I once attended a workshop entitled “The Rejected Part of The Body.” Sounds exciting, doesn’t it? Well it was. Actually it was one of the best workshops I’ve ever attended.
Given by two women I deeply respect and admire – Paula Reeves and Mary Hamilton – there were about 20 of us who shared a week together with a loose structure of dreamwork, storytelling, art and movement. Paula began the week with a story, before bed the first night, and then the days were organized around dream sharing in the mornings, reading, walking, resting. Then in the afternoons Mary would lead us in visulizations and movement, gently guiding us into a fuller embodiment and working with whatever pains, blocks or obstacles we found there. All this followed by art and in the evenings there was more story and usually a chance to share our personal stories.
The story that began the week was Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell and it was told over the first three nights. I highly recommend reading this in whatever variations you can find. Compare them! It is a story rich with metaphor and rewards.
It stirred some mighty dreams. Especially since we knew we were going to focus on the part of our own bodies that could/would be represented by Dame Ragnell herself, in all her glory:
“Her face was red, her nose running, her mouth wide, her teeth all yellow.
Her eyes were bleary, as large as balls, her mouth just as large.
Her teeth hung out of her lips, her cheeks were as broad as a woman's hips.
He back was as curved as a lute. Her neck was long and also thick.
Her hair clotted in a heap. In the shoulders she was a yard across.
Her breasts would have been a load for a horse. Like a barrel was she made.
To recite the foulness of that lady there is no tongue fit.
She had ugliness to spare.”
Of course that rejected part of our own bodies also has ugliness to spare, doesn’t it? Not sufficient to simply dislike it, this particular part (and for everyone it is different) it is the most loathsome body-part ever. “To recite the foulness of that [part] there is no tongue fit.” Indeed.
Taking that story and unpacking it for personal reflection allows for an enormous amount of growth, and brings a lot to consciousness. To encompass this in some direct, concrete way we used a large floor cloth – made of unstretched artist’s canvas about 7 ft long – and on our first afternoon we lay upon it and the outline of our bodies were traced by a friend.
Over the course of the week we began to fill in the outline … with color, design, image, affect, whatever came up in the dreams and in the movement work was transferred to the body outline. If you could you would work directly with the area that was so loathed. The requirements were few: (1) draw a ground for the body is a place of grounding and so the image cannot float freely (2) don’t judge as it is not ‘art’ in the sense of making something beautiful, and what may look awful and scary to someone may be a representation of great beauty to the one drawing it (3) don’t talk about it else you dilute the energy.
The dreams I had that week were circling around and around my mother and my childhood. Each dream was of a different time period in my life and felt so real that upon waking I was surprised to not be in my childhood home.
The colors that filled my canvas are brilliant and I used oil pastels so that I could mush them up with my fingers and blend them together. So the piece is large, and loud and boisterous, taking up all the available white canvas and arguing and shouting and laughing and breathing and messing up all over the place. These are the things that made me feel so incredibly ‘in-the-way’ as a child….even though the house I grew up in was boisterous and loud and I was not.
There is a part of me that has felt, and perhaps continues to feel, that there is no room for me. Whatever it is I do or think or say is not appropriate, right or good enough. It's all pretty obvious on that large cloth. Lots of letters too - writing, writing, writing.
I began to see that the self-loathing, which may start out as a taunt or a thought, gets placed right in the body, right in the flesh. And so the flesh suffers.
For me it is/was the feet. The most loathed part of the body. That part of my I rejected and hated. What this ended up doing was depriving me of a standpoint, and just think of the ramifications of such a metaphor.
I know I am not the victim of someone else in this regard, and I’m not really the victim even of myself. But continuing to go along as if it was okay to simply hate a part of my body would have continued to deprive me of the ability to stand up for myself, to take a stand or make a stand, or to stand on my own two feet. Lacking those metaphors would indeed keep me childlike far beyond any recognizable childhood, and stunt my life.
So why keep up the hatred, the rejection? The process of coming to terms with this self-rejection and having the space to ritualize it with art, with dreams and with reflection made a dramatic difference to me. This brought to consciousness the loathing and rejecting, giving me the opportunity to choose - do I keep it up? Or can I let it go? If I do let it go what will it mean? Will I replace it with something else? Do I have to reject and hate something in order to keep going?
One of the closing rituals was called “Dolor” or something like that (it’s a Spanish word) and it means to tell the sorrowful tale. We partnered into dyads and walked in a single direction, connected to each other with arms linked and the one on the inside told the sorrows of her life to the other. No interruptions, no comments. Just deep, present listening. We walked together for 45 minutes. At the end of that we paused and went to the center of the room where there were basins and towels. And the outside woman, the listener, bathed the feet and hands of the tale-teller. Silently, and with great love.
