Love, Actually 💕

It’s February, the month Americans have “hallmarked” as a time for love. Thousands of years ago, February 15 was celebrated as Lupercalia, a wild fertility festival that was squashed by the Roman Catholic Church and turned into Valentine’s Day, with a slight date change so it wouldn’t look political. During Lupercalia, young men drew women’s names to be partners for the festival, hence the question, “will you be my Valentine?”

Love is risky. You have to be vulnerable, tender, receptive, attentive, supportive. How do you give your heart to another? How do you open your heart to the “other?” Because it’s not just about romance. The psychologist and body language expert Paul Ekman said that love is not an emotion, it’s a state. Unlike fear, which manifests itself in a body posture of tension, love is movement. In order to bring attention to both myself and the object of my attention, I need to let go of tension, to soften, breathe, and listen.

Aggression, righteous indignation, bullying, and lying are partners with cowering, fawning, hiding and defense. Anxiety, criticism, rumination join in for a choreography of physical tension, all connected to fear. Shoulders, jaw, buttocks, belly grip in readiness for fight or flight. This tension literally affects our vision, breath and health. We can’t see the big picture, our eyes deceive us; anxiety breath patterns impact the functioning of both brain and gut.

In a recent Feldenkrais session, I noticed my client suddenly furrow his brow, his shoulder gripping. “Are you OK?” I asked.
“I”m fine,” he replied, “Why?”
“Well, you tensed up, I couldn’t move your arm.”
He was silent for a moment. “I suddenly had a thought that our government would collapse and we would all starve to death. I know that sounds crazy. Why would I have a thought like that?”

I spent many years ready to fight. It was such a habitual posture that I never even noticed it. Complete strangers would sometimes summon up the temerity, at a bus stop, or while walking down the street, to actually tell me, “Relax!” I’d retort, “I am relaxed!” hunching my shoulders up even further. I sometimes wonder if they were guardian angels trying to alert me to my potential implosion. It never occurred to me that the pain I was in was the result of guarding against attack.

Can we really love when we are living in a perpetual state of yellow alert? Is there a way to mitigate the tension around a sensation of constant vigilance? Is it possible to find a way to soften enough to breathe, to listen, to love instead of attack? To soften doesn’t mean turning into a pile of mush, becoming weak and helpless. It’s a quality of compassionate listening to your state, so that you can have agency to regulate where and how you hold yourself.

I invite you to turn to your kinesthetic intelligence, reconnecting with your powerful “per”ceptions: Exteroception, proprioception, interoception. Instead of trying to analyze, explain, define and defend; lie down, or sit, and “re-member yourself.” Bring your parts together.