To Begin With (Body)

In the "To Begin With" for the mind, I wrote about becoming it fully, feeling it fully, and acting.

But these three aren't just about the mind. Setting your way of being, feeling emotions fully, moving on trust in your intuition—all of it rests on the body as its foundation. If the body is clogged up, the head fills with noise, and none of it is possible.

We have bodies. Since we've got one, it'd be a waste not to experience it properly. I want to feel things through the body just as much as through the mind. That's what I think.

The body has a flow.

In Eastern medicine, they call it ki, blood, and water. It sounds complicated, but it's no big deal. Are the blood and lymph flowing properly. Is the gut—the so-called second brain—in order. And the "ki" beyond that, is it running through. That's all it is.

If the body is flowing properly, ki naturally runs through. If it's blocked, it doesn't. The order is always body first. You don't psych yourself up trying to raise your ki. Get the blood, the water, and the gut in order, and the ki follows on its own.

And when you push it further, this becomes a story about the three primal desires.

Appetite, sleep, sex. The deepest, most rooted desires in a human being.

We usually try to satisfy these with the pleasure of the brain. We eat food drowned in sugar. We stay up late soaking in stimulation. We consume excitement. The brain is delighted. But the body gets left behind.

Not that—I want to satisfy them through the voice of the body. The same three desires, but in the direction the body truly wants, not the brain. That, for me, is what tuning the body means.

So I do a few things.

Food. Get the gut in order. Avoid sugar as much as I can, and eat fermented things. Point my appetite toward building the body, not toward the brain's pleasure.

The public bath. Electric bath, carbonated bath, cold plunge. The flow starts moving, and it feels like everything settles.

Meditation. Though really it's more like dozing off. I bring my awareness—always looking outward—back inside. My head clears.

And being touched by another person. A massage, physical closeness, either works. It's a strange thing, but a massage machine doesn't do it. Kneaded the same way, it only heals when it's a human hand. When you touch hands with someone you like, you feel something, right. With someone you trust, your heart loosens, right. That's probably a ki thing too. There's something that only runs through from a human hand.

One at a time, I'll write these here from now on. All of it is what I've experienced in my own body.

Science, I think it matters. Because there are people who investigate properly and verify things through reason, the world holds together. I really do think that.

But that's not my role. This idea that you can't speak unless you arm yourself by lining up evidence, that if you don't know then shut up—I find that boring. What you've felt in your body, you're allowed to speak on it without permission. I just write what I've felt in my own body, exactly as it is.

Since we've got a body, after all.

• The body has a flow: ki, blood, water. Get the blood, the water, and the gut in order, and the ki follows on its own.

• Satisfy appetite, sleep, and sex through the voice of the body, not the pleasure of the brain. That's what tuning the body means.

• If the body is clogged, you can't feel. To feel, you tune it.