11 JR’s Story: What Happens When You Listen to Your Body

Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem

Title:  JR’s Story: What Happens When You Listen to Your Body 

Episode 11:  April 24, 2020

Welcome to our podcast Coronavirus Crisis:  Carpe Diem.  Let us seize this day!  This twice-weekly podcast helps us rise up.  It helps us embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this time of crisis.  And our podcast does this through being thoroughly grounded in a Catholic worldview. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski with Souls and Hearts at soulsandhearts.com.  It is great to be together with you, thank you for tuning in.  

This is Episode 11 and its April 24, 2020.  This one is called JR’s Story: What Happens When You Listen to Your Body.  I am super excited about this episode, because we’re going to do a deep dive into the experience of JR, who is one of us in this podcast community, and what he discovered about himself in doing the guided reflection in the last episode. But first, a quick review:

We have been discussing our Catholic bodies in times of crisis, and how we can increase resilience through a better bodyset.  Remember that when I use the term bodyset, I’m referring to how our body affects us, how our physical reactions impact us and our dispositions and inclinations.  We are embodied beings, composites of body and soul.  Our physical bodies have a huge impact on us.   The state of our body, our relationship with our body, that’s bodyset.

So as I discussed with you last time, the main message about bodyset is that we need to listen to our bodies and respond in love to our bodies.  Last episode we focused on listening to our bodies and at the end, we did an experiential exercise where we did some really focused listening, to hear the messages from our bodies that we may otherwise be ignoring.  And that brought in some great responses from some of you, our podcast community members.  Nothing brings me as much satisfaction as hearing you really engaging with this podcast, taking in the information, doing the exercises, discovering new things about yourselves, and growing.  That is what this is all about.  

So before I share these emails, I’m going to suggest that if you have the time and the inclination, go back to the last episode, episode 10 titled Your Catholic Body and this Crisis:  Bodyset and listen if you haven’t done so already.  Go back to the last episode and really experience that exercise, truly listen in to your body with our guided reflection together.    Then come back and listen to the story of JR in Indiana, and what he experienced as he did the exercise from the last episode.  

Whenever I share these kinds of stories on this podcast, because they are so deep, and meaningful and personal, I always ask for permission from the person, out of respect.  If the person is not willing to allow me to share it on the air, that is totally understandable.  I really value your privacy.  These stories, though, illustrate the experiences that I so much want all of you to have, they show the possibilities of what you can learn and how you can change by deeply engaging with this podcast and with our community.

This is also a clear example of what this podcast community is all about.  It’s not about me, lecturing to a microphone off in my makeshift studio far away, and you, just listening alone, a passive recipient.  No.  This podcast is about engagement, it’s about relationship, it’s about connection, it’s about community and it’s about being pilgrims together in these hard times, in this valley of the shadow of death, Yes.  Be we are also together on the road to salvation.  I have responded to every one of you that has reached out by phone or by email, we’re a small enough community that we can do that together and that is a top priority for me.

So I want to start by thanking JR in Indiana for his openness and his willingness to share his experience from the last episode with all of you.  Thank you, JR.  I am going to read this as JR wrote it, because he expresses himself so well in his own words.  He emails me last Monday, four days ago:  

My back is physically out of shape due to lack of exercise (and I was diagnosed with some arthritis in my lower back a couple of years ago). Also, I have had to perform some physical home chores recently that I thought might be the cause of the pain.

I have been working hard at self-care: stretching, walking, a lot of time on my back with my legs elevated. Usually, this self-care would have worked by now; but not this time. I can move; but, not without pain.

This morning I followed your guided meditation and asked my back pain what it wanted to tell me. It said, “Slow down.”

I replied, “SLOW DOWN? I am on my fricking back and can’t move—I can’t go any slower. I am isolated—i can’t go any slower. I can’t find meaningful work—I can’t go any slower. I can’t engage with the Body of Christ—I can’t go any slower!

I have no idea what “slow down” means; but, I will take the suggestion to prayer and further meditation.

I write to him:  

I suspect that the pain has some deeper meaning.  I definitely think you are on the right track with taking the message to prayer and further meditation.  I also would check in with your pain again.  See what more it has to tell you.  You can do that on your own, or it might be helpful to play the relevant section in today's podcast over again if you want a little guidance on checking in.  But approach that pain and its message of "slow down" with curiosity, openness, acceptance if you can.  I get that part of you is frustrated with all the inconvenience of the pain.  See if that part can give you a little room to understand what's going on with the part that is in pain.

Dr. Peter,

Over the past twenty-four hours since my first meditation which gave me the words “slow down”. I have done meditation two more times--late last night and this morning.

The following may be more than you expected; but here goes:.

1)      Here is what I think I learned after the first meditation:

My unconscious, in the form of the little child in me, was saying slow down. The little child, still wounded, was trying to stop my chronological age by slowing me down physically.  It would take me longer to reach old age (death); If I couldn’t move as fast.  With the slowing down, then I would have more time for things to occur; i.e., healing, etc. (and I wouldn’t die!).

Let’s stop for a second here.  This is a great realization.  This is an example of how unconscious parts of us can work.  JR has identified a part of himself that was connected to his back pain.  When he focused in on that pain during the guided reflection, he discovered a part of himself that seems like a little child.   This is so common.  I firmly believe that we all have these parts of ourselves, parts that are young and often neglected or exiled.  These parts of us get trapped in the past, and they think and feel like children do.  Sometimes we condemn these parts of us as “irrational” but I’m going to tell you something.  It’s really important.  I wouldn’t say this part of JR is irrational.  This little part of him is trying to protect him from death, trying to help h...