#53. Body Language

About a week ago, I posted on the fridge side-by-side childhood school photos of me and J, stitched together and printed on heavy cardstock. I've had it for years. I'm not sure why I put it up now.

I find myself looking at it, trying to remember the day or the year. I try to find any clues as to who we were then, even just for that moment. There's not much to see but two smiling kids in cool picture-day clothing—me in a sideways half ponytail and a striped and boxy polka-dotted top, and J in a raglan-sleeve shirt that reads (er, yells?) "GO FOR IT!" to a geometrically abstract skier jumping off of a slope—but I still try to decode any subtleties in body language or facial expression.

It's been a month or so of psychedelics, and if it were a class I'm taking, I'd say that the teacher is the body. God, it's always the body! And much as I love being a student, I do live for ditch days.

When I used to hear the term body language, I'd think it was assigned solely to the art and skill of reading another person—how someone leans in, crosses their arms, pulls back, and what it all means. We’re taught to become fluent in other people’s physical vocabulary while remaining strangely illiterate in our own.

This is what I do—focus on others, tune into their needs, read their discomfort, while forgetting to listen to my own body's whispers.

And it starts early, this unlearning of our innate awareness of our physicality. Babies learn their cries are inconvenient. Kids who fall down are told, “You’re fine!” instead of being asked “What does that feel like?” We’re taught to override our internal compass while becoming hyper-aware of everyone else’s, all in the false names of convenience and comfort.

Well. I’ve long been a terrible translator: confusing stillness for failure, quiet for invisibility. I'm not sure I ever considered myself fluent in the language of my own body; I was mostly just making educated guesses, if I wasn't ignoring it completely.

Another month has passed, and I'm still fighting the softening, the gravity, what time and life naturally do. My body’s been trying to teach me something through this resistance, but I kept turning down the volume, favoring my own loud-ass commentary over its softer truths.

I'm always scared before taking psychedelics (which isn't much of a surprise if you know me at all—I'm scared of most things). I get scared of what they'll tell me, scared of being "taken over." Somewhere along the way, whether in this life or one of the previous, my body has learned to be protective, maybe hypervigilant, about letting its guard down.

But not this last time! There's much joy on the other side of giving up fear, or giving in, or just allowing it to be there like a little friend along for the ride. Then, you can see the conversation that everything is always having—shower tiles swirling, clouds dancing, the drone of a bee's wings as it lifts up from its rest, a blue jay's throat chakra blazing electric indigo and ultramarine. A return to the child who hasn't yet forgotten her fluency.

At one point, I looked down at my leg, marked with pebbled indentations and dry from the sun soaking up all my skin’s moisture as I lay outside, staring alternately up at the sky and inward to the depths. I was repulsed. I’m rotting, I thought. This is why they say not to look at yourself when you’re tripping. Why? Because we might see the truth? I told you I was scared.

But then the body jumped in, and told me as clear as the day that I was in:

Stare at this until you love it.

And so I did.

Well, at first, I responded that I'm like the sun in a way: I know there's brilliance, but staring too long isn't a good idea.

But I stared anyway and within half a moment, I watched my skin regenerate in real time—breathing and pulsating with blood vessels and oxygen and life. A wonder! A miracle! I love wonders. And miracles. I suppose this means, then, that I stared at it until I loved it.

It reminded me of India, years ago, when I wore no makeup for weeks until I learned to love my face without it, my body teaching me then what it's still teaching me now—that love isn't a reward for meeting certain conditions. It's the condition that allows everything else to happen.

A few hours later into the trip, after some tears—because what is a psychedelic without a fun little rollercoaster—I was asked what it would be like to consider myself.

I paused. Then kept pausing. I had no idea. It was like I couldn’t even understand the words, much less the question.

But now, I think of the way Pacquito goes limp the moment he feels my hand underneath his body, readying himself to be lifted, to be carried. He lets go completely into my hand—into me. I'm thinking of—remembering?—how to be that for myself. To go limp with trust into the knowingness of my own strength, my own consideration, my own love.

It’s funny, in a way, that in my work as a therapist, I help people tune into the wisdom of their bodies. I talk about how “the issues are in the tissues,” how the nervous system holds our stories, how learning to listen to sensations and impulses can help us become fluent again in the language of the body.

And yet, my own still has to grab me by the shoulders, look me square in the face, and ask me to pay attention.

Maybe that’s part of teaching—learning alongside. Remembering not only that the body keeps the score, but to love the scorekeeper.

The language of the body is fluid, shifting, deepening, like the swirling sky in psychedelia land. What my body needed to tell me at 2 or 20 is different from what it’s whispering at 40. The conversation evolves. The vocabulary expands.

My body is teaching me that resistance creates the very suffering I’m trying to avoid. That fighting time, gravity, and change is like arguing with the weather—exhausting and ultimately pointless.

It’s teaching me that love isn’t about returning to a previous version of myself.Love is presence.Love is being here, now, in this skin, at this age, with all the wisdom and weariness I carry.

The mushrooms didn’t give me new information. They just cleared the static so I could hear more of my body's message:

You are not broken.You don’t need fixing.You just need to listen, and to be heard.

And so I practice listening while learning to speak the body’s language with more fluency, more patience, more curiosity about what it might say next.

The conversation continues.The learning never stops.

And maybe one day I’ll look at that photo on the fridge and see two kids who already knew how to listen. I’m just remembering now.

As always, with love and thanks,

BROOKIE

P.S. I swear the oracle cards are almost almost here.

And the card I pulled for us today is

OPENNESS.

It's about welcoming every part of ourselves, not just the easy or likable parts, but the uncomfortable ones, too--anger, fear, shame.

And its call to action for us is to soften towards the things we're resisting.