A large part of the spiritual journey
is the integration of the whole person – that is, when we stop
compartmentalizing our selves into separate categories of “body,”
“mind,” “emotions,” “spirit,” and so on. In particular,
the body is a site of extreme dis-integration, in a world where
unhealthy concepts of the body abound. Whether it's the flesh-hating
bent of some organized religion, or the flesh-selling culture of
consumer capitalism – I think it's really important to unpack how
we think about our bodies.
Being a gay man in Vancouver -
“Hollywood North” - it's pretty easy to get caught up in the
marketplace of bodies. The pressure to conform to a particular body
type – to be the muscled, hairless, perfectly manicured, and tanned
dude wearing all the right clothes – can be overpowering at times.
Hidden just beneath a thin veneer of “living a healthy lifestyle”
is a deep pressure to conform to a particular way of looking. As our
society has become more embedded with “marketplace consciousness,”
we commodify and sell our bodies. We spend enormous amounts of money
modifying and rebuilding them, trying to fit an aesthetic that is
virtually unattainable.
Body shaming is so widespread in our
culture. In the past, gender theory and feminism focussed on how
women are required to manipulate their bodies – often in extreme
and unhealthy ways – in order to fit into a specific body type. Of
course, that same pressure exists for men – and speaking from the
experience of being queer – it can be particularly intense for gay
men. Value and worth is assigned based on body shape rather than
looking to the beauty which exists at the core of each person. The
fact that humanity is blessed with an enormous variety of body shapes
and sizes, and that “healthy” doesn't look the same for every
person barely registers. There's always something “wrong” with
our bodies that we need to “fix.”
Of course, this body shaming has
enormous implications when it comes to our mental and spiritual
wellbeing. Rather than living in a healthy, integrated way – where
the focus is on creating balance within our bodies, our minds, our
whole person – we create artificial goals of how we think we should
look and pursue it with a self-judging aggression. In addition, we
spread hate by mocking or judging those who don't look like we think
they should. And in the perpetual journey to lose weight, we forget
that the scale and waist-size is just a metric, just a number.
How much better off would we be if we
could come to live at peace with our bodies, just as they are, right
here and now? We spend so much time being unhappy with ourselves –
when we really could spend time practicing a healthy attitude free of
shaming where we're actually happy with the way we are. When I'm old,
I hope to have spent more time being happy with myself than standing
in front of a mirror worrying that I don't have bulging biceps.
In a recent yoga class, one of my
teachers said, “live in your body right now. Not the body you had
last week. Not the body you had ten years ago. Not the body you want
to have. The body as it is, right here and now, as you're sitting and
breathing on the mat.” We need to stop inhabiting the body in our
minds and learn to live in the body that actually exists – with all
its scars, belly fat, the hair that grows in strange places, the loss
of flexibility as a result of growing old, the cellulite on our
butts, and all of our beautiful imperfections. This doesn't mean we
will end up stopping exercising or eating healthy – those things
are part of the spiritual journey too. As we let go of the limiting
stories which prevent us from fully expressing our bodies, with
dedication and practice we may also discover the ability to do things
which we never thought possible.
I recently injured my right upper
hamstring attachment. As I worked through the injury, I realized that
my mind would immediately jump to “fixing the problem” as I
practiced forward folds. It takes an intentional mental shift to stop
thinking about the soreness and aching as a problem, and see
it rather just as it is – a sensation of soreness which the mind
judges as unpleasant and tries to push away. We need to stop the war
against our bodies, and learn to celebrate ourselves just as we are,
even as we stretch and build balance into our physical selves.
