The Body is the Bridge to the Soul

I have been thinking about my body a lot recently.?I’m training for the Boston marathon.?And hopefully the Leadville marathon after that on Father’s Day.?I have a wonderful coach and equally wonderful nutritionist.?I had an injury recently that gave me time to completely reset everything.?To start over trusting my coach and my nutritionist to put away some old damaging behaviors and start anew, looking to be joyful in my movement and my fueling and never take for granted for one moment how lucky I am to inhabit this 58-year-old body that is capable of such cool stuff.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about the mind/body connection as well as continuing to deepen my connection to soul.?My coach Christopher teaches me that to run well, to run with intention, to run with joy, I need to cultivate love.?I have been praying and meditating .?Spending time with other men speaking of love and profound loss, sharing our souls. Looking at my vulnerability as a super power rather than a weakness.

I am an alcoholic and addict in recovery.?One thing I know for sure is that a sick mind cannot cure a sick mind. The brain only gets in the way of the alcoholic who is attempting to stop drinking.?It just doesn’t work.?Ever.?Us drunks must surrender.?We need each other and we need to discover some relationship to heart, to a higher power of our own understanding.?It is often said the longest twelve inches for any drunk is the distance between the head and the heart.?My first sponsor Tony said my recovery would drip one drop at a time from my head down into my heart until my heart was full of love.

Last week, I took a breath-work class with my old workout friend and now inspiring leader Iona Holloway .?She taught me the power of my own breath to chance my habitual patterns.?Iona talks about the body as the bridge between our mind and our soul.?I like that so much.?Too often, for me, we seem to want to jump straight from sick thinking to spiritual answers.?But we are a body first. ?“Creature first, human second” as Iona says.

For me, getting out of my head and fully into my body is a big first step towards spiritual development.?At its core, my problem is that oldest, most reptilian part of my brain so often overrides everything, even when I have no conscious idea what is happening (for more on the reptilian brain see this piece on the male soul ).?I live in my “fight or flight” response thinking there is a tiger around the corner when it is just my loving dog, Cooper.

The reason for breath work particularly paired with extreme cold swimming (a group of crazy awesome friends and I have been swimming in the 40-degree Boston harbor each Thursday at sunrise for a while now ) is that it helps regulate the nervous system.?It’s a way of telling the reptilian voice shouting in your mind to fuck off...by fighting through the discomfort with resonance breathing to come home to the body even amidst the cold.

We often say in recovery that the point of the process is to clear away everything that stands in between us and God .?We are implicitly talking about the trauma which colors the lens with which we look at the world. We must shed that darkness. Luminosity is our natural state.

Where does the trauma live??In the body.?We cling to it, sure this is the only safe way to pass through the earth, never knowing what is wrong and that there is another way.

I love dogs and horses.?I had a Bernese Mountain Dog named Zeus who was my spirit animal.?I still dream about him.?His eyes were infinitely deep with love.?He kept me standing through a dark passage.?Now I spend my days with a golden named Cooper who is just as Zen-like as Cooper was but more affectionate with strangers and other dogs.?He has never met a creature he doesn’t want to greet with a big dog-hug.

I rode horse in rural Western Massachusetts growing up.?Nothing formal.?Just bareback through the woods as a middle schooler with some girl several years my older who I had a crush on.? The girl did not acknowledge my existence, but I learned to love my horse.

Twenty years ago, my true love Elena and I started going out west together to ride horses each summer.?Idaho, Colorado, and for the last 15 years Montana. That very first summer with Elena, I remembered the sacredness of being with horses.

Animals see the trauma in our bodies that we can’t see ourselves.?Zeus stuck to me like glue, following me around the house and laying at my feet because he was so worried about me.?Cooper comes running down the hall to lay next to the day bed in my office so I can rub his head and ears because he knows I am down and need a little extra love.

Horses are the most intuitive animals I have ever spent time with.?You may think you are calm when you get on a horse, but the horse will let you know if that is true.?They are a perfect mirror for what is REALLY going on with you.?They sense the trauma in your muscles and react.?I might think I am relaxed, but my horse tells me otherwise. He forces me to look inside.

My horse demand that I begin to process the old hurts enough to be with him in true serenity.?If my body is tense, even though my mind tells me that I am calm, my horse is going to get pissed.?He is going to say to me, “What the fuck?”?And I have to figure out what is going on in your body real quick.

I have received so much love from my dogs and learned so much about myself from spending time with horses.?They can’t talk.?All they can see is my body.

This all explains why I love to move so much--to run, ride, swim, running stadiums with my two sons and November Project, to go to Crossfit, to row .?Since I was a very young boy, running has been my safe place.?A place where my mind shuts down, I hear my breathing and my foot falls, and can sink deep into simply “being” in the world. My running now is a return to that boy with love in my heart.

I am not afraid to ask for help with my body.?Sometimes interventions by professionals is just the ticket. I have had several great body workers who have changed my life.?Most recently I have been working with Chris at if you happen to live in Boston.?I also recently went to a two-hour Thai massage with Grace .?That woman walked on me, used her hands, knees, elbows, and whole body to massage me, stretch me, and massage and stretch me at the same time! Finally, I also recently had an online Reiki session with Krysta-Lyn .?I have found the human touch very helpful in moving the energy, healing what is broken, and bridging to my essence, my soul.

Breathe, get cold, move, hang out with creatures to remember you too are a creature, and seek out human touch.?We all deserve the joy and love in our hearts that is our birthright.?The bridge to the soul is through the body.