Approaching Faith as a Whole Body Experience
In so many ways throughout my life, I was taught (mostly subconsciously) to dismiss my body. What I learned (and I’m sure many of you learned) was that my body was full of shame, full of sin and shouldn’t really ever be in the lead (nor should my feelings for that matter). I was taught that my head should take the lead. I had to learn the stuff of my faith, the doctrine and dogma, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, etc. That is all good. I do believe it’s important to know some stuff. But at the time, I didn’t realize my body and the needs of my body were being dismissed all along. As a young person, I was not being taught to integrate different pieces of myself. I walked around as if I was a storage unit with separate compartments and some of those compartments needed to be closed up for the sake of my soul.
In the last few years, it has been hard, slow work to reconnect with the needs, desires, and feelings present in my body. Through a lot of the chronic pain I’ve experienced, I had no choice but to get up close and personal with the needs of my body. At some points, the pain became so bad that I couldn’t ignore it. Whether I had a good day or a bad day became dependent on how well I was going to care for the needs of my bones, my muscles, and my gut.
Many of us grew up embedded in purity culture, where we learned that sex is mostly bad and should be reserved for marriage (I’m oversimplifying here). In school, we really weren’t taught about our bodies or how to have sex in a way that honored our bodies, our needs, and our boundaries (or anyone else’s). Whether it was intentional or not doesn’t really matter because the impact had a lot of ripples on how many of us came to form our thoughts and feelings about our bodies. So many people who grew up in this culture learned to deny their instincts and the desires of their bodies and eventually became disconnected from themselves. Regardless of your beliefs about sex before marriage, I think that working things out in the light is much more helpful than in the darkness. How are young people supposed to learn about their bodies, about treating their own bodies and other people’s bodies with care, love, and respect if we can’t talk about it? The reality is that we were all given bodies for a reason and I’d rather spend my time getting to know my body well than pretending it doesn’t exist. I also think it’s helpful to acknowledge that we have very real desires in our bodies - if we frame all of those needs as full of shame, people are not free to talk about it. This is pretty unhelpful, in my opinion.
Long story short, this last season of my life has been spent reconnecting with my body in all ways, because of my pain, because of my need to care for myself, but also in terms of my faith. I’ve come to learn that my faith and trust in God can be felt in my body, in my bones. That shouldn’t be denied. There is much to be learned in approaching faith as a whole-body (and mind and heart) practice. The truth is that my faith can be felt deeply in my body and I don’t want to miss that. Getting in touch with what is happening in my body has revealed important information and it has a place in the world. Understanding my needs, my desires, and the stuff happening in my body matters. Holding it all in the light and wrestling with it all serves me much better than denying it all does.
I’ve been given this body for a reason. We are made in the image and likeness of God. That means something to me. I want to spend the rest of my life more deeply understanding these feet and hands, this stomach and heart, these legs and arms, my neck that holds so much of my pain and stress, all of the parts I am most insecure about, and all of the parts I love most. It’s mine and it deserves a place and space to be held in the light. My body isn’t full of shame or sin, it is a gift that God has given me. I’m going to love her well for the rest of my life.