Then the process repeated. Going in the other direction they switched places and listener told her tale, and the other listened. With deep attention. And then the washing. With great love.
Our world and our society is much poorer for the lack of such rituals among friends.
I do feel lucky to have participated in so awesome a ritual and to do work of that nature.
I continue to use the floor-cloth in my own personal work, and in my artwork. I have some I’m working on now. I don’t know if I’ll be able to share them….they still tend to be pretty personal.
But maybe so.
One day.
I believe that we women are seen largely as ornamental. It's not like that in every culture, though in the last 600 years, those where women were valued have been wiped out. (I think of my own ancestors when I write this...we First Americans are still here, but most of our cultures have been wiped out. The euro, christian fundies who happened on these shores counted the fact that women were treated as equals as just one more heathen way of the savages living on the east coast.)
ReplyDeleteBut even the women who succeed as ornaments..the pretty ones...seem to hate themselves. I'm reminded of the study that finally convinced higher courts to allow integration in schools. Black children thought of themselves as ugly when compared to white children.
From the moment we can understand what's being said around us...we can't help but think of ourselves as less. Our parents, our teachers, the damned TV...the very same attributes prized in boys are seen as flaws in little girls. And the way girls are depicted...even TODAY...they're usually the assistant people...the supporting characters. They still defer to men. Or if they don't, they'd better do so sweetly, coyly, apologetically...or their character is defined as bitchy.
And, my god. We can't win for losing. If we learn to avoid expressing "male" attributes, we find ourselves labeled sneaky, dishonest, coy, etc.
It's amazing. We're socialized to behave a particular way, and then we're damned for doing so.
And all of this is held physically, in the body. I really was unaware of how much of our thoughts and feelings and emotions manifested in our physicality.
ReplyDeleteNot that there is blame here, but the pain in our bodies is so often connected to the pain in our lives. Certainly something to think about! When I see the tremendous energy and color and all the things "my body" wants to say when I look at that floor cloth, it's amazing.
And it feels right. When I look at it there is something in me that feels like it is looking in a mirror, or listening to its own voice. And saying "Yes!"
Men have been broken too. And they continue to be broken. I don't think the pain of self-loathing and rejection and detaching from our bodies is something that only women suffer. But the work I've done was done in the company of other women.
And that was helpful to me. I know that I've watched my husband do a lot of healing, and I'm grateful to have been a part of that. Women with sons tell me of the very, very difficult paths they watch their sons walk. I have no doubt about that.
Patriarchy is destructive and power overwhelms... and it destroys both men and women. My mother in law was one of the most powerful, destructive patriarchal people I've ever known. Her wounds were used to nearly destroy others - my husband included.
So, I wish it were as simple as mere feminism... it isn't. Power is what is so destructive -- wielded by men OR women.
I agree that men suffer in our system almost as much as women...but I can't say "as much," because they still retain the power. They still make the money...children starve in our country, because men are in power. Women and children are devalued.
ReplyDeleteBut even as children, boys are given greater status than girls. Especially the athletes. Sure. they aren't allowed to cry or feel...but at least they get to eat. They're given easier access to careers that afford them the basic needs of food and shelter.
Girls are not. They're taught that being physically desirable is paramount. Even in this day and age, girls are taught to objectify themselves for boys.
Yes. Boys want to be attractive for girls, but they know that with the right car, job, etc, they needn't be physically attractive. (I guess I'm saying they have more options, and they know from the get-go that their physical appearance is secondary.)
I have brothers who are still reeling from our childhood. They suffered as much as I. But watching them with their wives...they don't exhibit the same self-loathing, or the same self-consciousness their wives do. And they don't suffer the same physical maladies. But it's not rational for me to generalize from that.
I guess my first point in that first response was that I don't see that men have it as bad as we, because they actually have greater power to change their futures and their environment. This is, after all, their culture.
Oh I agree. And I mis-stated my intent. I think many men (individual) are just as injured. Not all men certainly, and not men as a group.
ReplyDeleteJust as all women are not really hampered, although women as a group are and some way more than others.
I was sloppy in my language. Its just important for me to be careful about getting to gender-split on who's to blame and how to fix it. I'm not denying the existence of great swaths of sexism, but I don't think everything that is negative is sexism.
And, I do believe that many men (individually) are fully capable of treating women with respect and not a hint of oppression. I'm fortunate to be married to one -- and lucky for the world he is helping to raise four daughters.
That is the way it changes. One small circle at a time.