There are many legends about the famous statue of the Madonna in Central France.
Notably, that she is black, and historically, that she was beheaded in the French Revolution.
That statement should be enough for each of us to write a thesis, and I could go on and on, but I’m going to start with this metaphor.
The Lady Madonna was separated head from body by white patriarchal affluent men, attempting to control society.
So, instead of launching into the number of historical significances of this circumstance, I want to talk about YOU.
When did you discover that your head had been separated from your body?
For me, it was postpartum, when I discovered that I couldn’t find certain muscles and muscle groups in my abdomen and my pelvis. Has this phenomenon happened to you? Did your trainer ever say, “hold your core muscles in,” and your brain and body just couldn’t connect that?
I find more and more, through helping women, especially, that this is true, either through a major life change or through trauma. Or both.
I started going down the rabbit hole today of how many ways women are asked to separate their brains from bodies.
For many women in many societies, they are told long before they are women that their bodies are required to fit into a certain mold… usually, a very small mold. And if you don’t fit that mold, you need to take drastic action to make that happen.
Adolescents are told that their bodies in themselves, without any other reason, just for BEING female, are distractions, objects, and lures for unwanted advances from men and boys… AND that it’s not the males’ fault. The men and boys in question are merely slaves to their masculine hormones, and YOUR job as a female is to hide when appropriate, and by overtly sexual when appropriate… and you better not get the two confused.
Women are told constantly that their job is to use that body for the satisfaction of the male in their life, to harbor children, and then to make sure that body is absolutely perfect before, during, and immediately after childbirth. It’s an ever-moving target, and you better be certain that you are hitting it.
I think many of us now are starting to see the number of holes and flaws in this patriarchal paradigm, but it doesn’t mean that we are free from it.
It does mean that we have work to do, and a lot of the work is merely reconnecting our minds, bodies, and spirits so that we can start to be the whole people God intended for us.
I made this meditation to start to help you reconnect, and I do hope it helps you. Let’s talk about your mind body connection and how to start that process. I find it’s not the same for any 2 people, but we can start to bridge the gap through old, tried and true processes… namely, a breath practice.
Many scholars of the divine and science have linked our breath to our connection to ourselves and our energetic beings. The idea is not that you have to be perfect in your breath work, or be completely able to silence the mind in order to do breath work, but that you just practice.