Those of you who have practiced with me for a long time have heard bits and pieces about the idea that, since our bodies are the vessels that move us through our daily tasks and play, the time we spend nurturing them can be acts of gratitude for the moments that include those motions. But I wanted to draw that idea out a little, both for my own ability to work with the wording, and for whatever metaphorical beauty there might be in it for your own meditations in practice.
There have been two moments for me lately that have reinforced the value of an orderly, well-loved home: one of them was in my house-home, and the other regarded my bodily home. The first moment came when, after my husband surprised me with the offer to renovate our walk-in closet for my birthday, the project was finally done and we started moving in to the new space. In a single day, the wardrobe that had started to resemble too closely my rumpled childhood Barbie-clothes collection, with scarves and wacky wrap-around items sharing hangers, and stockings and odds and ends of belts that don't go neatly anywhere shoved into anything roughly box-shaped and stackable... transformed into a neatly categorized, aired-out, smoothly kept collection.
Now, even when I am not in my newly roomy and accomodating closet, the thought of its space and neatly hung and folded articles relaxes something down deep in me. Some part that I didn't even know had been uneasy, but that was biting her lip, and WAITING for me to get a grip on that overwhelming, but wonderful collection of personal expressions, is now finally relaxed, even frisky with her paints spread out and ready in front of her.
The second moment came first, but is clarified by the closet moment: I was on the mat wiggling and reaching into the corners of the elements of Sun Salutation and whatever grew out of it, finding all of my deepest knots and imbalances, moving in gentle circles through the ranges of motion that each position opened for exploration. In each place I massaged, or breathed and reached into, I thought about the tasks and moments that use each of those areas, and about how much reaching into them and cleaning out their tension, nourishing them with breath, felt like cleaning and settling into a house. Like the scene in "Under the Tuscan Sun", when Diane Lane talks about gently, sweetly introducing herself to each room of her new home.
I'll talk more about it in my next post, but it's a metaphor worth playing with: our bodies are the homes from which we will interact with the world our whole lives, so to keep them well tended, tenderly visited, nourished and massaged is as necessary to happy occupancy in them as is organizing and maintaining the homes we garden and refurbish... and the time spent is as rewarding to our psyches as it is to our bodies. We feel ready, free of unacknowledged messes or under-tended places, whole and open and eager for whatever occasion might present itself.
