Helpful Guidelines for Living in a Human Body
A list that's more relevant than you might originally think
“And thirdly, the code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules.”
~Barbossa from “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl” (and a favorite family quote)
The Buddhists (along with the internet) love lists.
It’s as if all of human experience can be summed up in the Eight Precious Somethings or the Ten Best Something-elses.
Drives me crazy.
But, unwilling to stand separate from my fellow meditators and online writers, I’ve decided to embrace this trend.
Here are my (current) “Helpful Guidelines for Living in a Human Body”
1. Appreciate your time in a body
For most of the folks I know, your relationship with your body is complicated. Between pain, illness, injury, and unpredictableness, it’s hard having a body that lets you down.
This is why it’s particularly important to have moments of gratitude.
Time here on earth is really short. Appreciate it. Even your struggles bring beauty to your life.
2. Everything changes.
Things get worse; things get better. We all know this so when our loved ones are struggling, we remind them that things will turn up.
The bad news is that when things are going well, they’re bound to be challenging again.
This is a hard truth and it’s difficult to remember when it comes to your physical health.
I have a client who has struggled with pain and discomfort in her body for years. Recently, she had a few months of feeling strong, capable, and relatively pain-free. It was like a miracle.
But when her struggles returned, she felt doubly unhappy about the change.
It’s common to imagine that your body’s normal state should be good, pain-free health, and that anything other than that is a dip below the baseline that needs to be corrected. But reality is different. There is no baseline, just constantly fluctuating experience–good, bad, and everything in between.
What’s even more complicated is that living in your body is multi- dimensional. “Good” or “bad” doesn’t begin to describe it. Instead, it tweaks, changes, and transforms–like smoke billowing in a breeze.
Nothing stays the same.
3. Health is equal parts what we control and what we can’t.
Common knowledge has lots of “shoulds” for health. We “should” walk 10,000 steps/day. We “should” eat 4-5 servings of fruits and vegetables. We “should” get 7-8 hours of sleep every night.
While these guidelines make sense, they also create a sense that:
We can control our health if only we do the right thing.
There is a knowable answer.
If our health is bad, we are to blame for it. We did something wrong. We ate the wrong food or should have used organic dish soap.
Actually, much of our lives just happen. Fate, destiny, chance–whatever you call it, lots of things happen outside your control. There are no guarantees. You can’t eat sweet potatoes and know that nothing bad will happen.
This seems so obvious but observe yourself carefully. Do you question why you’re sick when you took all the right precautions? Do you blame an illness on eating sugar the previous week?
To be clear, it makes complete sense to put the odds in your favor. To the best of your ability, exercise and eat well. Do whatever you can to make things easier for your body.
But once you do, you let go. Be soft.
Q: Why 5000 [steps]?
It’s a round number which makes it legal currency,
It’s about twice as many steps as I’ve been averaging these last two years - lost as I was in some kind of chronic-fatigue long-covid vortex
It’s also half as much as we’re told to do…which is perfect because I don’t like being told what to do.
~David Venus in “Do something about this…”
David Venus is an example of someone who is doing this masterfully. He’s walking a little more, a challenge but not a stress, and he’s sticking to what is healthy for his body. Most importantly, he’s enjoying the process.
He’s doing what he can and letting go of the rest.
4. See your tendencies clearly (aka Don’t make trouble for yourself).
There’s lots to be stressed about. That’s very real.
And yet…
There is also a big chunk of our pain and discomfort that we create for ourselves.
When I hurt my back, the pain was excruciating. There were moments when I could only crawl because standing was too difficult. My daily life unraveled and as a single mother, I was inclined to feel sorry for myself. It was hard to continue in those circumstances.
When I noticed my self-pity, I decided to shift and become curious. Once I made that change, the pain was actually interesting. It fluctuated and morphed–a lot like a kaleidoscope of sensations and experiences.
This made the pain more tolerable and deepened my relationship with my body.
I’m not saying my body ever became comfortable during that time. However, once I saw my self-pity more clearly and I stopped stressing about the stress, things got easier. I relaxed and asked for help. Now I see my back injury as one of the most profound experiences of my life.
Give these guidelines a try
Like all lists I read, these four guidelines seem overly simplistic and obvious. My impulse (and probably yours) is to skim through them and dismiss them as shallow.
But in my experience, I bump up against these principles over and over in my life.
I’m not alone. I regularly remind my clients that their injuries are not their fault. I encourage them to see their habits more clearly. I remind them that moving in their body can be joyful.
So here’s my advice: pick one guideline and check in with it throughout your day. What do you notice? Does it come easily or hard? How could it make being in your body more comfortable?
I love that you weaved in Pirates of the Caribbean about a post about living well. It's a favorite POTC quote, second only to "but why is the rum gone?" That reminder that so much is not within our control is a good one. I'd wager we have less control over our health than we think.
I laughed out loud at the Buddhist reference as it is so true. Impossible to live by that many principles. Four is manageable and so is the idea that we do our best and things still happen that we have to make our peace with. And, happily, I read somewhere that just 3,000-4,000 steps lowers your risk of heart disease and death and now I win steps every day!