Self-care begins with one’s body

What could it mean to practise a regimen of regular gratitude for all the cellular grace our body offers? Representation pic

By now moisturising my body after a shower has taken on the potency of a ritual, an aspect of my daily administration that brings me pleasure. I remember a time, at the height of career-related stress, when tending to my skin felt tedious. I felt overwhelmed by its neediness, its desperation for hydration. It bothered me that I couldn't travel overnight anywhere without carrying along a skin cream. About two years ago, during therapy, I made a commitment to my body to act solely in the interests of its well being. Since then I have come to love its surface area. Sometimes when I moisturise every part of me I think about the act of touching my flesh, massaging it gently, spreading the cream into my pores and I anticipate the sense of relief that will accompany me for long after. Most of the time it is about a simple post-shower ceremony, an application that involves my fingers and palms and a spreading across surface and an ensuing glow my body experiences, sometimes to the beat of a funky Spotify playlist.

Yesterday, as I was applying the Arnica oil my mother-in-law gifted me to render the skin over my belly more elastic, thereby less prone to itchy stretch marks, I thought about how well my body has been doing through my pregnancy simply because I have had to tend to it even more diligently. My navel still hasn't turned out fully and as I begin my 32nd week, I am happy to report only two marks on either side of my lower belly that resemble lightning bolts. Because I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes and have had to monitor my blood sugar daily and eliminate all forms of refined sugar from my diet and focus on consuming more complex carbohydrates I have actually lost weight. I feel fitter and have good amounts of energy. Most significantly, I do not suffer from insomnia or discomfort at night, and I wake up feeling rested. Last evening I suddenly found myself thanking my body for all its generosity. For being stable and carrying me and the baby through the last 31 weeks and offering so much strength and wisdom.

And as I did that, as I thanked my body it struck me that this was not something we are programmed to do. We are conditioned to vocalise gratitude to all forms of external sources for our well being or for our recovery in the event of an illness. But what could it mean to practise a regimen of regular gratitude for all the cellular grace our body offers, whether able or disabled. Especially in this present moment within the larger arc of the pandemic, when, all over the world, cases are rising and the spread of Omicron becomes endemic and we're all uncertain about what toll an infection might take on us. Once again we are all attempting to boost our immunities to prevent infection, or treat the body if it is infected. Among the biggest lessons of the Pandemic was this - we cannot take our bodies for granted, and yet, as long as we find ourselves healthy, for most of us, taking the body for granted is the default mode.

I've written before about the complex process of re-associating my selfhood with my body, which involved learning to feel my emotions instead of negating or invalidating them. This was not easy to do, because it often means sitting with difficult thoughts. Where my impulse was to either distract myself or completely disregard a negative feeling, I had to recondition my mind to allow it to enter my consciousness and not repress it. Once it was within the range of my awareness, I had to sit with the feeling and do the work of understanding what was its trigger, and what my own role was in its instigation, and only after I have done the labour of processing it can I put it to rest. Somehow, allowing for such a practice led to a certain bodily realignment. For instance, I became more alert to situations that brought me pleasure and those that felt like obligations. I found myself voluntarily detracting from toxic circumstances. It became somehow easier to collaborate with my body when I began to respect it as not just a carrier of my selfhood but an intrinsic part of my identity.

The most crucial information I learned was related to stress. Once I had a better understanding of what led my body to a state of stress, and also what that state felt like physiologically and psychologically, I was able to eliminate those circumstances (and sometimes people) from my life. Sometimes it has involved earning less than I could. But I found that there was no point in having crazy deadlines in order to earn money if it meant I was always stressed out about work, and always in survival mode. I began to see how crucial this kind of cellular information is in the practice of self-care. I still have a lot more progress to make, but I'm grateful that I've managed to come this far.

Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D'Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx
Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.