Networks

I have historically responded poorly to support from others. I remember telling a friend when I was a teenager that I didn’t trust her – or anyone else, for that matter – because girls can sometimes be mean to each other, and being a teenager is hard. I felt more comfortable with a hard shell, considered myself more lone wolf than pack animal. And when I encountered smiling faces telling me about the really great group they belonged to and maybe I would like to join, I shuddered at the thought, a feeling passing through me similar to trying to swallow something that has too much sugar in it.  

            But we never build anything of value in the world alone. The most important and meaningful accomplishments depend on community.

            My parents both were drawn South, to this land where I have spent most of my life, by the call of community that Martin Luther King helped speak into the world. My mom came from a cloistered life in Rochester, Minnesota, where she was as a nun, donning plain clothes and hoping to add her voice and work to the movement taking root in America. My father travelled from his insular Mennonite beginnings to add his voice too, finding a new home for himself in a vibrant and turbulent inner city. They met, married, and started a family in Atlanta, where I learned from the earliest about the Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King’s ideas about the Beloved Community.

“In a real sense all life is inter-related. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”

Martin Luther King, Jr, Letter from a Birmingham Jail

            Today I belong to the Atlanta Parks and swim at the Martin Luther King Recreation and Aquatic Center, where MLK’s words and pictures fill the walls. These words fill me with hope, because I am a member of the community he built, a community that endures these many years after he left this world. I see his face as he leans down to talk with his young daughter, Bernice; as he walks with his wife, Coretta; as he enjoys a swim the same way I do, in a pool that bears his name.

And I have learned, in time, to trust the love that has been extended to me from so many communities. AA meetings. Meditation discussions at the Shambhala Center. Bike rides. My writing group. A yearly gathering under a bridge at the winter solstice, listening to live jazz, huddling around a fire. Summer parties with my neighbors, into whose homes my courageous cat used to venture, entering into pet doors that were not hers. (I think about this: how she invited herself.) These intersecting communities form my personal experience of that inescapable network of mutuality; a webbing of souls that help me understand what it means to be a human amongst humans.

            A sense of belonging, of participation in various communities, of connection, allows our bodies to relax and to play. In my work, I am engaged with understanding the intimate, inner workings of the body and how to foster conditions for physical recovery and repair. Bodies that are braced for conflict necessarily borrow energy, incur what in PT parlance is called allostatic load. This physiological load we carry from moments of stress is hopefully paid back as we encounter situations where we feel safe and be ourselves. As a yoga student of mine said recently, participation in classes “creates the optimal conditions for my healing to occur.”

            This week I held an open house for my new business and found myself in a group of people from various walks of my life, this time coming together for an idea I had. A business, a small PT practice yoga studio, a new community. It is my hope to create a space where you can be yourself, whatever your physical situation is. As we gather in private sessions or group classes, the burden of physical challenge becomes easier to bear, because it is shared. Whatever imperfections we find, there will always be far more that functions beautifully along the inner landscape of our bodies. Learning our bodies from the inside out is one of the most fruitful endeavors in life, an endeavor not relegated to Olympians; our body is our home in this world.

This exploration might not be for you. But it might be. Either way, consider yourself invited.