I am sitting. Again. At my computer. Folded into my desk chair. Reminding myself to straighten my spine. I can feel the edge of the desk dig into my forearms just below my elbows. I watch the red of my painted fingertips caper across the keyboard as thoughts and words come into my mind. Then pause and hover, waiting for the next idea to…delete…hover…the next idea to make its way down to be captured. To sprinkle letters like organized confetti across a blank page. Making a sentence. And then a paragraph.
I notice the ache at my bent hips. A yearning for another posture. To stretch and move. To bend backwards and curl in the opposite direction like when I try to flatten a rolled piece of paper. To take a new shape from this one that is habit. And I begin to think about the shapes our bodies take.
Dancing, snuggling, walking. Fighting, balancing, retreating. Cowering, swinging, marching.
Dutifully falling into step with wherever our thinking mind takes us next. At once a power and powerlessness that I hadn’t ever acknowledged before. The power the mind holds to persuade the body to join the shenanigans without first being consulted. How often is it the other way around? It occurs to me to play with deliberate attention to the shape in which I place my body. To start there. To opt to dance or snuggle or stretch with the deepest intention of tangible alignment. Let my body set the path for my mind and not the other way around.
Is this what remodeling is? Creating an updated shape for your home? So that you can also feel differently shaped? I’ve never asked our clients if they find new patterns and habits and physical resource in a perfected kitchen triangle or an elegant primary suite. If their kid rests differently in their room because the door is perfectly centered to the opposing window wall. If the roof deck actually creates longed for lounging, the mediation room breathing, the mudroom organizing.
I would suspect there is deep habitual human psychology to contend with no matter if a space is new or old. But I like the idea that we build a platform for a daring paradigm shift for how you can perfectly shape your body inside a home that is perfectly shaped for you.
This must be what it is to find yourself. An allowance to shape into something certain. Irrefutable. Safe. Familiar. It feels so courageous! A new interpretation of life. To be at-the-ready with a different mirror. To display something new to react to or judge?
Not because it’s too hard for us to bear, maybe just too hard to wrap our brains around. Physical change. But we do it anyway…just keep moving.
If your mind had nothing to do with it, what shape would your body take?
All my best,
Allison
