subject: Chapter 12: A Psychosomatic Body [print this page] Chapter 12: A Psychosomatic Body Chapter 12: A Psychosomatic Body
Chapter 12: A Psychosomatic Body
It was duyring my five years of teaching high school that I began to see the many consequences of my extremely psychosomatic nature. Indeed, mind, body and spirit are highly connected and perhaps even more so in me. My blood pressure and blood sugar fell low and upon being given a glucose tolerance test, it was found that my blood sugar was going up and down without eating. The doctor said that my adrenaline was reacting to life situations as if the house were on fire and I went in to carry out a refrigerator. Thus it wasthat I was put on sedatives to quiet down my enfdocrine systerm.
Always being a good sleeper, I was then extra tired as I fought against the sedatives to continue my normal activity. By the time school was over, I was so very tired that I began a pattern of asking to retire early. I would come home from school, stop in chapel to pray, pick up some supper in the kitchen and retire to my room where I would correct as many papers as I could before falling into bed in utter exhaustion only to rise at 5:00 a.m and start all over. To make matters worse, myu scruples whcih had plagued me off and one throughout my life returned with a vehemence and I was truly in a dark night of the soul.
During this time, Vatican II was happening and when I had kitchen duty my friend and I would speculate about what changes we would like to see in religious life. But when all was said and done, the joke was that they had only removedthe buttons from our pellarines.
I remained at the academy for five years, continuing to be a agood teacher, but not feeling free in my convent life. A welcome change came when I was transferred back to St. Joseph in Fremont, but this time to the high school. I was happy both to be back in a parish situation and to be assigned both math and religion to teach. School again was my refuge and I was assigned to be in charge of the school liturgies. Liturgies were especially fun during that time of liturgical renewal and I have many happy memories. But I took my psychosomatic body with me and it started to act up again as I struggled with a strict local superior and a provincial administration that did not promote my growing interest in assisting the migrant farm workers and their families in the Fremont area. This tinme my body produced boils, one at a time on my face so that all could see my inner struggle outwardly.
There have been written so many stories of the soul. But because of my experiences, I feel compelled to write a STORY OF THE BODY for I am very much a body person full of body language. For so very long I tried to be a soul person, but my body rebelled. Ever since I started to pay attention to my body, my life has necome more interesting, more allve and full ofgrowth. My body has taught me to love symbols. I think they are God's language.
I no longer think of my soul as encased in my body. In fact I do not even like to use the word "soul". It is so Platonic, so stifling in its little cage. Now I think of my "spirit", my true self,encircling my body,reaching out to other spirits. My spirit is my principle of energy, life and growth. As I began to pay attention to my body, I also began to pay attention to my dreams,both my day dreams and my night dreams, to all those signs and symbols throughwhich my God would deign to speak to me. Indeed, life became exciting, challenging, and full of new possibilities.
