Given how much life we still have ahead of us, we shouldn’t forget about our body, but don’t obsess about it either. Think about the activities you want to be able to do when you’re 90 and then recognize that if those things require physical strength and agility – and they do – you need to start to train for them now.
Your body is the rental vehicle you were issued at birth and you still have a lot of mileage ahead for your banged-up vehicle. Some of us maintain our vehicle with tender loving care and precision, while others drive like the Baja 1000 off-road motorsport race. Along the way, we all need a few pit stops as well as a skillful road crew for whatever conditions we may face.
Just as a car depreciates with time, so does your body. It’s being reclaimed by nature as you grow older. Nature is asserting her rights to decompose you. It’s not a curse. It may even be a blessing as it helps you to experience so much more than bodily pleasures and egoic mirror gazing. Beauty is more than skin deep. It’s our emotions and our relationships that sustain us into our later years.
One of my favorite days on our recent Indian trip was doing a morning yoga session outdoors with a young master and a gorgeous view, followed by a vigorous nature hike, and followed by a Shirodhara session at the end of the day. Shirodhara is a classical and well-established ayurvedic procedure of slowly and steadily dripping medicated oil on the forehead (and can also include a long-stroke massage). This procedure induces a relaxed state of awareness that results in a dynamic psycho-somatic balance. The National Institute of Health has shown that this treatment creates a significant improvement in mood scores and lower stress that leads to an alert calmness. I can attest to that as I’ve experienced that calm awareness each time I’ve done a Shirodhara, whether it be in India or the U.S. It’s a joy to feel at one with your body.
As they say, our body keeps score. That’s why I’m so excited to introduce our first MEA workshop dedicated to the value of bodywork and tapping into the internal wisdom stored in our body, Owning (Body) Wisdom. I learned how to give massages at both the Esalen Institute and Body Electric school and was tempted at age 25 to junk my Stanford MBA and become a massage therapist (a year later, I started a boutique hotel company which stressed me out and led me to getting a lot of massages). More than a quarter-century ago, I bought the largest spa in San Francisco and the largest Japanese communal bath outside Japan, Kabuki Springs & Spa, so I’m a bit of a spa slut.
Over the course of my past forty years, I’ve had, on average, a couple of massages per month, so I’m up to almost 500 massages in my lifetime. But, never have I had bodywork like the experience that Santa Fe-based Molly O’Brien has consistently offered me. She and one of her talented colleagues will be offering free one-hour massages to every single member of this upcoming cohort (we’ve never offered a free massage to a whole cohort). And, one of our lead MEA facilitators Laurie Hofmann, who was CEO of the Institute for Functional Medicine (and co-led an MEA workshop with Dr. Mark Hyman last month), will lead a couple sessions about how we tap into the wisdom of our body. We’ll have a breathwork expert join us and I’ll also talk about what my cancer journey has meant for me in terms of listening to my body.
If you love massages and bodywork and are curious about what functional medicine can do for you (especially if you’re facing a difficult health diagnosis), I heartily recommend you join us in Santa Fe February 10-15. Given that it’s over Valentine’s Day, it’s a perfect workshop for couples as well as individuals. Hope to see you as we appreciate our body as both a temple and a beat-up car.
-Chip