are, but that’s not the same thing. I’m inclined to believe that you can only see wisdom in retrospect, and furthermore that you can only hope to call it wisdom after a lifetime of dedicated, true and mindful inquiry and practice. And even then, you would probably not be rushing to label yourself or your decisions as such, though others might. Do you think any of the people that have been held up as wise over the years have done so – Confucius, the Buddha, the Dalai Lama, to name a few?

I also don’t believe decisions or the decision making process is that black and white. Even if you sit down and make a list of all the things you must decide, there is a backdrop of angst-ridden uncertainty and grey thorny emotion (or at least there is for me), behind all the ones that really matter. Also, every act, thought, desire, decision is interlinked with ones that have gone before (as well as all the might-have-been's and weren't-meant-to-be's) and once actions or decisions are carried out, they go on to affect and be affected by the countless acts and decisions of others. How can you single one out and name it wise? And why would you want to? Whatever you describe your actions to be, they remain what they are.  You aren't the only judge.  Can you truly see and know the full repercussions of your actions?

Finally, if it were possible at all, I don’t see how reflecting on a wise decision is supposed to be helpful, except as an exercise in public self-congratulation. Wouldn’t it be a better learning experience to reflect on an unwise one instead?

So here’s one of mine – the decision to continue to participate in this project. Will I end up regretting it? Or can I reverse it from an apparently unwise decision to at least a not-as-bad-as-it-could’ve-been experience? Perhaps I can. But there's only so much schmaltz a person can take.  And at xmas time to boot. Please oh please let me be proved wrong about my gut-wrenching suspicion that the 25th day prompt will be about how Santa Claus really does exist and how he’s there every day of our lives and not just for xmas.

I'm clearly going to have to fortify myself with large doses of darkness and depravity. Fassbinder or Lars von Trier movie marathon anyone?