Being A Body

I’m struggling my way into a seated forward fold during yoga when I start to cry. As poses go, Paschimottanasana, or its wide-legged cousin, Upavistha Konasana, are not my friends. As everyone around me melts into their folds, I hover laboriously in a not-quite pose, trying to manifest a tower of blocks under my head so I can at least unclench.

This isn’t the first time I’ve cried in yoga, nor will it be the last, but usually, I can pinpoint the source right away. These tears left me perplexed and frustrated.

The yoga was part of a Full Moon retreat in the fall of 2021, twenty months into the pandemic. The retreat was part writing, part tarot, and part practicing being in a shared space with other people. Hosted by two beautiful humans-slash-creative talismans, Claire Campbell of Blue Stone Writers and Cecily Sailer of Typewriter Tarot, there was nothing scary or fraught about this weekend. It was quiet and contemplative. It was about reconnecting with ourselves as much as it was a chance to connect with others.

It had been more than two years since my last yoga session. In the months between, I’d had a hysterectomy and was experiencing some middle-age gut maladies. The pandemic, too. Forgive me for being a little tightly wound!

By the time we got to my favorite poses, the warrior series, I couldn’t enjoy them because I was in a full sob.

I pulled myself together enough to make it to Shavasana, after which we had a moment to write. That’s when it hit me. I’d become much too comfortable being only a face on a screen. I could be my conversational best in my one-inch square home in the Zoom gallery. I showed up for critique groups, book club, and family chats with only a smile, my ideas, my humor, and my intellect. Not my too-big hips, my emerging wrinkles, or stealth-attack hot flashes.

I enthusiastically toggled the Zoom appearance touch-up and adjusted the height of my screen to remove my duplicate chins. I wore “I put in the effort” shirts while my gut, thighs, and rear end bounced around off-screen in Lycra spandex. Still do. My Zoom life continues to bloom.

Returning to being a body in 360 was terrifying because of how little I recognized it.

This strange sack of skin, muscle, and bone broke my heart.

My body and I have always had a fraught relationship. It’s been the dumping ground for emotional eating and stress hormones in overdrive. It has whiplash from losing and gaining and losing and gaining. It’s been in a near-constant battle with my brain—is it fight or flight today? Throughout my life, I’ve done very little to celebrate and soothe the body I inhabit.

Relaxing into my forties, I thought I’d come to terms with my body. Or, at least, carved out a truce with it. But my anxiety has always centered around a fixation on my body, specifically, my body in performance. About the audacity of carving out literal space amongst other bodies. Am I doing justice to the oxygen in my lungs or the ground I stand on?

There’s not a woman on earth who does not know a version of this feeling.

Is it any wonder that the pandemic provided a little reprieve?

Outside of worrying about whether or not my body could survive COVID, I was able to set it aside, for the most part. Within my two-dimensional universe, my confidence soared, my anxiety plummeted, and many of my relationships deepened.

Materiality in the form of living in a woman’s body is never just our own. The patriarchy is built around the possession of things it shouldn’t own. The male gaze. The female gaze! We are products of the patriarchy, after all. The uninvited caress of a hand on my body in a bar, on the subway, in a crowd. Looking over my shoulder and carrying my key in between my knuckles just in case. Saying NO but being treated as if my body extended an invitation with or without my will. Wishing my body could be invisible. I’m approaching fifty, so I will get my wish. But once invisible, will I wish back my relevance in the form of my woman’s body? It’s a mind fuck. The pandemic let me take a breath away from all of this for a moment.

My body is my power but also my prison. As I come to terms with the full impact of the pandemic and how it’s changed me, this has never been clearer.

Since my forward-fold meltdown, I’ve started a yoga practice. I’m trying to reconnect with my body through yin, flow, gongs, and singing bowls. I like to think of these sessions as couple’s therapy—my body and I, like a long-married couple who’ve become blind to each other. Re-learning to co-exist, even thrive together.

It took me some time to work up the courage to post this piece. The blog sat in draft for months. Then, last June, the Supreme Court struck down fifty years of abortion rights. Anger and fear made me delay further. Why would anyone care about one woman’s experience of her body post-pandemic when there’s a bigger, collective struggle at play? My body is a provocation in a man’s world, no matter my relationship with it. In draft form, it stayed.

I was angry.

I am still angry.

But I’m angry enough to be a body unafraid of taking up space. Writing and talking about our experiences living in our bodies is part of that real estate.