Last night's hoop practice was particularly rich. Having had a sore shoulder for much of the week, and a bizarre episode of overcaffeination on Thursday, I vividly felt the absence of discomfort in my body. Stretching out before practice, I reflected on the simple relief that quiet, relaxed, mind-present stretching can bring, really noticing the difference that came out of allowing my full attention to rest in my physical being. Having practiced an intense form of yoga for eight years, I got to a point where yoga itself dispirited me, and for the last 2-3 years I've essentially put it aside--it had become encrusted with thoughts and associations that made me feel intense and keyed up, as opposed to relaxed, free, full.

Now that hooping has dropped my center more resolutely into the actual center of my body (as opposed to residing, like a transient renter looking for a new place to live, in my head/thoughts, in the electric center of my brain) I have felt awareness in parts of my hips and back that is entirely new. The awareness is unrushed, quiet, and complete.

I realized while resting inside this slow movement how easy it would be for so many to benefit from the very low-impact exercise of simple stretching. I also realized that I, an extremely physically active person, rarely take time to stop what I'm doing and just stretch, just feel. So I understood how difficult it must be for someone who is inactive, unfit, and unhappy in their body to take this time to practice this kind of self-care and feel its richness.

My hoop practice itself zoomed by, easily yielding a score of new insights about moving with the hoop--exhilarating--separating undulations of the upper arm, moving from the soles of the feet as the hoop revolves around the core, new connections with the hoop on the legs--a delight. I marveled at the joy that is so readily available through engaging the whole body in rhythmic movement, and understood anew that the human body is meant to move, is built to move. I am certain that there are encodings built expressly for dance embedded in our genetic material. We are machines that can move as a poem moves--with intent, within structure, into grace.

Present within these recognitions was the conviction that each of us has the potential to find physical relief, joy, and, consequently health, through movement. I could feel the untapped power of pure physical awareness--how, if we can bring full attention to our bodies from within, we can identify with ease the places that don't feel "right", and we can nurture those places with profound relaxation, deep stretching, even self-massage. It struck me in the middle of one of these delicious moments that the love and respect of self that we can choose to bestow upon ourselves by honoring the body in this way is something that so many people desperately need--an easily accessible resource that can truly heal. But the thing is, so many people lack even the self-respect and self-love to even begin the process of taking time to nurture the body, to listen to its needs and respond with kind, loving hands. The healing these simple practices have brought to me--a former anorexic who saw my body as a queer windowshade that was pulled down awkwardly beneath my huge thought-stuffed head, as an incidental and confusing scaffolding that I was attached and condemned to--has been immeasurable: listening to my body, responding to my body, respecting what it is.

And yet--and yet--after a while as my thoughts drifted on, I realized that an underpinning of this line of thinking was that we have total control over our health, that we can always be free from pain if we listen closely and carefully enough. But we cannot be free from pain, whether it be physical, mental, or emotional--we have no guarantees (as my therapist likes to say). We might take every precaution and still develop stomach cancer. And ultimately there is no way to guard ourselves from death, of course. Death and pain, at some level, come into our lives, and they are not by definition punishments, or the consequences of bad choices. They simply are.

So what is the lesson here?

I have life, and blissfully I have, much more often than not, health and comfort in my body. My gratitude for these blessings, and my recognition that my life and health are gifts that have miraculously come into being through phenomena that I have no way of understanding, will leave less room for bitterness, resentment, and resistance when pain, physical challenges, and ultimately death come my way. I will be more present in the miraculous cycle of my own life. How else can we live? If we are afraid of pain, we are not appreciating the freedom from it that we now enjoy. If we are experiencing pain and hating it, we are preventing ourselves from discovering acceptance and, possibly, healing. I felt last night a new understanding that the more humbly and completely we appreciate the gifts that we are blessed with now, the less we will be shocked and unbalanced when life inevitably brings its slings and arrows. Gratefulness for the miracle of being. Thankful. Present. Alive.