Mind/Body/Spirit

Today, I stepped way outside my comfort zone. I did something I have never done, with people I have never met at a place I only started going to in the last week. It was, for absolutely no reason, scary, but I also haven’t felt this energized in many, many years. But I am getting ahead of myself, it didn’t “just happen.” It was a conscious decision, and the following is what led up to it. 

We are each made up of mind, body and spirit; these three aspects work in harmony and the better we balance and are in tune with them, the better we will feel. In less than six months, my world has undergone significant changes. I turned 63 years old, I retired and, factoring in the continuing ramifications of my social circle implosion, nothing, it seems, is the same. It’s not all bad; in fact, it’s not even mostly bad; it is a thing and it must be adapted to. That is where this “mind/body/spirit” triad comes into play. I feel, for no direct reason, disharmony. It’s nothing new, it has come and gone over my many years. But this time, it’s at a time when everything is mostly good – even those social ramifications, now no longer new, have proven beneficial. So, why the disharmony? It’s because of balance and neglect – specifically, neglecting my spirit and my body. Of the two, my body is most neglected. That does not mean I am unhealthy, but it does mean that I have not moved either very much for a long time.

My spirit underwent a literal overhaul when I stopped drinking and drugging. For my more than 21 years of sobriety, spiritual work has been not just desirable, not just important, but absolutely necessary. Prior to that, I never gave it even a seat at the table, dismissing “spirituality” and its derivatives as various forms of silly. Even in sobriety, being an atheist, I struggle with the idea/belief of spirituality. They say that spirituality and religion are not the same thing and that sobriety is a spiritual journey, but many of their walks don’t match their talk. Can it be done with just a mind/body paradigm? Sure, I did that too, and I do not discount others who see the world that way. For me, spirituality could very well be folded into “mind,” but I find it more effective leaving it separate, mystical and always new. All that said, my spirituality has not been new in a very long time – it is stagnant.

As has been my body. I was in a near-fatal crash more than 25 years ago. Prior to that, the combination of my age (37 at the time), good genes and a pretty active lifestyle meant my body could and would do just about anything I asked of it. While I was physically fit, my mind was clouded by drugs and alcohol such that I was often on auto-pilot. As far as spirituality went… as I said, that was for fools. Although I was in serious imbalance and disharmony, I didn’t know it and would not have cared if I did. After waking up in the hospital five weeks after my wreck, that began to change, but it was slow and extremely difficult.
 

My body, with only some minor limitations, eventually recovered. After getting sober, my mind woke up all on its own, returning to a place of inquisitiveness, curiosity, critical thinking and even assertion that it once was many years prior. Continuing my education supercharged it—of the three, my mind has been healthiest and, for the most part, not stagnant. It has been more stagnant since I retired, but I find it relatively easy to get back to that always new place. These words are an example of that – right here, right now. However, my body has suffered the most stagnation. Over the past two decades-plus, I have gradually become decreasingly active. Spiritually, I have rested on my laurels; I have not pushed its boundaries, or expanded on what it is, means or how it operates.

That brings us full circle. Last week I took measures to remedy that balance and that harmony. Today was but one very small piece of that overall puzzle. I engaged in a physical class that I am deliberately not naming, because the last thing I want is to be inducted into a lifestyle brand or viewed as a new-age convert. It does not matter what the specific movements were; what matters is that I have taken a step outside of what is comfortable, familiar and easy to enter into the unknown. Did I like it? Yes and no; no one likes discomfort, but that is what it takes to get where “there” is. Did I like the activity itself? It is too soon to tell, but I did not hate it, so there is that. Right now, the big deal is that I put myself out there again for the first time in a long time, and that I do like.

And I am not done. Tonight I have another, different activity in a place that is new, around people I have never met before, doing something I have never done before. It’s not to be “bold” and “overcome fear,” although that is a side-effect, it is to repair the rift between my mind, my body and my spirit, to wake them the fuck up and start working together so that I can get this old me moving again to enjoy the years I have left. And, if I do it right, I might just add a few years to them.