The body I am
If someone says "I have a body", he can be asked "Who is speaking here with this mouth?"
Wittgenstein, On Certainty, ยง244
So, do I have a body or am I a body? Gabriel Marcel makes a distinction between being and having which applies as well to my bodily existence. I can say that I have a body and look at it in a disassociated manner or I can say I am a body, because, well, my body and me are a whole, I couldn't exist without a body - not in this world anyway. As Paul Smith-Pickard once beautifully said: "you never see minds walking down the street".
The Cartesian split of mind from body is really out of date, but then again I rarely come across people that "are a body", or at peace with their body and its possibilities. It's a tricky thing because on one hand you can't control all your biological processes, so you have a body, on the other hand you live with all those processes, so you are a body.
Sometimes I get completely pissed off that my body acts on its own ways, some others I think it's practically in harmony with what I'm experiencing at the moment. For example, there are times that I have a headache and I catch myself thinking "damn you stupid head" and there are times that I'm so tensed that getting a headache seems the normal way to be. I mean how can I feel awful and never getting a body sign? I think the only way is if you're completely detached -either from your feelings or from your body.
I have quite a responsive body, I mean I always have a sign (maybe a stomachache, or a headache or something) when something bothers me. I usually don't like it but my therapist used to say "your body is wise, trust your body".
What about our clients? Do they trust their body signs? Do they listen to what their bodies are trying to tell them? And if we are our bodies, don't we already know what's going on? Do we need a body signal? Or are the signs just in accordance with what we're experiencing at the time? And what should we tell to a client whose body suffers and so is she/he?
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