Mind Over Matter Is Bullshit

Embodied writing after a lifetime of learning your body is a disgusting meatsack you must dominate

Cramps woke me up early this morning. I tiptoed out of the bedroom and heated up water in the orange kettle, then poured it into the red hot water bottle my mom gave me for Christmas 2017. It was the last time I saw her and her last gift to me. In those five years since, the eight of us have worn out the water bottle during illnesses and period cramps and upset stomachs and feeling cold and needing comfort. I sat in the stillness of the quiet house, sipping from my sister’s mug, staring out at the snow, watching the steam rise from my coffee.

My mother and my sister, their hot water bottle and coffee mug, warming me from the outside in and inside out.

I recently heard a line in a breathing meditation that stopped me in my tracks: Our bodies can often keep going long after our mind collapses. I don’t understand this to mean our bodies are perfect, all-powerful, or eternal. Just that they are not the sinful, lazy, weak, corrupted meatsacks many people and ideologies want us to believe. Bodies are not the shameful receptacle for a pure soul, mind, or consciousness.

It struck me, because we usually hear it the other way around: “Mind over matter. If your body…