Your Body is Sacred

Part 1 of the 4-part series, Unlearning Capitalism. To receive future modules - which include guided meditations and reflection prompts - in your inbox, sign up here.

Daily Practice as a Soothing Balm

The Virgo archetype teaches us the wisdom and benefits of devotion: of tending to something consistently, diligently, with a loving heart and discerning eye. As we move through this course, I encourage you to recommit to the daily practices that soothe you and that honor your entire self as sacred.

Our bodies were designed to process complex situations, connect on a deep level, and to heal themselves when sick. Our bodies are incredible systems, so resilient and strong in their own unique ways. But these bodies, which have evolved for millenia and can survive in almost any climate, have a limit.

Consider an ancestor of yours that lived 10,000 years ago. Imagine someone very similar to you - someone full of hopes and dreams, full of the same needs and desires. Imagine them going for a walk after something stressful occurred and looking out upon a still, serene lake at sunset. They pause for a few moments and take some deep breaths, soaking in the beauty in front of them. After a time, they slowly walk home, sit by the fire, and have a hot meal with their loved ones. The spaciousness and natural beauty inherent in their life allows them the mental and emotional clarity with which to feel grounded after a difficult encounter, and they can move forward in a healthy way.

At the risk of idealizing ancient cultures, I would argue that a lifestyle such as that above is more aligned with our true nature than the way(s) that most of us live today. In her book The Nature Fix, Florence Williams cites research demonstrating that when humans lived closer to nature, the stressful experiences they had were more balanced by the calm, quiet, stunning beauty of the natural world.

In modern culture, we don’t get the same deep resets that our ancestors did. We may not have scary encounters with wild animals, but we still experience stress. The difference now is that many of us have nervous systems that are constantly in a heightened state, bombarded by the effects of living within a civilized culture with capitalism feeding its roots.

Capitalism’s Beginnings and Manifestations

Capitalism is “an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit” (Wikipedia, 2019). It’s so steeped within our daily lives that it’s like the air that we breathe. Most of us are so used to it that we can’t imagine any other way of living or working. The problem is that capitalism breeds and depends on inequality and is only made possible through slavery and the destruction of entire communities across the world (see Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici).

For our purposes here, capitalism is the system through which we work and make a living for ourselves. We work for wages, receiving money for our physical, emotional, or mental labor. Our wages are necessary in order to pay for things that should be basic human rights, like housing, medical care, food, and education. If we aren’t able to work, we’re largely denied a dignified existence, dependent upon a patronizing and ill-equipped state government.

Living within this kind of system - where our basic needs can only be met if we receive wages from others who own the means of production - is a nightmare for many people. Communities and families break down, slavery is still necessary in order for the machine to operate, and those of us with the privilege to make the system work well enough are still wracked with anxiety over how we’ll pay our bills.

It makes sense that rates of depression and anxiety are on the rise in the United States and global West, and it’s foolish to blame individuals for not coping better. Anxiety and despair are understandable responses to the structures that we have set up in this society, especially among those who are most marginalized by it: namely, those who have been impoverished by low-wage work and unmanageable expenses.

The ancestor you imagined previously was most likely part of a small group of around 100 people that practiced a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. They ate a wide variety of foods and were never dependent on one type of crop. They hunted or gathered for an average of 2-3 hours per day and spent the rest of the time processing their food, eating it, resting, and enjoying leisure activities.

In order for civilization and capitalism to evolve, the land your ancestors hunted on or foraged from had to become privately owned and turned into farmland. Communities could no longer tap into large swaths of land, which stored hundreds of food sources. With privatized land and agriculture came the slow demise of the ecosystems, the soil over-burdened by the production of mono-crops like wheat and corn. Private landowners owned those crops, which meant that instead of your ancestors going out and getting food whenever they needed it, they had to find somewhere to work for eight or more hours per day in order to pay for the food that they used to go out and get in two to three hours (for more on this, check out my interview with Peter Michael Bauer).

