Heart Body

       A few days ago, somebody reminded me of how resilient the heart is. How it can be broken, sometimes repeatedly, and still come back to love again. I have recently learned how true that is. My heart exercised it’s resiliency when I finally allowed it to be torn apart.
        This is counter intuitive. And for myself, being a personal trainer and long time exercise fiend, it’s double-secret-probation counter intuitive. I’ve lived according to the axiom that you make something stronger and better by building it up. When it came to my heart, I interpreted that as fortification. Make it harder and tougher, at least on the outside. To build a strong heart, one that could deal with heartache, I had to fortify it so that it could withstand the blows of life. Or the sharp deadly arrows of another.
        Looking at that philosophy now, it’s clear to me how flawed my strategy was. Because I wasn’t building a stronger heart. I was building a stronger wall around a heart that I thought was weak. The way a garrison would build a fort around a town full of children.
        And my heart was, and still is, like a child. Or should I say, like a happy, well adjusted child. Playful and open, ready for the next...whatever. Excitable and wild. Spontaneous and sincere. Passionate, and absolutely gushing with what it can do. Wanting so much to give and receive love.
        My heart was always that way, but the fort I had built around it didn’t allow that light to shine through enough. Like a child who isn’t allowed to come and play, my heart yearned, but was denied it’s sustenance because my walls were keeping too much out. And too much in. It’s what walls do. And they did their job. But the child of my heart was still inside, suffocating. Starving. Lonely.
        My whole life, I thought the way to a strong heart was to protect it by building a a fort around it. But I was wrong. The way to a strong heart is to open it up and let it do what it was created to do. Put it out there and let it run and create and feel. Let it go unfettered and see what it can do. Use it. Let it exercise. Let it love.
        Like a twist on the old “child for the path” metaphor. Don’t prepare the journey for the heart. Prepare the heart for the journey. By letting it out.
        So, actually, my exercise analogy is totally applicable. Because instead of protecting my heart with walls, or with a suit of armor, I let let it run free. I let it dance and play. I let it go and see where it takes me, as anyone regularly reading this blog can attest. Wild at heart. And just as children get stronger and healthier and happier by doing that, so does my heart. And therefore so do I.
        I’ve worked out for thirty years, since I was fifteen. Up until very recently, I subconsciously related to my body as a veritable suit of armor. A encasement that would protect a very tender place deep inside of me. Now, I still work hard at building a strong, healthy body. But my relationship to the process, and to what I’m building, is radically different. No longer a suit of iron, I look at my body as well conditioned vehicle that’s carrying very precious cargo. That shift, not only in my thinking but in how I relate to myself, has allowed me to build stronger, healthier, freer, dare I say more beautiful, body. Certainly a body better suited for my life.
        No longer used to protect. Or defend. My body now serves the purpose of being a vessel through which I carry all of myself into the world. A spaciously limited but metaphysically vast movable home that brings it’s practically limitless contents with it, wherever it goes. Nothing else on earth can do that. Nothing that humans have ever created. No inanimate object in the universe. Only the body. How fuckin’ exquisite.

©2008 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and a body full of Wrongs) Reserved.

Click on the photo abpove to see more portrait shots of yours truly done by a great photographer named Jernnifer Devlin. Click HERE to go to her website.

Comments

[Terri Cornish]

You've created a sense of spacious even in your writing.
Love the photo too. So full of life!
Awesome.

[Clint Piatelli]

Right back at you, Terri. My relationship with you has helped create that openness and space. Thank You.