Memory Part One: The Pain-Body, and What We Carry.

Memory is an interesting and beautiful thing. For me, the most meaningful parts of life are the memories of both fondness and struggle, and the way they come together to create something else entirely. This third thing. A feeling of meaning and significance. Not to mention how this is amplified when memories are made and shared with others.

I have the good fortune of knowing a Diné medicine man named Darryl. He talks about a kind of ceremony we do as a process of healing our memories. He says the pain-body comes from the disconnection that can happen when we forget. When we forget to tend to the relationship with ourselves… our body, our brain, all the different parts.

The pain-body is what arises when the thinking body and the feeling body drift apart. By reconnecting to sensation, by remembering to be in service to our body as it is, it teaches our brain to relate to sensation. In doing so, we bring about a bridge where body and brain come together in breath, in spirit. We start to not only have respite from our pain-body, but begin to heal our memories.

Darryl says it can be as simple as stopping to pause, and notice. Bonus points if we think of something to be grateful for that came from our own hand. Not gratitude for someone else, or what they did. Gratitude for me. For something I did.

Here’s an invitation into the inquiry of memory. Stay tuned for a couple more posts on the topic.....assuming I remember to post them!

P.S - My favorite memories involve Baseball.