According to my photos I generated 25 pieces of waste
yesterday, but I know it was more than that.
I know because there was the breakfast bar wrapper that I forgot to photograph
after I gobbled it down on my way to teach a class, and twice, as I was in a
hurry to go from one place to the next I forgot to take pictures of the toilet
paper from last minute bathroom visits. I was in a rush and just didn’t have
the presence of mind to take the pictures.
Which is sort of a nice segue into the question, “Just what
does this garbage thing that you are doing have to do with embodiment anyway? Isn’t that what you normally write about?”
Well, yes…it is.
I believe that our separation from our physical selves, our
bodies, is directly related to our cultural separation from the natural world
and our communities. We are raised to
not value these things. We are taught to
live in our heads, that the body and its urges and feelings are to be ignored
or despised. In the case of women, we
are taught that our bodies are not even our own to begin with; we do not have
autonomy over them. We are also raised to believe the natural world is something apart
from us or even something to be feared.
If we are so disconnected from ourselves, how can we
possibly be fully connected to the world around us? How can we respect and value other people,
and their bodies, if we do not value our own?
By extension, how can we begin to feel connected to our communities and
the natural world if we do not even have awareness of the space we occupy
within it? Our separation from ourselves,
our communities, and the natural world has resulted in a cultural trauma of
disconnection. The first step in healing
that trauma, is to come home to ourselves.
When we begin that process, to reconnect to ourselves, we begin
to first recognize our own internal rhythms and processes. Slowly, with time we start to move outward and
begin to understand how we move through the world around us. We start to develop an awareness of the living
things, the people, animals, plants, that share space with us and, because we
have developed that connection to ourselves, we recognize not only their autonomy,
but also how we relate to them – what our response is to those we share this
earth with (Note: This is very much related to the practice of
witnessing in Authentic Movement and Contemplative Dance which I may write more
on later). And so, finally, we are
not longer separate from the world but in relationship with it.
And that brings me back to trash. The idea for this week of waste came out of
some writing I began to do on the three pillars of sustainability (economics,
society, and the environment) and how they relate to embodiment. I was exploring the idea of personal sustainability. When I began I was writing from the perspective
of how to apply the ideas behind the three pillars to my own body. I was very much taking an outside to in approach;
how do these things apply to me? But I
quickly realized that while that might be a good beginning, eventually it had
to turn outward. I had to not only look at
how I might take a sustainable approach to my body, but also how I (and by
extension my body) relates to the world in a sustainable manner. And after reading an article on the zero-waste
movement, I came upon the idea that one way to explore that relationship in a
very tangible way was to take a look at the waste I generate.
Yesterday, and my being in such a rush that I didn’t take
photos of several things, is an example of how being disembodied – when I was
rushing about I was very much in my head and not my body – can disconnect me
from the world around me in a very immediate way. We move through our days tossing things out without thought. Many of us use disposable things because they are convenient and we don't consider how these actions are an expression of our disconnection from the world.
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