sleeping body, slippy mind

Portuguese version here.

I wonder if it ever happened to you, during vacations (or any other period away from your routines), to wake up a little dizzy, lost, with a weird sensation of tiredness, with no apparent reason.

It’s not the first time this happens to me, and last week, after a few days in Azores, in the Island of São Miguel, I woke up like that. Then, I realized I was starting to feel like a smooth sausage (maybe because of the unusual amounts of bread, cheese, and wine I was taking daily), with less and less life and identity. It may sound exaggerated, but I really don’t know how to describe it better.

This sensation reached its peak the day we went doing thermal baths at Poça da Dona Beija, in the little town of Furnas. With my body submerged in the warm waters, the steam gently caressing my face, and my blood pressure (usually already low) going down to values that put me in a kind of cerebral anesthesia, I started losing the notion of time and my own body perception. For a few moments, I existed only in my thoughts, and I started a journey of thoughts about the imprisoned way we live our body experience. And no, I was not on drugs!

Minutes after coming out of the pool, I wrote the following:

“We can only be free in the now. I already know that. This simple learning transformed the way I see and stand in the world. I comprehend it very well, I already felt it, and I can find that freedom if I wish so. But the struggle against dissatisfaction remains a permanent fight in my daily life. I can distantiate myself from it, but it doesn’t ever leave me.

I passed the last few days on this wonderful piece of land, being haunted by the shadow of what I wasn’t doing. Of what I wished I have done. Feeling my body caught on the quicksand of hypothetical thoughts and the present running through my fingers without even sensing it.

Life is so short, and there is so much I want to love.

I’m so good right now. But am I really here most of the time?

Far away from home, where the rain runs after the sun, and the sun never stays that much. Here, away from my routines, from my streets, distant from approvals and other’s opinions, without social media, who am I, after all? Am I more of a dreamer and fearless, or more torpid and immobile?

Immobile – the body.

And when I say body, I don’t mean the hollow shell, but the physical form in a more global dimension. I want to denote the complexity of the body in its all existential context, its social representations, and the sensory experience lived through its use, as a transformational and interactive instrument with the surroundings – the soma.

I understand now that the suspended perception of my Self, emerged as a consequence of the poor attention I’ve been giving to the soma since I landed here. The autopilot of my mind is enjoying a free-pass day after day, and I can feel the almost absolute absence of body consciousness. And I need it to remember that I exist. I know I will meet myself again, sooner or later, in the sensations and in the interaction with the world.”

Those rambling considerations led me to finish that day with a very sweaty yoga session and start the next morning with two hours surfing in the Azorean sea. It was an essential move, cause it immediately changed my perspective on how satisfying the vacations were going. The physical activity pulled me to the present moment and brought me more awareness of lived experience, or at least I thought so. Becuse that was nothing more than a classical reaction to run away from what I’m about to explain next.

I remained with the disturbing question – why the hell am I not capable of feel and experience my body unless I push it to the limits in some way? Am I condemned to enter in this state of lethargy and alienation of the Self every time I go out of my usual context? Every time I stop training or doing projects?

Already on the plane, on our flight back, I was reading the book “Body Consciousness – A Philosophy of Mind and Somaesthetics” of the philosopher Richard Shusterman. It was from him that I first heard the concept of soma, as talking about the body on a much more comprehensive approach. In this passage, the author analyses and criticizes the way Michel Foucault explored the experience of corporeal pleasure, through super stimulation of the body, comparing to our current social behavior. It goes like this:

“Our culture’s constant lust for ever greater intensities of somatic stimulation in the quest for happiness is a recipe for increasing dissatisfaction and difficulty in achieving pleasure, while our submission to such intensities dulls our somatic perception and consciousness.

We cannot delight to the sound of our quietly beating hearts if we are in a noisy plane with loud music blaring in our earphones.

…

Our culture’s sensationalist extremism both reflects and reinforces a deep somatic discontent that relentlessly drives us, yet is felt only vaguely by our underdeveloped and insufficiently sensitive body consciousness.

Foucault’s anhedonia and extremism clearly express a common trend of late-capitalist Western culture, whose unquestioned economic imperative of ever-increasing growth also promotes an unquestioned demand for constantly greater stimulation, ever more speed and information, ever stronger sensations and louder music.

The result is a pathological yet all too common need for hyper-stimulation in order to feel that one is really alive.”

Suggestion or not, this excerpt hit me like a rock because it explained, in a very simple and practical way, my existential discomfort during the holidays. The absence of strong stimuli for several days, the relaxation of having no obligations or daily goals, culminating with the body numbness induced by the hot springs, left me in a state of total distress, craving for intensity. That went from the initial struggle with the inner voice telling me that I needed to do always more things, to the disturbing sensation of being "less alive".

We let ourselves chain us by external interests, blinded to our own elementary necessities, and we fall into the continuous wasting of the so rich experience that our bodies can provide us.

I came back with more clarity regarding the importance of developing and cultivating the body awareness. This body consciousness (as part of the wider concept of self-consciousness – mind, and body) might be one of the paths to regaining some power over the capitalist system that seduces us daily, in the labyrinth of consumerism, of always wanting what we can't have.

This way of living is transforming us as a species and our environment. It is creating distance from ourselves and each other.

Maybe we need to learn how to feel our body again, as babies feel their hands on the floor for the first time. To better understand what it really needs, so we can choose wisely what to do with it. Learn to be quiet, exploring the sensations, and accepting the emotions life offers us, without identifying with them. Understanding that we are a vehicle may set us free from the obligation of perfectionism and get us more in balance with the rest of the planet.

Sometimes I think we forget how much we depend on that balance!

Some practices as yoga, Tai Chi Chuan, biodanza, mindfulness, meditative exercises, and pranayama (branch of yoga that comprises the control of breathing and the movement of vital energy) aim to optimize the sensorimotor experience and promote psychological well-being. These practices and some others, not so well known in Europe, like the Feldenkrais Method, are being pointed by recent research as having enormous benefits on the improvement of human experience.

If you ever had a similar sensation, share your thoughts or reflections. If you already put into practice some action that helps you to be more connected to your bodily existence, I would be more than happy to learn from you, so please get in touch! You can reach me on Instagram or Facebook, or by sending a message on the About page.

Grazie!