The Body, a Being in Its Own Right

Ladies and gentlemen, hello and welcome to this new episode of Presence Within. Today’s episode is about the body, following a request from a listener. So, when I got this request, I thought, okay, what can I say about the body? And when I think back on this podcast and this recording, I remember—I have a memory related to the body, but it’s not a physical memory, it’s not a memory of the body itself, it’s more of an intellectual memory.

But more than 20 years ago, really 20 years ago, even more, I remember a conference about the pendulum in the southwest of France that I attended. There were two things that caught my attention. The first was that two men presented this conference.

One of them was an engineer and pilot, and also had a leadership role in public administration. And I already found it very surprising that two people, pretty rational on the surface, even with technical backgrounds, gave a conference about the pendulum—practical on the outside, but apparently quite esoteric. So that was the first point.

But the second point was that the very first thing shared at this conference was that the pendulum was considered like a needle, and the body as the instrument that measures. And I believe it’s from that day on that the idea of the body as more than just an object took root in me. At least, the seed was planted, especially that day.

And there you go, it would make its way later. So what I’m sharing today about the body is simply my own encounter with the body. And actually, that encounter mainly happened in two ways.

It’s not very original, but let’s say that first, this encounter took place in my therapeutic journey, obviously with the Maïeusthésie approach I trained in, and also alongside my spiritual path. So, there’s a bit of these two threads or aspects, which in reality are two sides of the same coin. And so, these two approaches really changed something quite fundamental for me.

They allowed me to stop considering the body as something I own, and more as something—or rather someone—I live with. For example, we naturally say “my body,” as if we could say “my car,” “my house,” “my phone.” Well, that’s fine, it’s a way of speaking, a practical way of speaking.

They also say, perhaps, something else about how we see ourselves, as if there’s me—the conscious me, the individual me—and then my body. Something that goes along with me, an object that accompanies me, a vehicle at best, that I have to feed, maintain, take care of, and so on. And so, something I can also look at in a mirror and judge.

Do I like it? Am I thin enough? Do I fit the physical standards of my time, and so on? So, ultimately, a large part of how we relate to the body is quite utilitarian: functioning, performing, looking good, obeying, and so on.

And when it no longer lives up to what we expect of it, or to what we project onto it, something can become very conflicted— a major source of suffering that can last years, even decades. And in my encounter with psychotherapy, I actually discovered that there’s another way to consider the body, which is really simple: a way where the body can be truly met, a way where the body can be seen as a whole being. That’s really what I take away—that the body can be regarded as a full being.

Now, this might sound strange when you hear it for the first time, this idea, this concept, no matter what you call it. Because we’re more used to thinking of the body as a mechanism—sophisticated, chemical, biological—and all that; often it’s mysterious, it slips away from us. Of course, there are things in how it works, in its complexity, that I understand can feel mysterious and beyond our grasp.

But on the level of therapeutic support, we can also step into a different relationship with it, as I was saying, that of a being. So no longer just seeing it as something that functions, but as an ally, as a partner. Though for me, I like to say as a whole being.

Now, ally, partner—those words are already quite loaded. And when you consider the body as a whole being, there’s a kind of way of welcoming it that will evolve, welcoming our body, welcoming our sensations. For example, when a sensation arises somewhere in the body, we might ask what’s happening, and we place our attention there.

We don’t automatically try to get rid of it, especially if it’s unpleasant, but rather to go meet it. We place our awareness, our attention on a spot, and maybe put words to it, to recognize, to encounter what the body is experiencing. Because sometimes, a bodily sensation allows access to something that our thoughts can’t put into words.

It could be an experience, it could be an emotion, a memory—it could be many things. But in any case, something that just asks to be heard and acknowledged. So in that sense, the body can truly become an unfailing ally.

It can really become an ally on the therapeutic path and on the spiritual path as well. Because it can lead us where thought, intellect, and rationality don’t know, don’t know how to go. So once we discover that certain physical manifestations can open a door to something within ourselves, there’s a path to explore, something to explore.

But still, despite everything, there’s this temptation that can come up: to look for meaning everywhere. I’ve already touched on this in previous podcasts, but I’ll say it again.

Why does it hurt here? What is this pain about? Why did I cut myself? Why is my belly reacting? And this way of doing things can very quickly turn into a form of control. I call it the tyranny of the why. It’s as if we were in a relationship of controlling the body and suddenly switch to controlling the body’s interpretation.

Every sensation should mean something, every pain should tell a story, every symptom contain a lesson or point to a clue. Well, we don’t always need to go that far. The body is also a living organism.

It has its own history, its own physiology, its own processes, its own balances—it has its own life. It can be tired simply because it is tired. It can hurt because it’s injured.

It can get sick just because that’s how living organisms are—they get sick. There isn’t necessarily always a symbol to find or a meaning to discover. Because, I repeat, in some therapeutic or spiritual approaches, you can end up becoming hyper-attentive to yourself and fall into hyper-observation.

What am I feeling? What does it mean? What is this sensation, this energy? So this attention, which started as openness, can gradually turn into surveillance. And so, I find it useful to cultivate a kind of trust that simply says, here, I let my body live what it has to live. Without constantly asking it to teach me something, without constantly asking it to be my guide or my landmark.

Actually, just not demanding from it anything other than what it is at this very moment. And then, as I said, there’s a bit like this second facet, a second dimension in the relationship to the body that is more spiritual. Our body also has a kind of intelligence—a direct intelligence, an all-knowing intelligence.

The body knows before we do—at least it knows a lot of things before we do, that’s certain. So when we enter somewhere, something relaxes, we meet someone, something closes or opens, a situation that seems perfectly logical intellectually, and then there’s a part of us that immediately senses something’s not right. Or the opposite: we can’t explain why, but something inside us makes it possible to move forward, things flow, our feelings are positive.

