Trust in the Body
The body knows when to run fast, when to slow down and look at the small shards of frost on each stem of long prairie grass. When to stretch, and for how long, and what to stretch toward--sky or ground, bed or bike or kitchen or bed.
It knows when it needs a cookie or spinach or quinoa and pomegranate seeds or hummus or broccoli or the smell of burning wood, pine needles, fresh cut grass.
The body knows when it is cold, asks for a thicker sweater, wool socks, a scarf long enough to cover the face.
It knows when to curl up on the couch at just the right time of day to bathe in the sun's rays in the dead of winter, just where to lie down by the lake in the summer's mid-afternoon heat.
The body knows when it needs to be held, touched, by whom, in what way, for how long. It knows when it needs to be alone, to walk for hours through the woods, climb a tree, sit still in the clearing.
Persistent, it speaks through its aches, its hungers, its deep fullness. If we trust it, it will not fail us--even when ravaged by illness, pain, and trauma--by the beatings life gives that it couldn't control--
if we love it all the way to the end we will understand it did what it could, taught us to listen as long as it could.
It knows when it needs a cookie or spinach or quinoa and pomegranate seeds or hummus or broccoli or the smell of burning wood, pine needles, fresh cut grass.
The body knows when it is cold, asks for a thicker sweater, wool socks, a scarf long enough to cover the face.
It knows when to curl up on the couch at just the right time of day to bathe in the sun's rays in the dead of winter, just where to lie down by the lake in the summer's mid-afternoon heat.
The body knows when it needs to be held, touched, by whom, in what way, for how long. It knows when it needs to be alone, to walk for hours through the woods, climb a tree, sit still in the clearing.
Persistent, it speaks through its aches, its hungers, its deep fullness. If we trust it, it will not fail us--even when ravaged by illness, pain, and trauma--by the beatings life gives that it couldn't control--
if we love it all the way to the end we will understand it did what it could, taught us to listen as long as it could.
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