Wiggling Toes Take Priority.

WoYoPracMo has gotten me more aware of my toes and what they want like and need, and for some reason I can feel all nice about them and want to do those things (stretching them out and rubbing them after a long run).  This isn’t something that always comes easily to me–feeling okay about myself needing or wanting things (especially on the emotional/psyche level), but this seems like a starting point, something to work from.  Maybe it’s possible to start there and work to the things that are harder for me.

I was talking to some fellow recovery people yesterday about the ways in which we seem to jump from large addiction/compulsion to a multitude of little ones (and less harmful ones, so this is no small improvement, and it’s really a matter of going from lethal to non-lethal).  And I think that part of it  (there are many many many aspects, a real manystranded tangle)  is that we (women especially maybe, but perhaps not exclusively, but this is who I was talking with and about) often don’t feel we have the right to try to get our desires and needs met, and addiction/compulsions can be a little way of compensating, of feeling like we’re giving ourselves something over here on the side when you’re not looking.  It’s not usually something that’s actually good for us, but it’s also a way of preserving or recognizing our right to have wishes and needs.  Now if we could all “just” quit killing ourselves our driving ourselves crazy with this technique.

But this tending to parts of the body that want or need something seems a little more accessible to me than the whole treating oneself as deserving of existence.  My reflex is to perceive myself as inherently wrong, wrongness incarnate, fundamentally faulty.  But I don’t do this as much with the physical part of myself.  “As much” I say because I do not always feel thrilled about whatever flaws I happen to be deciding that I have at a given time (it varies, and I think it’s almost arbitrary).

But I am going to stop writing now because my toes are saying they want to wiggle and not only that but they want my full attention as they do.

A link if you like–hikejmt’s WoYoPracMo posts with photos of toes and hands in yoga poses:

http://woyopracmo.ning.com/photo/photo/listForContributor?screenName=l9ykcnwlo6hl

Explore posts in the same categories: Body-mind, Change, Coping strategies, Embodied spirituality, Recovery, Shame, Yoga

Tags: addiction, compassion, compulsion, Recovery, self-care, self-worth, toes, WoYoPracMo, Yoga

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