As mentioned in my last post, I’m understanding myself better. Maybe you might be wondering why you should try to read and understand Sarah understanding herself better! Well, “Christ’s love compels me”[i] to share my stories in hopes that they can help you live your life better no matter what level of brokenness you are experienceing now. Each of us has inner work to do, and since we live in bodies, a lot of our inner work has to do with our relationship with our outer body, this physicality God has given us. The fact is that for many of us, this body just doesn’t feel good, doesn’t feel like a good fit, and we are not satisfied with this shell that carries our self.

Okay…I just threw out a teaser there. When I said “shell that carries our self” did that cause any warning beeps in your brain? Maybe, maybe not. In the past I often used those words when I told my stories, talked about all my drama, and expressed how God has restored my life. Human bodies are biologically amazing, and God gave me a very specific one. I’m realizing that this body does represent me. I am my body! I’m not just a brain or spirit carried around in some rough, unimportant material.

Let me show you how things have changed.

Ta-da! 

Scroll back up and take a look at my latest self-portrait! Or take a look below and see what differences you notice when you compare 39.0 version with the 47.0 model? Some aspects surprised me. I fully expected that, as a good spiritual person, my spirit should grow as I became older and wiser. Wouldn’t it make sense for a Christian to grow in ability to communicate and commune with God? That feels like what should happen. However, in addition to growing spiritually, over the last 8 years, a whole lot has taken place in my relationship with my body (and my pain) and that has shaped my relationship with God. “Interesting,” says the inner psychologist, “…outside-in healing instead of inside-out? Hmmmm….”

Let me explain this image—working outside in.

First of all, the bright and lively background represents my context. I live in the tropical land of Indian with never-ending, year-round greenery and brilliant tropical flowers. I often fail to appreciate how much the vibrant plant life around me contributes to my well-being. Also the friendly, relational atmosphere has changed me over the years from someone who prided herself on her independence to one who is a lot more interdependent. Good stuff. There is a lot of life in India.

Next layer: My body! Yes! It looks a lot better than in my “Self Portrait 39.0.” This time, I took special care to add delicate and bright details to make my body beautiful. (Feel free to get a little teary here with me.) This is big! I have a different relationship with my body, and this is despite the fact that I’m more limited in my physical abilities than I was when I painted the first version. The Celtic spirals can represent the journey of life, and the growing awareness of how wonderful it is to be a human body!

Here is the difference.

Once I got through two painful but necessary operations on my right knee and the long, disappointing recoveries, I started down the path of acceptance. My knee is what it is. My body is what it is. I don’t need to be an enemy with my body for the rest of my life. I need to accept where I am and trust God that my physical status can be good. I’m not going into that much here as it is in many other posts, I’ve talked about this journey of learning awareness, learning not to override pain, but rather learning to listen to what my body wants me to know.

In the past, I viewed my body as an awkward piece of baggage I had to haul around. It wasn’t carrying me. I was carrying it and working all the time to manage it, take care of it, keep it healthy, keep the pain down. What a chore! I felt so disconnected from it and bothered by it—it wasn’t the true me, and it only seemed to prevent Thriving Sarah from doing what she wanted to do. Now, my body is part of the team that is taking care of me! The lessons I learned in SmartBody SmartMind and the somatic practices I do multiple times a day have turned this around.[ii]

My body practices serve to calm my mind and decrease my anxiety. I don’t call these activities “exercises” because the physical movement is much more about relaxing out of chronic tension rather than building strength. These practices helped me learn to be aware of my body, not just the pain—from the inside. In The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk writes, “Trauma victims cannot recover until they become familiar with and befriend the sensations in their bodies.”[iii] Getting familiar with our painful sensations? Befriending it? This sounds crazy! Befriending our sensations provides a completely different mindset compared to the way fear dominates our minds and lives when pain takes over our lives. Note: We aren’t befriending our pain, but rather we are learning to be non-judgemental toward it as well as develop awareness of other sensations. From my experiences, I can testify the truth of van der Kolk’s statement, “Physical self-awareness is the first step in releasing the tyrany of the past.”[iv]

Secondly, as I’ve learned to listen to my body, I know what it needs, and if I do those things, my pain reduces drastically. Please note that this has taken practice, and I’m not perfect. I’ve had to learn new skills and change the rhythm of my life. Most Christians don’t feel like this is right. We feel like even if we are in pain, we need to be busy. We have to show we are busy to show how spiritual we are.

