This morning I’m thinking about authority and health in the body - body meaning the whole, for I believe that the mind vs. body are labels that result in separation within and without and facilitate unhealthy dynamics. Lately I’ve been experiencing awareness of the oppressive nature of the (my) mind - a play acted out by voices of judgement and victimhood, mangled memories and echoes of my parents, my acquaintances, friends, social constructs. My body- my wholeness - heaves under the weight of this virtual reality projected by thoughts and my capacity for joy, autonomous and cooperative action, and self-affirmation are dulled by the noise of an argument that no one started, spontaneous trials and normativized self-policing.
I’ve also been reading about anarchy - without governance- what does anarchy of the wholeselfbody look like? The presiding order of oppressive governance can be echoed in our bodily configurations and the way we manifest authority, judgement, punishment, shame, and action in ourself.
Gustav Landauer, German anarchist, wrote: “The state is not something which can be destroyed by a revolution, but is a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of human behavior; we destroy it by contracting other relationships, by behaving differently.”
If I am mimicking authoritarian relationships within my body how can I expect to imagine anarchist ones outside of it? What behaviors might begin to contract other relationships that destroy the a human condition that undergirds an oppressive framework of being and acting?
I see meditation, exercise, and chores as ways of de-heirarchalizing the selfbody. Does anyone else have methods or practices that challenge the conditioned authoritarianism of the mind? Thoughts on an anarchist body?