at home in my body

my "to blog" list grows, but alas, time has not expanded and it leaves me feeling a bit diffuse and out-of-focus. i always suffer when i'm not writing. but while not writing, my mind has been occupied. occupied by questions of home, being present in my body and dreams of making a podcast.

last weekend, in connection with an amazing art project that i'm participating in with our local art group, trapholt museum in kolding and trekantsområde, a danish artist and a syrian artist, we had an amazing discussion of what home means. it's a question i increasingly ponder these days, as the country of my birth displays distressing signs of madness on the political front. denmark isn't that much better, but they did just regain their status as world's happiest. this, despite rabid right wing xenophobes at the helm. but it all leaves me feeling, once again, a lack of a place that feels like home. at least identity-wise. and maybe i'm also feeling split since my work week is spent away from the house i call home. but that seems to be serving to make our actual house feel more like home base. the place from which i go into the world, stretch my wings (and my muscles at yoga class these days), and soar. i'm loving work and the fun things i get to do there - photoshoots, video shoots, chasing a lorry through the scottish highlands, casting, arranging, planning fun projects. so the split isn't a sad one. and maybe the conclusion is that i now have multiple homes - i feel at home at work and at home, in copenhagen and in the countryside, with husband on the weekend and on my own during the week. maybe we're multifaceted and we have many homes. perhaps the constant is me and thanks to my newfound yoga practice, i am finding home right here within myself, in my own body. and i honestly can't remember when the last time i felt that was, if i ever did.

that fact hit me the other day, as i stretched into minute 5 of a yoga pose, my inner thigh muscles screaming for every bit of my attention. i couldn't remember the last time i really listened to my body in that way. was attuned to it. that it had my full attention. that i was just there, in it, and nowhere else. i really don't know if i've ever been fully in my body in that way before. ever. in nearly five decades. we live so much in our heads these days, it's hard to be fully present in our bodies. but, now, after the major wakeup call of acute and sudden back problems, i'm working on it. and yoga is definitely helping. with regular practice, maybe i'll be able to call my own body home.