Your Body's a Cuisinart?

Have you noticed that people in our society are CRAY-CRAY about their bodies?  Young and old people are obsessed with diet; exercise; fasting; Keto, Mediterranean and Vegan.  They pop pills, chug chemicals called health food and slam energy drinks.  Yet, we see extreme numbers of obese as well as depressed people.  

These unhealthful conditions come from one source:  ignorance.  Our ignorance of energy and the function of our very own bodycraft is making us crazy, fat, depressed, anorexic, stressed and addicted.  (To introduce a simple, effective means for becoming happy, vibrant and healthy, I’ll use the label “bodycraft” when talking about the “vehicle” in which you navigate life: your body.)

Teaching that the bodycraft is primarily for looking good is truly shortchanging the senses.  Sure, it’s pleasing to look at a beautiful, groomed or adorned person, yet sight is only one of our senses.

Let’s talk about the function or purpose of the bodycraft.  Your bodycraft is your embodiment in this life, it’s how you sense, experience and interface with the world.  But even more simply, your body functions as a Cuisinart.  Your bodycraft is a processor. 

Einstein said, “Everything is energy.”   To be alive is to PROCESS energy.  So a whale eats (takes in energy) and a whale swims, hunts, mates, plays, dives, jumps (expends energy) and then a whale eats (takes in energy).  And that’s what it does, all day, every day.

Similarly, in the presence of CO2, sunlight and water, a living tree photosynthesizes (takes in energy).  Then, creating glucose, the tree releases energy as oxygen and cycles through the process again. 

All living things engage in processes without thinking, because only humans have language to think with.  Yet the language we use to talk about our bodycrafts falls short in teaching how to live harmoniously and happily inside of them.  So here’s a short lesson.

Your bodycraft takes in physical energy as food, water, sleep, touch, sex and movement.  You then expend physical energy: in the gym, walking, at physical chores, gardening, mowing the grass, cooking; movement; anything that burns calories.  Then we fill up again.  That’s the whole process.  

If we ingest more than we burn, we are full, maybe overweight.  A simple talk about balancing what we take in with what we let out could help us understand.  Our caloric intake and burn determines our physical health.

Then there’s emotional energy we take in and let out.  An example of taking it in?  In traffic, a driver cuts your car off. The driver’s action triggers a charge in you and you react angrily.  The charge stays in you, unless you CONSCIOUSLY DISCHARGE. 

If we ingest more emotional energy than we burn, we are full, as in “I have one nerve left and you’re getting on it.”  So learning to empty emotionally, just as we burn physical calories, is crucial for stable emotional health.

When we make time and space to release emotional energy (by crying, yelling, writing, expressing, playing, sports, cheering for our team and so on), that’s caring for our bodycraft.  Just as we burn calories, we burn emotional energy.  Rather than wait for a trigger to release emotional energy, often at an unfortunate moment, on the wrong person, we consciously do our exercise, much like we would with physical, caloric energy, to release it. 

Physical energy burn is sanctioned in our culture; see the gyms, yoga studios, Tough Mudder, marathons and physical challenges.  Emotional energy release is stigmatized, on the other hand.  “Don’t cry, or I’ll give you something to cry about” is one example.  Taking responsibility for your bodycraft means you learn to be emotionally healthy and to empty out excess or charged emotions.  My future weekly blogs will address this over the next 6-8 weeks.  Emotional exercise or emotional release is the next great hurdle for evolving humanity and your bodycraft.

For a deeper exploration of Bodycraft, check out the A Nurtured Life episode below!