Sometime in the last week I saw a post about allowing your body to lead you into and through your day. I thought it was from Lama Rod Owens, the wise and wonderful Buddhist teacher, but when I looked back at his recent posts this morning I couldn’t find it. (He has beautiful things to say about the project of liberation, often those innermost steps like awareness and Noticing.)
In any case it reminded me of what I call Living Like My Animal: rather than allowing my day (my life!) to be dictated by work, or social norms, or a boss, instead to just pay attention to my creature needs. What am I hungry for—rest? inspiration? intimacy? chocolate?—and structuring my time by responding to those impulses. As a freelancer and a Cipher I have more space than most to live like this, but I think everyone has opportunities where we can take this approach as opposed to being on autopilot.
Years ago I interviewed a woman named Naho Iguchi, who was doing a yearlong art project in which she got financial sponsors so she could live like this. We talked about how it changed her sense of time, how much more aware she became of sensations in her body and messages her body was sending her, and also the idea of a guaranteed income. I wanted to call the piece “Living like a Fox” but the editors picked another title.
Living Like My Animal was sparked by two formative relationships that developed in the aftermath of my divorce. One was with the woman who taught me to hoop (hula-hoop), with whom I then authored a book on HOOPING, Christabel Zamor. Christabel and the hoop helped me to hear what my body wanted, and to indulge it, to bring joy to the relationship with my body after 30 years of disconnect, shame, and punishment. There were the obligatory green smoothies and raw foods and affirmations in the mirror in the Christabel era, to be sure, but it was also about allowing anything that brought me pleasure.
The other formative relationship was with a lover who was gloriously his animal. He reveled in me just as I was, no primping required. Up until that point I had spent so much energy trying to make myself desirable according to the standards of the beauty and fashion industries, the porn industry, according to my peers—other women!—and of course men who expressed preference for it. This man-creature just devoured me— devoured me even if I was unshaven, sweaty, on my period—and it changed my sex life, and my life, forever.
Living Like My Animal