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Mind and Body Do you use your body as a source of information about your self and others? What awareness and information do we get from our body experiences? What places might we metaphorically discover in our bodies, like opening drawers, that might give us new information and insight? Each of us has our own historical relationship with our own body. Andrea Olsen in Body and Earth writes: Many students want to “gain control” over their bodies. I have to remind them this is not our goal. The task is to listen to the intelligence of our home.....Control limits possibilities; dialogue invites surprise. (Middlebury College Press, 2002, page 7.) Our group shared a large variety of histories. A dancer for many years, one woman recently had felt betrayed by her bodies injuries. An 86 year old man continues his habit of swimming every day. Many struggle with weight loss and gain. Many had been judged by doctors about the health of their bodies. One man had always been comfortable with his body until with age it gave him pain. One woman had a contentious relationship with her body until she began a movement meditation process that gave her a more peaceful relationship to her self and body. As a group we made a list of possible things to learn from our bodies; information we might get moving our bodies and by turning our attention to our senses and becoming more aware of our bodies. We agreed that each person might choose to organize the continuum differently. You are invited to design your own continuum. Here is the group list: Turn ons--turn offs (like smoking)--comforts--appeals--health cues--infinite degrees of touch sensitivity--skin reactions--skin softness/toughness--hearing (location)--sounds--breath--exercise (endurance, balance, tolerance, limits)--stress--pain--aging--decision making--distraction from obsession--relaxation--spiritual connection. Elizabeth shared a quote from the NY Times article, Sex and the Brain: Researchers Say, 'Vive la Différence!', By ANAHAD O'CONNOR, Published: March 16, 2004, about women using their sense of smell to choose men. One group enjoyed experimenting with a woman smelling each of the man’s hands. The smells were earthy, sweet, clean, and like an anti-bacterial soap. She liked the earthy smell best. (For full quote see below). Finally we considered what movements might change our habits. A hand to hand exercise using the movements of a partner to learn about your own habitual movement and our relationship to another person was enjoyed by all. One group member observed that this would be a great exercise for a couple to get a sense of their own dynamics because as their hands move so also does their relationship. There are many ways to increase awareness. Letting your body inform your mind is a way with almost infinite possibilities for access to new awareness of self and others. For additional reading see: The Subtle Art of Communication by Elizabeth Reid. Elizabeth Reid has been a Clinical Member of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy since 1978. Her specialty is marriage and couple's therapy. She has practiced for 30 years, been in the Albany area since 1984 and in private practice locally since 1987. Mind to Mind is a series of short papers recently written by Elizabeth. These papers look at the application of recent brain research to couple's relating. Further information can be found at Elizabeth Reid's web site (http://capital.net/~ereid2/).
The full NY Times quote: Women, on the other hand, may be more attuned to the signs that a man will make a good father or provider, she added, though some other researchers find this assertion dubious. A woman's choice of a mate, Dr. Fisher argues, could involve an interplay among a number of factors, including, some experts now theorize, a man's odor. Several years ago, Swiss scientists discovered that women could sniff out genetic differences in potential mates. When women were asked to smell T-shirts that different men had worn, they often ranked more favorably the shirts that belonged to men with dissimilar genes for major histocompatibility complex, a group of proteins involved in immunity to disease. The odors a woman preferred also tended to remind her of past and current partners. Seeking out different immune-system genes might be a way
to prevent inbreeding or to arm offspring with a more versatile immune
system, said Dr. Rachel S. Herz, a psychologist at Brown who in a study
in 2002 found that women ranked body odor above almost every other factor
in attraction, except "pleasantness." |
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