If the Cake Ain't Layered, You're Missing out on the Flavors

A lot of stress these days comes from a lack of prioritization. We are constantly doing over 10 million things. And EVERYTHING is important. So even when we relax, our mind is still racing about the 5 million and one things we also think we should be doing at that very moment. 

Why is everything so damn important? Jobs are important, family is important, health, is important, social standing...but there is no possible way for us to do everything at the exact same time. We are simple beings. Even if we try to convince ourselves that we are complex by referring to the 80% of our brain that is unexplored, we must admit that this 80% is unexplored because we simply cannot access its information. 

But when we have priorities, things tend to balance out a little better. Instead of having to deal with everything on the table at once, things tend to shift, layering themselves naturally into a more manageable way. That way we can see what we are actually dealing with. This choice, this prioritization, doesn’t have to be a be-all-end-all decision. The layers can shift to different positions at different times whenever need be. 

Without this prioritization there is a state and a level of energy that most people these days are vibrating at. You can feel it: a churning, grinding, forced state and near click into panic mode that our bodies are being trained to endure in order to accomplish everything needed to be accomplished. No wonder we’re so freaked out! 

To some this frenzied state becomes an addiction. If there isn’t an adrenaline rush and underlying panic, one is not living life to full capacity.

So what can we do with the many alarming and even harming things running through our minds? How do we get the amount, the ticket count running through our cranium to a slow, steady, manageable pace? 

I like to breathe. And just forget about all of it for one large glorious second. Yes, time outs used to be imposed upon us as kids when we weren’t behaving, but nowadays, they’re man’s best friend. Everyone deserves a time out every now and then to come back with a little new perspective and the honesty that no one (not even that fictitious Super Mom out there) can do everything at the same time.

Body Extremes

A few months ago I decided to take on a 9-5 writing position at a desk. “It’ll be great!” I thought. I was excited at the prospect of landing a serious sounding job entitled “writer/researcher,” and placing it on my resume.

As a performer I often took on jobs that required loads of movement. From teaching movement classes, dancing and performing, there wasn’t much time during the day where I sat at a desk, let alone in a chair. My latest stint, working in a busy midtown restaurant, forced me to be on my feet all day long for ungodly hours. A switch to Sketcher Shape Up shoes helped my body to not be in complete pain at the end of the night (more on these in a later post), though a growing fear still mounted in anticipation of the day when spider veins would explode all the way down my weary, lactic acid filled calves.

So you can imagine my relief and excitement in making the switch to this more conventional, relaxed “writer/researcher,” position. 

A funny thing happened on day two of beginning this new job, however. As I rushed to leave the office and jump onto the subway car home, tears began to stream down my face on the platform. No, I did not like this new job and its lack of creativity, but these silent tears seemed to be indicating something even deeper than that. I realized suddenly the extreme shock I was giving to my body. Just two days ago I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off, and now I was sitting for a period of eight hours in one spot. 

I had joined the cubicle forces and was dealing with a common office virus formerly unknown to me: the virus of sedentary motion.

This felt as unhealthy to me as the constant vertical motion of my previous job. In desperation I developed a phenomenon known as the “15 minute dance party,” a term coined for the moment at the end of the day when I burst into my apartment and danced my a$@ off to the loudest music I could find.

It was then that I realized how many bizarre positions we place our bodies in everyday. How many extremes we force them to endure and how little we allow them to move the way they naturally move. Repetitive actions and neglect to exercise can cause our bones to calcify and our muscles to freeze into an improper alignment. And this alignment when unchecked can cause severe damage to our health and emotional states.

Skeptical Scripture

“Your body is a temple,” says Corinthians something or other. I’ve heard this quote bandied about by devout Christians, often in reference to its defecation. Tattoos, piercings and casual sex all seem to fall into the “don’t do” category. Treating your body like a temple means respecting it, keeping it holy and sacred for a higher power.

Like all biblical quotations, its use often becomes one-sided and a majority of people dismiss its wisdom like they would an annoying nag.

But what if we did treat our bodies with the same reverence we would devote to a temple? As a non-practicing Roman Catholic I have struggled with my views of religion. To put it bluntly and shortly (because I am not interested in actually having a religious discussion here) my beliefs do not include religion. I am more interested in the spirituality of the individual and its community than in any established edicts.

Yet I am willing to look towards older texts and admit when kernels of wisdom resonate. “Your body is a temple,” it says. What is a temple? Something that we would not desecrate, something that we would respect, something that we would honor. Something we should not fear.

For me, the idea of a temple conjures up a place to go where moments of silence are celebrated and one listens with an open heart.

Is our body a temple? A sacred open space where one can listen to receive answers? If so, what would those answers sound like? And if we heard those answers, would we trust them, knowing that the knowledge has come from within?

The Body Irrelevant

Glamour magazine conducted a survey in 2009 to determine what percentage of women were dissatisfied with their bodies. The results showed that a whopping 40% out of the 1,000 women surveyed were unhappy with the way that their body looked. Another survey, conducted recently in Britain by REAL magazine, echoed these results with even more startling numbers. Out of 5,000 women, only 3% claimed to be totally happy with their bodies while 73% not only admitted to being unhappy with their bodies, but that they also think about its size and shape every day.

When did our body become an enemy? A separate entity that we have to "fight, burn, crunch and whip" into shape? A shape that has become much more important to us than how our body actually feels, or the functions it may serve.

When a friend of mine was visiting South Africa she marveled at the reactions the women had to her body. Each and every one of them could not get over how skinny they thought she was. She in turn asked them what part of their bodies they liked the most. Though the answers varied, ranging from the legs to the breasts to the hips or to the arms, all seemed to share one common factor. It was not the appearance or the shape of the body part that endeared itself to these women, it was the ability it gave them to function within the world. Legs for traveling to the next village, breasts for feeding their children, hips for birthing, and arms for lugging water from the riverbed to their home.

Is our obsession with shape caused by the fact that we no longer need to use our bodies any more? Each technological advancement eliminates the amount of physical movement and exertion needed to complete even basic tasks. The car eliminates walking, the dishwasher eliminates washing, and stores of all kinds provide the items necessary to get by in life without ever having to hunt, plant, or construct any of them. No wonder we have all of this excess fat added to our shape and then a quest for perfection in trying to get rid of it.

If we did more stuff (and I mean physical stuff, not stuff like sending another email) our body might naturally be the shape it needs to be. Its support of our actions in life would serve as a vehicle to our happiness instead of an unrelated visual silhouette that has the ability to make one unhappy.