And this intelligence is sometimes very, very subtle. And the problem is that it speaks much more quietly than our thoughts. Our mind makes a lot of noise—it analyzes, comments, imagines what will happen, remembers the past, invents stories, scenarios.

Whereas the body can produce very slight sensations, an imperceptible relaxation, a subtle contraction, an inner movement, something light inside us. And if we’re constantly busy thinking, we miss it. We miss the fact that inside us there are forms of perception finer, subtler than just rational thought, than analytical thought alone.

So having a body within oneself is an extraordinary thing. It might sound obvious to say, because we were born with it, we live with it, we wake up with it every morning, there it is all day long. So obviously, we end up getting used to it.

But the simplest things are really the most powerful, though they’re too simple. And so the mind doesn’t focus on them, whereas they’re so important. We forget that we can see, we forget that we can touch, we forget that we can feel the warmth of the sun on our skin, we forget what it’s like to drink, we forget the miracle of listening to music.

Being able to look, being able to walk, to run, to breathe, to live. It’s thanks to this body that we have the experience of life. It’s thanks to it that the world becomes perceptible at every instant, moment to moment to moment.

And I’d even go further: I’d say that, in a way, it’s thanks to it that we can meet ourselves. Without our body, it’s hard to live an embodied life, a human life, and thus to meet ourselves through our explorations, through our experiences. I definitely don’t want to minimize the suffering linked to body image, illnesses, intense issues, or the intense suffering that the body can know.

And being grateful isn’t enough. It’s not as automatic as that; it would be too simple. But I really believe there’s another perspective that can coexist with suffering, truly.

I can not like a part of my body, yes, and at the same time recognize that this body allows me to live. I can be upset by its appearance, even more than just upset, and still feel gratitude toward it. I can suffer from my limitations, my issues, but not necessarily reduce, or at least reduce my whole relationship with it, with my body, just to that limitation, to those limitations.

Both can coexist together. And that seems particularly important to me because the body, over time, will anyway no longer meet our expectations, no longer match our projections. Because this contract, somewhat implicit, that we make with it—the contract that says I love you as long as you work well, I love you as long as you don't make me suffer, I love you as long as you stay young—doesn't last.

The body itself can’t respect that contract. It changes at every moment. And those changes become especially noticeable as time passes.

It will age, lose its abilities, and one day, it will become more fragile. So our relationship with it will gradually, automatically, necessarily become something else. Not just a relationship with a performing body, that's clear, but a relationship—as I’m coming back to— with a being that accompanies us.

So, I’d like to say, with a real companion who’s been here from the start. It was there when we were children. It grew up with us; it went through all the events, all the experiences of our life, our existence.

It has known our joys, our fears, our losses, our loves, our difficulties, our successes, our failures. It’s been there for every time we fell off the bike, every time we took a tumble on the bike. So, it still accompanies us today.

Often, when I think about the gratitude of being a being, of having this life, of having a body, of being able to live this life—even though sometimes it's very hard—often I tell myself, with every heartbeat, it's as if this gratitude is permanent, and it happens with each heartbeat. I don’t remember exactly how many times our heart beats in a day, but it’s over 40,000 times, I think, 40,000 or 50,000 times. So, it’s as if we should say—we don’t do it—but it’s like 40,000 thank-yous for being here, for existing, for being embodied.

What I mean is that there’s, for me, maybe here a very simple invitation. It’s not necessarily to immediately love one’s body, or to love one’s body, but just to simply be with it. To start looking at it differently.

It could be putting our attention on a sensation, placing our hand on a spot of the body, on our chest, on the arm, and maybe just saying, "You’re here, thank you for being here." No need to trigger any particular emotion, no need to feel love, no need for anything magical, no, just acknowledge, acknowledge its presence. I think that’s, when we set out to meet our body, for me it’s one of the gestures—maybe the first, I don’t know—but a simple gesture: recognize that it’s there.

And to extend this movement of consciousness with a physical movement, when I say place the hand, well, it’s an inner movement of consciousness and a manifest movement. And then, after that, to remind ourselves of everything that allows us. To remind ourselves, but in the sense of calling forth.

I really like this word. David Chussi, one of my guides who taught me this word, it’s to call forth, to reconnect, but really to call forth, to remember all that supports us. Today, now, even if it’s imperfect, hearing a voice, drinking a coffee, holding someone we love in our arms, feeling the air as we breathe into our lungs, and if some of those capacities are no longer there, it’s quite a movement to make.

But not to stay stuck on regrets, but rather to strengthen, to call forth and strengthen our gratitude and our joy for all those that are still here, still present. And I find there’s something deeply spiritual in this simplicity. It’s not necessarily in having extraordinary experiences with the body, but it’s realizing the extraordinary in everything that seemed ordinary.

I am here, I have a body, and thanks to it, for decades, I've been able to experience this adventure, which could be described with many adjectives— a human adventure, the fact of being alive. You're here, thank you. Maybe we don't need to do more than that.

We let it live, we take care of it when it needs it, we listen when it seems to call for our attention, we leave it alone when it has nothing to tell us. And maybe most of all, we can gradually stop tying all our tenderness for it to it being exactly how we'd want it to be. So here it is, our body doesn’t need to be perfect, it doesn’t need to be young or aesthetically pleasing, or high-performing to deserve our attention.

It’s simply this living companion, this whole being thanks to which this human experience that we're living right now is possible. So that's a few words, a few reflections about the body. Please feel free to share your own experience with me; I’d be very very very happy to hear it.

As always, by email, social media, whatever. And who knows, maybe that could feed other topics to come in future podcasts. So, don’t hesitate to send your feedback, and I’ll say see you very soon.

Thank you very much for listening.