Lately, I have had intermittent access to the use of a sauna.

Last night I was melting in the sauna, mentally pleading with my lower back/sacral area to flatten into the hot cedar beneath me. “Why,” I desperately thought, “will my body just not relax??”

I noticed a feeling and a knowing arising, intertwined. I noticed the impulse to ignore this braided vine. I knew better, so I took a long deep breath and looked straight at it with soft question eyes.

My body unleashed this silent torrent:

I can’t relax because I can’t trust you.

You let other people hit me. You did stupid things that got me hurt. I could forgive that.

But you hurt me, too. You crammed me with food and made me throw it up. You cut me, on purpose, until I bled. You bruised me with our fists. You punched things until skin came off our hands on purpose. You decided not to eat lunch, not to eat dinner, over and over again. You said we didn’t need food. You made me sit in a chair in front of a screen, clicking and typing for hours with no other movement. You didn’t get up and drink water when I said I was thirsty. You didn’t listen when I said I had to pee—how many times did you get us infected doing that??

You dissociated and left me all alone. You pretended I didn’t exist—that I was invisible—to make yourself feel safe. You largely forgot the back half of me existed.

I’ve been carrying all the things you turned away from, and all you can do is complain about me being tense.

How could I trust you?

And you still do some of these things.

And when I saw and felt the feelings twisted up in this, I saw this strand was another twisted braid of grief, shame, and anger.

The major strand—the one I felt wash through me—was grief. Deep, deep sadness upon acknowledging that every unspoken word my body said was true. Seeing with excruciating clarity how much I have taken my own unacceptable feelings out on my physical body, how much I have abused it. And how I still do, most often in subtle, neglectful ways. Seeing the ways my definition of self-care has some sections scrawled over with black Magnum marker.

The grief makes space for the shame and anger to be seen, to nestle in, to be woven into understanding. Seeing the historical rage that I turned on myself because I did not know where else to put it. Seeing one part of me identifying my body as “me,” deciding that we would not be suffering so if that “me” were sufficient or good, and demanding punishment. The self-blame because it was intolerable to admit that those who should be caring and loving were not able to provide those things.

Seeing the shame I feel over how I have treated myself, because these are the marks of “crazy.” Sometimes literally so. Feeling like I should be farther away from this sort of treatment of myself. Anger with and judgment of self for not being farther away. Fearing the fact that I am not is “proof” of something scary, and so feeling the need to hide.

The sickening inversion of the realization that the only person I have to protect myself from in day-to-day life is… myself.

Knowing that my body is, in actuality, quite a bit pissed off at me.

And sitting with it all, taking it all in with soft eyes and heart. I expected at any moment to find myself sobbing, but I did not. Instead, I rode my breath through waves of constriction and nausea and felt my heart cracking. Grief sees, it enfolds, it enlarges.

There is no mourning without celebration, so where is the celebration in this?

I have the ability to change this. Through listening closely to my body and exquisitely caring for it, I can begin to win back its trust.

I scheduled a Rolfing Ten-Series, went to the first one, and several days later my body is telling me this. The process of gaining its trust has begun.

Just the phrase “winning back my body’s trust” brings up that sharp sadness again. Shoulds against myself. “I shouldn’t have to do this.”

But I can, and I am, and there is the celebration.

All I have to do is let the soft animal of my body love what it loves.¹

My body loves melting in the sauna.

1. 
   

   Wild Geese, by Mary Oliver

   You do not have to be good.
   You do not have to walk on your knees
   For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
   You only have to let the soft animal of your body
   love what it loves.
   Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
   Meanwhile the world goes on.
   Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
   are moving across the landscapes,
   over the prairies and the deep trees,
   the mountains and the rivers.
   Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
   are heading home again.
   Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
   the world offers itself to your imagination,
   calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
   over and over announcing your place
   in the family of things.

   [↩]

Another study on sense of time
Vrabel, Christopher J. (2009) Sense of Time, Inhibition and Working Memory in College-Aged Students. PhD dissertation. Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

Inhibition was not related to time reproduction or time discrimination. In addition, time reproduction was not related to working memory, ADHD or trait anxiety. However, time discrimination was related to working memory, self-report symptoms of ADHD and trait anxiety. Subsequent analyses showed that visuospatial working memory predicted above and beyond verbal working memory. When tested in a stepwise fashion, self-report measures of ADHD and trait anxiety both predicted significant variance in time discrimination ability above and beyond working memory. Further analyses showed that, although participants were able to solve medium level time discrimination items using working memory, as the level of difficulty increased and exceeded the capacity of working memory, participants were forced to rely more on their sense of time. The results of this study provide evidence that symptoms of ADHD and anxiety are related to “purer” deficits in sense of time as related to an internal clock.

I could have told you that
Caci, Hervé; Bouchez, Jacques & Bayté, Franck J. (22 April 2009) “Inattentive Symptoms of ADHD Are Related to Evening Orientation.” Journal of Attention Disorders : early view.