What if God is speaking to us through our pain and simply saying, “Slow down, take a rest, come be with Me”?

(Take some time with that previous thought.)

Moving on without rushing on.

Let’s look at my mind. It sure looks a lot more calm, doesn’t it? The colors harmonize with all the blues and greens representing life as well as steadyness, rather than hot busyness (a gentler way of saying “hot mess”). Though my mind is still strong, and I love thinking God thoughts, I feel like I have a lot less thoughts. My brain is no longer on fast-forward, multi-tasking mode with diverse waves of worry pumping up and down. Could I now be experiencing the “peace that passes all understanding”?[v] I’m sure I still have room to grow, but where I am now sure feels better than my previous mental states. I no longer fear the future as I used to, and…I sleep much better. Yes!

How about my inner spirit? How is it doing now that I’m wearing my body better and am not as dominated by an over-active brain? In “Self Portrait 39.0,” I represented my spirit with a spiral symbolically trying to show the never-ending depth of life with God. This time, I chose interconnected rings that look like they have turquoise wings. Hmmmm…I don’t know exactly what it means, but I find it interesting that I painted my innermost part with the some of same colors I used for my context: yellows and greens. Could it be that my spirit is very connected to God’s heart for India? I sure do love it here and have learned to live at a new level of dependence on God in this land.

Through growing in my understanding of Internal Family Systems, which you will hear about in my upcoming posts, I’ve learned a lot more about this inner layer. This is the home of our True Self and where our Self connects with God’s Spirit. Sounds like a powerful team! At creation, God marked humans as special by blessing each one of us with his image, Imago dei. This indestructible part of us separates us from animals and makes every single human valuable. 

As I discuss these ideas with people, I’m understanding that it is not just souls like me who have had traumatic accidents who feel disconnected from their bodies. We can reject our bodies for many different reasons. If none come to mind, just get on a phone for a bit so you can compare how you look with some of the celebrities and athletes of our world. Or consider all we do to numb our emotions and bodies (alcohol, drugs), push past our pain (medications) and any physical boundaries (extreme sports or extreme busyness). What would our spiritual lives feel like if we were connected to our bodies and honored them as the temple of God’s spirit,[vi] or if we considered them “good” [vii] as God has declared them to be?

Our bodies are confusing.

Bear with me a bit longer. Ultimately, I’m making a feeble attempt to explain how I, as a disabled person, am becoming embodied. I’m learning to live in my body, not escape into my brain. I’m working toward an embodied spirituality. This isn’t as complicated as it sounds. A perfect example is how when you feel stressed, you might say, “I need to go for a walk.” After a nice walk, your mind feels calmer and you sense God’s peace. The good, God-given properties of your body-in-motion, helped your mind relax. Unfortunately, people with disabilities and/or chronic pain don’t usually have this option or easy way out. Going for a walk might cause more pain, and send the brain into a deeper fog or faster spin.

Please understand that I’m coming at this idea of being in the body, or being embodied, from a different angle. For many of you, like me, the body is the main source of challenge. How do we access the goodness of the body? God didn’t create us in our individually, unique bodies just so we could escape them to get into a better, more spiritual, non-material world. This is what the ancient Gnostic (and the modern ones) teach. He created us in bodies so that we can be in and relate to this world.

Why is this important for me, or for you, or for anyone? I’d love to hear your thoughts. I’m still working on answers to these questions. Maybe some more artwork will help me have more insights! 

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[i] 2 Cor. 5:14

[ii] To get started, check out Irene Lyon’s free videos on YouTube. Another route you could take would be to sign up for free movement practices at http://essentialsomatics.com/. Learning physical awareness becomes a lifelong practice, so please don’t give up after a few tries. Try once or twice a day for 3 months and then reassess.

[iii] Bassel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma (Penguin Books, 2014), 100.

[iv] Ibid., 101.

[v] Phil. 4:7

[vi] I Cor. 6:19

[vii] Genesis 1:31