Prime Time - Jane Fonda [42]
Assuming you did the above, you were, for a moment, present in your body. When we get into the habit of body awareness through meditation, attentive, deliberate exercise, or yoga, we can nurture what Joan Halifax says is our ability to be interoceptive—we have the capacity to sense or experience the body, including our ability to sense our body temperature, feel our hunger or sexual urgency, be in touch with the gut, the lungs, the heart, and so forth. Another way of saying this is that we develop an image of our body’s internal state. What I find most interesting is that interoception allows self-empathy. Empathy means we feel the suffering (or other emotions) of others, which can lead to kindness. We can’t feel empathy and kindness for others if we lack it for ourselves. Self-empathy starts with our embodiment—being in our bodies, our muscles, our cells, our breath. You have to love and be kind to your body.
Taking it a step further, Joan Halifax says that while empathy is about feeling for others, “compassion means feeling the suffering of others but with an attendant aspiration to transform the suffering. Compassion is the most important mental quality we can cultivate.”9
Very different than pity, which masquerades as compassion and drains us and the other person, compassion energizes us and others. It activates an impulse to outward action. This is what I see as the beautiful sequence: from visceral, attentive, nonjudgmental body awareness, to empathy for self, extended out to empathy for others, to compassion for others, and then to universal compassion, an expression of compassion that is unbiased, all-inclusive.
Deep inner to wide outer.
My challenge to you to become physically active and attentive to your body is also a call to become both embodied and compassionate. You have the time—now more than ever—to do this work. You need to make time and develop the guts to get into your guts—to feel, accept, love, and be present in your body.
In Conclusion
Even if you have never been active a day in your life, you can start now. The MacArthur Foundation Study of Successful Aging concluded that physical activity is “perhaps the single most important thing an older person can do to remain healthy … the crux of successful aging, regardless of other factors.”10
It’s not too late, but the sooner you begin, the better. You have to get up and “just do it.” And chances are, once you do, you’ll be motivated to keep on doing it, as you start experiencing how much better it makes you feel. You’ll actually come to miss exercise when you have to skip it. Now’s the time.
CHAPTER 7
Now More than Ever, You Are What You Eat
Had I known I was going to live so long, I would have taken better care of myself.
—EUBIE BLAKE, JAZZ PIANIST, AT AGE 102
My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four; unless there are three other people.
—ORSON WELLES
I MENTOR A FORTY-YEAR-OLD WOMAN, KELLY, WHO HAS HAD A very challenging life. We correspond by email. A while back, she wrote and told me what her usual diet consisted of: Kool-Aid, Doritos, pizza, whatever was cheap. I was horrified! Of course, her “normal” diet was the same as many people’s, especially poor people. So I sent her a little money and told her to go to a store and buy chicken, broccoli, and fresh fruit, and I explained how to cook the chicken. After several months of her new diet, she sent me this email:
My situation caused me to become depressed (no job, constant setbacks, etc.). It seemed no matter what I did or tried nothing ever worked. I was isolated, angry, and depressed. Then you wrote me those magic words, “Get out of your head and into your body.” You told me to just try eating healthy. I really didn’t want to but I did anyway. I began to notice a change. I began to feel better. Then when I finally got my food stamps I was able to afford to buy healthy foods. (Before the food stamps I tried to conserve money by buying cheap food that would last the longest. I was trying to stretch