Midweek: Why Do We Live Disembodied?

A creative exploring the mystery reader suggests our first attachment may be  to our body – not to our parents.  Go to blog comment section March 10, 2015, to read her thinking.

Attachment suggests connection. When we are attached to someone or something, we spend time making certain the person or object is safe. If our first attachment is to our body, why do many of us struggle with, and many times fail, our attempts to care for our bodies?

Most of us, self included, spend our waking life in our minds, intellects, or heads (whatever label you choose). This interferes with our ability to feel our feelings. 

Disappointment can be a path to our emotions. We don’t get to know feelings by thinking, we get to know feelings by feeling. Feelings need exercise.  

Anger is one feeling that I don’t exercise very often. Longtime readers will remember when threats of the emerald ash bore led to a plan by the Homeowners Association to cut down perfectly healthy trees in my yard. 

My first response to the news was disappointment. I would miss these trees, I commune with them every day. Staying with the disappointment, feelings of powerlessness appeared. Not liking the feeling of powerlessness, anger erupted from a deep place inside me  The anger helped me speak up and save the trees.   

Does your mind get in the way of exercising your feelings? Do you have ideas about our first attachment? Please let me know in an email or in the comment section. BTW, I use emotion and feelings to refer to the same thing in this post.

Thank you for exploring the mystery of attachment
                                                                     – Nicky Mendenhall

The photo (and the camel photo last post) is from a feeling engendering photo exhibit at The World Food Prize building, downtown Des Moines. I am currently unable to locate the name of the photographer.