My friends and I who practice InterPlay, a system based in the body, often remind one another to “go the speed of the body.” This isn’t just another way of saying “slow down, you move too fast, gotta make the moment last,” like in the song Feeling Groovy. The speed of the body, any body, is not the speed of the high-speed internet, and especially not, the lightning speed of our imaginal minds. Just because we can think of doing something, or picture a whole list of somethings being completed in seconds, to actually carry them out may take hours, months, or years. The tempo of the body can be fast on occasion, but when it is, it can’t last beyond some healthy threshold of endurance. There’s the need for recovery and rest and, at my age I must remember this need occurs sooner and recovery takes longer as I get older.
We’ve just returned from our first cross country flights in 18 months to visit family, staying in the house we hadn’t lived in for that amount of time due to the pandemic. To make it feel like home again took such Herculean effort that I made my husband promise never to refer to this experience as “a vacation.” In fact, everyone in the family still owes themselves and one another an experience that could honestly be described as a vacation.
Assembling family members who hadn’t seen each other in person for a year and a half made me recognize that the group body has an optimal speed and need for cycles of rest and recovery just as an individual does. Some people are ready for breakfast, others prefer to sleep in. Some are not ready to cull their possessions while others move swiftly to clean and clear the communal spaces. Some are energized by group efforts while other bodies feel easily spent.
When a member of the group body (family) is no longer present in this life, the group body must adjust and accommodate to that loss. Individuals must step up into unfamiliar roles and responsibilities, in order to insure the family can carry on. It was my generation that had been missing from that house and as the group body assembled there this past week, we were a bit out of practice in allowing both movement and quiescence; activity and rest.
Arriving home after the challenges of air travel, we confront all the tasks of catching up, unpacking, laundry, grocery shopping, reconnecting with our dog. Given how active we’ve been on this trip that was not a vacation, going the speed of our now extra tired bodies, we must add plenty of doses of rest, relaxation, and self-compassion, as we reestablish ourselves in our home base.
