My body, my enemy?

Run. For nine months I waited for the opportunity to put on my sneakers and disappear into the woods like a distraught dog that had just been let off a leash. Feeling of freedom. The happiness of regaining all my physical abilities, reinforced by the fact that for many months the pregnant body did not belong only to me and did not resemble itself. But it’s over, I’m finally here. My entire body. Heavy legs and numb arms wake up slowly, knees warm from repetitive movements, stiff ankles relax painfully with each step, flesh vibrates everywhere, breathing is restored, interrupted. I open every muscle, every joint again, just by feeling… Is it pain or pleasure? It’s hard to tell, they are indistinguishably mixed. But happiness embraces me all: it is happiness to feel my “being” as a body. Alexander Girshon, a psychotherapist, a specialist in dance movement therapy, confirms: “Feeling your body in motion is a source of pleasure in itself.” He believes that “this pleasure comes from feeling oneself as a whole, feeling the scale of oneself in unity.”

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Soul Dungeon

Could I confess to such a wholesome and sensual pleasure fifty or a hundred years ago, without fear of accusations of immorality and pornographic revelations? I’m not sure. For centuries, the body, this “dungeon of the soul”, in the words of Plato, was belittled, forgotten, hidden, because the Greek philosopher considered the pleasure and pain that it gives us to be “nails” that fetter us and prevent us from thinking¹. On the basis of the opposition of the spirit and the body, physical pleasures are often denounced for the fact that they carry the spirit down and it can no longer rise up to knowledge. And even less can he rise to God: the Judeo-Christian tradition has fixed in the public consciousness the denial of the body as a source of sin and base instincts.

But now it’s all history! You only need to look at offers of massages of all kinds, advertising of spa salons and spa hotels to realize the scale of the cultural revolution: the ability to please your body has become a priority. Our era is chasing bodily pleasures, and this is not only a tribute to hedonism and freedom of morals, but a recognition that bodily pleasures are good for the psyche too. This is evidenced by the prevalence of the term “psycho-somatics”: the mutual influence of the spirit and the body today is no longer a secret to anyone. And that is why many today are so attracted to Eastern philosophy and Eastern practices, which have always considered us in this wholeness.

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Object for improvement

So, the slogan of today is clear: take care of your body, take care of it, love it! But because this attention to the body was born in the wake of fashion and marketing strategies, it indulges our narcissism. And now we not only groom and cherish the body, which for centuries was considered shameful, but also constantly examine it, weigh it, measure it, remake it, it is at the center of our concerns and requires a lot of energy. These two approaches are opposite. And both lead to neglect, to the same “farewell to the body,” to borrow the title of a book by the sociologist David le Breton.². “The body,” he writes, “became the object on which we must work to improve, the matter in which our personality dissolves.”

My doctor, when I told him that I started running again, responded with understanding: “I am also trying to get back in shape and keep my figure, so I bought a treadmill. I put a tablet in front of me, watch a movie and try to hold out for at least half an hour. But, listening to music while playing sports, we block almost 70% of our sensations: information about them simply does not enter the brain!³ So my doctor is doing sports in such a way that his body does not even realize it. And of course, he pays him the same coin: it is still the same full and flabby!

When I listen to him tell me about his suffering on the treadmill, I realize how different he and I are talking about. The body can be felt, lived in, it can root us in the present, carry traces of our history and our origin. This body feels heat, cold, smells, it sees, appreciates, enjoys and caresses … In short, this body as a subject, “the body that I am.”

And there is a body that we look at in the mirror, on which we make tattoos, which we decorate, measure, which we force to run along the path without feeling it, we strive to give it a certain “shape”, to fashion a certain “figure” out of it. In other words, it is the body as an object, “the body that I have.” Of course, it can also be fun: when the treadmill emits the final signal, my doctor is glad that he passed this workout with honor. He is proud of his courage, he is satisfied that he has overcome pain and boredom. While dressing, he will probably notice that he can fasten the belt on the next hole, and smile with satisfaction. These pleasures are real, and they motivate you to keep running. But this is the pleasure of the ego, and it is born from the mastery of one’s body. It is based on the feeling of omnipotence of the one who considers himself above physical laws and therefore hopes that he is inaccessible to suffering, illness, death.

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Living history

I would be wrong if I said that after the acute joy of the first steps in the fresh air has passed, I have never had a strong desire to prevent the brain from receiving painful signals sent by the body! And I would be cunning if I began to deny that soon I was prompted to put on sneakers no longer by the joy of feeling the vibration of the flesh, but by the conviction that jogging helps to get rid of excess weight … Always feel “the body that I am”, remain sensitive and receptive not so simple. First of all, because in search of pleasure, none of us is immune from meetings with its opposite.

By listening to our body, we also run the risk of encountering its shortcomings, weaknesses and limitations: “When we take care of our physical condition, we cannot predict what emotions we will experience and with what intensity,” explains psychotherapist Marina Baskakova. Our personal history is recorded in the body: certain areas and certain feelings were given more attention than others, this attention was more or less positive …

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tool of knowledge

Not only the past, but also the present prevents us from regaining a healthy relationship with the body. Today, we have to retrain ourselves to listen to our feelings in the face of a fast-paced and technology-hungry age that is trying to divert our attention. In particular, by offering more and more gadgets that come between us and our skin, our eyes… In other words, between our body and the world. How many people, for example, can still experience bodily joy, watching the landscape not on the screen of a smartphone or tablet?

The modern denial of the body may no longer be the result of the exceptional power with which the spirit is endowed, but, on the contrary, a symptom of the deep decline of this spirit. Luckily, there are other people around us. Our body, when it is caressed, touched, kissed, forgets to look at itself and “understand” itself: it can only allow itself to perceive and feel, while simultaneously perceiving and feeling another body. “It is no coincidence that the peak of sexual pleasure was called the “little death,” writes philosopher Chantal Jaquet, “after all, it replaces life, suspends it, so that a person denies himself for a moment and can no longer think about anything”⁴. It denies itself – and thus returns to itself. Caressing and loving another person, we simultaneously caress, feel and return our own body to ourselves, we begin to love it again. There is probably no more correct and more pleasant return to the “body that I am” than a love relationship with a partner. And these relationships are good not only in themselves, but also because we can describe our feelings to each other.

Share feelings, explain to another what we experience in bed … or, for example, when running. This allows you to live an even richer life in your body, to experience every moment more intensely and consciously. Run – yes, a thousand times yes! But one, never again.

¹ Plato, dialogue “Phaedo” in the book “Philosophical Conversations (Dialogues)” (Librokom, 2015).

² D. Le Breton “Farewell to the body” (“L’Adieu au corps”, Métailié, 2013).

³ Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness, 2012, vol. 1.

⁴ Ch. Jacquet “The connection of body and spirit” (“Les liens corps esprit”, Dunod, 2014).