So today, you likely work more than three hours per day for your wages and then also tend to your basic needs such as buying and cooking food, doing your laundry, paying your bills, and squeezing in some rest here and there. Your life may be full of joy and peace, and I truly hope that it is, but in my ideal world, the work that you love to do would be done because you want it to be, not because you have no other means by which to live.

We need a new economic system founded in justice for the planet and all of its inhabitants. But until that happens, we each need to find ways to cope with the realities of modern life. Creating a daily practice that feels centering to you will not only help you to manage stress, but it can also help lead you into ways of being in service that honor the challenges of these times.

Reclaim the Sanctity of Your Physical Form

Capitalism requires us to move faster and produce more, and the goal of creating a daily practice in the way that I mean it is to actually claim your right to move slowly and produce less. Not because you have nothing to give the world, but because moving at a manic pace is destructive and unholy. To approach our work as sacred is about claiming the peace and calm that is our birthright, and there are techniques we can use every day to do so.

Annie Dillard wrote, “how we live our days is, of course, how we live our lives.” Each day is a microcosm of your life: your attitude, your choices, and the path you’re building toward your future. In modern society, there’s a lot of pressure to be doing more, and a myopic focus on self-development. But as we’ve seen, you are one person living within a system that seeks to grind you down to your dusty bones, and I hope you’ll give yourself permission to simply do your best. While it’s true that our days are important building blocks for our lives, most of us need to release the pressure to make every 24-hour cycle as productive as it can be. My hope for you is that you allow every day to be as kind and beautiful as it can be, making way for a Spirit-led life.

My work has been incredibly nourished by my daily practices, and it’s where I start with most of my one on one clients. I encourage you to take what I have to share and make it your own. At a high level, here’s how I envision a healthy, helpful daily rhythm when it comes to work:

It begins with a morning practice of some kind. The workday is rhythmic, includes meaningful breaks, and is contained within an attitude of sanctity.

What that looks like will be different for each of us, but at a foundational level, you deserve to move through workdays that (at the very least) don’t drain you of all your resources. No matter what you do for work, implementing some or all of the practices I’ll share can help you navigate each day in a better way. Here are the top four ways I recommend beginning. I’ll list them and then share more details for each one.

A solitary morning practice
A container for beginning and ending work
A rhythmic working style
Ongoing energetic hygiene

You might feel like these four practices are too basic, but they are the basics for a reason. These foundational pieces, when nurtured and made your own, can greatly improve your body’s experience throughout your workday.

A solitary morning practice

Having quiet time to yourself when you wake up is an excellent way to set intentions for the day and center yourself for what’s ahead. Notice how you feel waking up to an alarm, rushing to get ready for work, get your kids ready for school, or otherwise get on with your day. Without claiming space before the day begins, you get pulled into the torrent and are likely to start your workday feeling rushed and scattered.

Creating a dedicated time and place every day where you know you’ll have the chance to take a breath, write, or just enjoy a quiet cup of coffee can truly change your life. You deserve to stand on a strong foundation for your day, and a dedicated morning practice can give it to you. Reverend angel Kyodo williams once said that not meditating daily is like eating and eating but never digesting your food. Taking quiet space for yourself regularly is a necessary way to metabolize your emotions and experiences.

My morning practice has changed over the last six years, especially since I became a mother. There have been long gaps without it as my children have learned to sleep on their own or as schedules have shifted. But as with anything we’re devoted to, I return to it again and again for nourishment, and I hope you’ll implement or recommit to your own practice as well.

Not only is a morning practice a balm for your nervous system, but it also sends a signal to The Cosmos that you are a serious person who is dedicated to receiving information and walking your path in a good way.

A container for beginning and ending work
 
Most of us are constantly connected to work via our phones and computers, and it can be incredibly draining to feel like we’re always “on.” Creating containers around our work is a useful way to help the body know when to focus and when to relax.

