Well, Everything is Obvious Already

The next book on my contextual-woman discovery is, Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom by Christiane Northrup, M.D. This is a large tomb on many a contemporary lady’s shelf. I think it mostly functions as a reference guide, since it has all the lady functions and their magic and dangers in it.

So long story short I’ve read the first 24 pages and Northrup pretty much calmly explains the reality of women’s struggles in their bodies and minds and emotions as though she were summarizing my entire brain and handing it to me in a few paragraphs, since that is what my brain basically boils down to.

First let’s start with some terminology. Northrup cites Anne Wilson Schaef as stating that “anything can be used addictively, whether it be a substance (like alcohol) or a process (like work). This is because the purpose or function of an addiction is to put a buffer between ourselves and our awareness of our feelings. An addiction serves to numb us so that we are out of touch with what we know and what we feel.”

This is a handy way of viewing behavior; it’s a new take on “addiction” to me, and it makes sense. Okay so now here’s this:

“The patriarchal organization of our society demands that women, its second-class citizens, ignore or turn away from their hopes and dreams in deference to men and the demands of their families. This systematic stuffing or denying of our needs for self-expression and self-actualization causes us enormous emotional pain. To stay out of touch with our pain, women have commonly used addictive substances and developed addictive behaviors that have resulted in an endless cycle of abuse that we ourselves help perpetuate.”

I feel my own experience expressed in this idea, and I also feel that the sensitizing of yoga is helping me identify and face the forces of limitation outside of me, and the limitations to which I capitulate or hide behind in order to avoid myself. Northrup is definitely talking about the micro/macro thing I was trying to figure out yesterday, which is that we have to be more finely attuned to our actual experiences of our feelings to positively affect our external realities. But Northrup knows this, too. How did she get so awesome? Here it is, smarter and more succinctly stated:

“Remaining unconscious about our acculturated habits takes an enormous emotional and physical toll on our bodies and spirits. These habits keep us from being connected with our inner guidance and our emotions. This disconnection, in turn, keeps us in a state of pain that increases the longer we deny it. It takes a lot of energy to stay out of touch with this pain, and we often turn to acculturated habits, such as addictive substances, to keep us from confronting that unhappiness and pain.”

Also she quotes Germaine Greer, so, automatic awesome score.