How Active A Custodian Are You Of Your Own Body?

Back in 2016 I experienced a migraine that was unlike any I had experienced in the 30 years since my first one at aged 10. Not only was the pain beyond what I was capable of managing, the fatigue that followed, lasting some ten days, set off alarms that not all was good in the cerebral hood. For the first time in my life, my faith in my physical capacity was shaken.

After rolling through the alphabet of medical technology with a CT scan, MRI and two EEG’s, epileptogenic activity was found in my right temporal lobe. What resulted was an amazing odyssey to understanding the power and responsibility to my own health that continues to this day.

I had always been ‘health aware’. Even at the height of my hedonism, drinking heavily everyday along with several days a week of ‘recreational’ drug use, I ate well and exercised all the time. BUT what I did not understand was the level of commitment that should be going into the care of this body, compared with the level of commitment to ignoring it. The ratio of maintenance, compared with abuse of body, was vastly askew, yet I expected that my body should be untouched by this corrupted seesaw of care. Then when it went out of whack, I deeply did not understand that the bulk of work to fix what had gone wrong was up to me, instead, I looked to the external.

A classic example that still amuses me, was when I was about 25 years old, going to the doctor’s because I was having trouble getting alcohol down without feeling nauseous. The cure was pretty simple. The doc said, ‘ummm, stop drinking?’ A suggestion that I thought utterly absurd. All around me everyone was drinking, it was a rite of passage, a cultural norm. The messages were everywhere telling me that my body should be able to handle the daily consumption of poison, why else would it be advertised and participated in everywhere? Why would my aunts and uncles, friends, friend’s parents, famous people and role models be doing it? Why would it be legal?

There are so many things around us that promote a disconnect from the absolute ownership over our own body - poisons marketed as food, toxins sold as recreation, medication suggested without change of lifestyle advice and desires continuously enticed to keep us snagged to the external, distracting us from the immense value and capacity of our own physical form.

At the time of receiving my first yoga therapy practice, I had been impacted already for 10 months by my neural activity in a big way, on a daily basis. That first practice began a most incredible adventure in discovering the obvious - that every part of my body was mine to take care of; every bone, every organ, every cell. Mine. And my responsibility.

Around an hour a half a day, every day, I aim to give focused attention to looking after my physical, physiological and psychological health. It is after all, what supports my entire life. An hour and a half, just to move, breathe and meditate spread across morning and night; to keep reaffirming that this is not wasted time but in fact the most important thing I will do all day to maintain the quality of every action in my life. It is a commitment but nowhere near as much as what can result without it. At 46 years old, I feel stronger, fitter, wiser than I’ve ever been and I aim to keep that going until I’m 70, if I get to be so lucky. I want to be that person that’s available for others, to have the energy to help others, to carry physical and emotional load for those around me who are fragile, vulnerable or just going through a shitty time. I have a fire to be a superhero of service, to live in this body as comfortably as I can for as long as I can and that means effort on my behalf. Effort now for it to be effortless later.