Consider how you begin and end your workdays. Are there clear thresholds that you cross or routines you use to tell yourself “now I’m working,” or “now I’m not”? The easiest way I’ve found to create a container is to manipulate your physical environment in some way. For me, it’s getting my workspace ready and lighting a candle. At the end of my working time, I blow out the candle and clean up my workspace. This helps me release the work and have a sense of accomplishment.

Other useful tools could be using the commute to and from work as a threshold, changing clothes as soon as you’re done with work, or using lists at the beginning and end of the workday (first, priorities and then, what was accomplished).

I encourage you to consider new ways to create structure around your efforts so that the demands don’t bleed into every area of your life. By doing so, you approach the work with intention, honoring your own time and energy.

A rhythmic working style

You may already know about the research demonstrating how much more effective it is to work in 90-minute bursts with meaningful 15-minute breaks in-between. And if you haven’t, you can simply look it up to learn more - it’s a common “life hack” approach. To work rhythmically is simply to work in alignment with your natural energy flows, and it will look different depending on you, your body, and your work environment.

Some of us have more control over our workdays than others, so empower yourself to make whatever changes you can. This is really about noticing how your body most wants to work and honoring its needs. Again, you are a precious person, both physical and divine. You are not a machine that should be working at the same pace all day.

Here’s what my working rhythm looks like on a good day, in case it’s helpful to you: I work in 60-90 minute chunks, starting each day with the most creative and intellectually demanding work. I take meaningful breaks, which means that I get away from my computer for at least 10 minutes and nourish my body in some way - through a snack, water, stretching, etc. I often save face to face work and administrative tasks for later in the morning or the afternoon. I don’t leave email open and only check it within contained periods of time. I also keep my cell phone on “Do not disturb” so that I’m not distracted by notifications.

Working rhythmically is natural and easy to begin implementing in small ways if you feel like you can’t re-design your entire workday. You could start by playing around with focused chunks of work, getting up for 10 minutes at a time, or signing out of email for as long as feels possible to you.

Ongoing energetic hygiene

You’re probably used to washing your body and brushing your teeth regularly, but are you cleaning off the gunk of the workplace in a consistent way? Just like secondhand smoke, corrosive emotions are contagious - even when we’re working remotely. We all pick up what others are putting off, and if we don’t slough it off regularly, we can absorb toxicity that may not even be ours.

Good energetic hygiene is about creating strong boundaries that are like an intelligent, robust cell wall around us. It’s also about regularly processing what we inevitably pick up at work. Consider what you’re letting into your cell wall and what you keep at bay. You may be allowing the worries, overwhelm, or negativity of others that you work with into your experience. Having empathy for others is wonderful, but it becomes harmful when you don’t keep clear boundaries between what’s yours and what’s for everyone else.

For me, this looks like being clear about what’s my responsibility and what’s not my responsibility, clearing out difficult emotions by opening a window in my office, burning mugwort, or taking a shower at the end of the day. I encourage you to find the things that help you to process and clear away the energy that’s not ultimately helpful to you. I don’t believe there’s any “bad” energy, it’s simply a matter of what’s nutritious for your body and what’s not. Difficult emotions are a natural part of life, and they can have a lot to teach us, but we don’t need to live in them all day, every day, and unfortunately there are many people doing just that everytime they go to work. For some more information on this topic, you can check out a blog post I wrote a while ago called 4 Easy Ways to Discharge Workplace Stress.

In closing, I want to encourage you to simply begin wherever you are, with whatever resources you have available to you.

Ironically, taking care of ourselves can be very hard work. The beauty of approaching yourself and your work as sacred is that your worklife can actually become a place where your body benefits instead of constantly sacrificing. As you consider adding or removing practices within your workdays, start in your center, honoring your body as sacred, and just see what feels like a natural next step.

To access the next three modules in their entirety, sign up here.