Body Loyalty came to me in the midst of grueling surgical recovery, so it’s no surprise that the place I started was with Quiet. I didn’t have much of a choice. I was trapped in bed for years, isolated and bored, and with no where near enough distractions to keep me ignoring my circumstances. Somewhere after watching all the soap crushing and lego speed assembly videos on youtube, I became desperate enough to face myself.
As miserable and traumatic as that time was, there’s also a piece of me that recognizes the virtue in it. Ours is not a world that provides a lot of quiet contemplative moments organically. In fact, we are heavily rewarded the busier we keep ourselves. The more frantic and overbooked we appear, the more important we’re perceived. As the linked article summarizes, one study says that busier people appear “to be more in-demand, ambitious, and determined. Interestingly, “busy” people were also seen to be less happy.”
So many of us are trading away our peace, happiness, and fulfillment for the status that comes with being seen as in demand.
Quiet is the first Marrow of Body Loyalty. The Body Loyalty Plan is organized as a scaffolding tool to help you sort through meeting ALL of your body needs. Your recovery needs, mental health needs, emotional health needs, physical health needs, and social health needs. The Marrows are the purpose behind our efforts. They are the intention and motivating force behind the self care practice, and they provide a screening tool to any habits or choices we make. If a habit intended to meet your needs of recovery and restoration doesn’t lead you to Quiet, it’s not going to be the thing that solves your problem.
Quiet is the answer to an attention economy that steals even our rest from us. Laying in bed and doomscrolling for hours as we feel anxiety clutching our throats is not restful. Our bodies can not heal and restore if we aren’t even pausing the feeling of constant threat.
There are systemic forces that steal our peace from us – the endless scroll of silicon valley, the poor wages that make multiple jobs necessary for survival, the lack of support for caregivers, the digital creep that makes it so we are expected to be available to employers at all hours of the day and night – but often we do it to ourselves, too. Because so often it feels like peace and happiness aren’t possible, but at least we can feel important!
I believe that peace and happiness are possible, but it takes swimming upstream and changing some values. It takes facing your pain and trauma and learning how to live alongside whatever you can’t change. It takes the courage to face whatever darkness and discomfort is making distraction so appealing.
‘Crazy-busy’ is a great armor, it’s a great way for numbing. What a lot of us do is that we stay so busy, and so out in front of our life, that the truth of how we’re feeling and what we really need can’t catch up with us.
-Brene Brown
We cannot change the way we feel about our bodies if we don’t even stop to listen to what our bodies need. We can’t solve a problem we are too afraid to face, and we can’t make change if we are too distracted to take a hard look at reality and see who is really benefitting from the way things are.
If you are too busy to rest, too busy to go to the bathroom, too busy to pursue a hobby, too busy to be sick…you’re not the one who is benefitting from your busyness.
I have heard from so many people who felt completely overwhelmed at the prospect of making healing change in their life. They didn’t know where to even begin because they didn’t even know what they needed. Time spent pursuing Quiet gives you practice listening. Your body is telling you what it needs. You just have to learn to hear it.
The body speaks through sensation, and many of us have learned to cut off that sensation out of self preservation. Trauma, chronic pain, a long pattern of dismissing body needs, eventually you can dissociate from those body sensations. That can feel like a victory in the busy years – fewer ways that pesky body is slowing you down! – but it is a deal with a loan shark. The bill is coming due, with interest, and if all you end up with is a couple broken legs you can count yourself lucky.
By learning to listen to your body’s communications and respond accordingly you can prevent some future health issues, mitigate others, and manage the rest. You can fill your life with the pleasure that comes from positive sensations. You can get feedback on what health choices are yielding good results and avoid being taken for a ride by someone who swears they know better while they pick your pocket.
Those years in bed were a torment, and I wouldn’t wish them on anyone. But that time also gave me a lot of opportunity to practice. It would have been nice if I could have just taken up breathwork, but, hey, you work with what life hands you.