Atheopaganism is about increasing our capacity for happiness and engaging our responsibilities to the Earth and to our fellow humans. As such, it requires us to look at ourselves and the world with both curiosity and compassion; to see where there is work to be done.<\/p>\n
For me personally, after years of resistance I am coming to confront that a large portion of my work now relates to inhabiting my body.<\/em><\/p>\n I was\u00a0raised only to celebrate the accomplishments of the mind. In my family, I saw no modeling of physical recreation or exercise, and as a result, I was always the kid who was reading a book during recess. I did not learn to be comfortable in\u00a0my body as many or most children do, through physical play.<\/p>\n As a result, I’m stiff, and somewhat clumsy. Physical disciplines come hard to me, and I have felt so shy about them that I didn’t begin even free form dancing until I was in my late 20s.\u00a0I have related to my body largely as a robot that carries my brain around, rather than as an integrated part of me.<\/p>\n Uncoincidentally, the far precincts\u00a0of my body have problems\u2014my feet, farthest from the head where I live, have struggled with\u00a0chronic pain since my late teens.<\/p>\n Now in middle age, I am fortunate that my health is generally good, but I need to live in my body more. I need to\u00a0move,<\/em> and I don’t. Most of my life is still intellectual, mediated through screens and words. Even the expressed experience\u00a0of my Limbic system\u2014my heart\u2014occurs mostly through writing; through language.<\/p>\n I’m not sure how I will do this, but I know it is work I must do: my next frontier.<\/p>\n How about you? Where is your growing edge? It’s a valuable question to ask; a means to continue to deepen and flourish as a human being.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Atheopaganism is about increasing our capacity for happiness and engaging our responsibilities to the Earth and to our fellow humans. As such, it requires us to look at ourselves and the world with both curiosity and compassion; to see where there is work to be done. For me personally, after years of resistance I am coming to confront that a large portion of my work now relates to inhabiting my body. I was\u00a0raised only to celebrate the accomplishments of the mind. In my family, I saw no modeling of physical recreation or exercise, and as a result, I was always the kid who was reading a book during recess. I did not learn to be comfortable in\u00a0my body as many or most children do, through physical play. As a result, I’m stiff, and somewhat clumsy. Physical disciplines come hard to me, and I have felt so shy about them that I didn’t begin even free form dancing until I was in my late 20s.\u00a0I have related to my body largely as a robot that carries my brain around, rather than as an integrated part of me. Uncoincidentally, the far precincts\u00a0of my body have problems\u2014my feet, farthest from the head where I live, have struggled with\u00a0chronic pain since my late teens. Now in middle age, I am fortunate that my health is generally good, but I need to live in my body more. I need to\u00a0move, and I don’t. Most of my life is still intellectual, mediated through screens and words. Even the expressed experience\u00a0of my Limbic system\u2014my heart\u2014occurs mostly through writing; through language. I’m not sure how I will do this, but I know it is work I must do: my next frontier. How about you? Where is your growing edge? It’s a valuable question to ask; a means to continue to deepen and flourish as a human being.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2387,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,13,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-atheopagan-life","category-personal-reflection","category-practice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mgreen.atheopaganism.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mgreen.atheopaganism.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mgreen.atheopaganism.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mgreen.atheopaganism.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mgreen.atheopaganism.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2386"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mgreen.atheopaganism.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22923,"href":"https:\/\/mgreen.atheopaganism.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2386\/revisions\/22923"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mgreen.atheopaganism.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mgreen.atheopaganism.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mgreen.atheopaganism.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mgreen.atheopaganism.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}