For years I have used the analogy of a car, a computer or a machine to help people relate to and understand the intricacies of their bodies. I have referred to our bodies and health in terms of hardware, software, viruses and worms and virus protection – language that, we obsessed with technology people, can relate to.
Recently I came across this “poem” in Eduardo Galeano’s book Walking Words that made me re-think how I think of my own body.
The Church says: the body is a sin. Science says: the body is a machine. Advertising says: the body is a business. The body says: I am a fiesta. From Walking Words by Eduardo Galeano, 20th c Uruguayan writer, journalist and “poet laureate” of the anti-globalization movement.
What if, instead of thinking of our body like a machine, a car or a computer that can be replaced, we treated our body (and I mean the whole thing, inside and out) as our most prized and valuable possession, as a precious, irreplaceable gem?
The body is a sacred garment. Martha Graham
The machine analogy may help us to understand the body – there are many moving parts to putting on a good party as we all know, but treating the body like a fiesta, like a really good party, not just a sum of its parts, it certainly a lot more fun.
Take a moment to be still, to listen, to observe. Feel the pulse, hear the breath.
J. Ruth Gendler, writes in Notes for the Need for Beauty, the body is “like a Mayan festival with many different musicians playing throughout the village, the rhythms weave in and out of each other creating a music of many layers and depths.”
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