Imaginal immune tea time
Transgressive tendrils through the miasma
How can we let the navigation of our diseases be part of our creative process?
Real talk, this past week I have been in a challenging place and having a hard time thinking about anything beyond how unwell I feel. In bygone times I would have tried to Pollyanna my way through it, determined to find the bright spot, afraid of ostracizing readers with bleakness if I didn’t paint so much silver it was a hiding, not a lining. I’m also tired of talking about how tired I feel, so I’m seeking a balance, asking - what does honest play look like from this place? How can I more deeply apply my principles: all bodies are good bodies, we deserve rest, all parts of ourselves need to be welcomed home, bypassing does not serve vitality… in the moments they are most needed but also when I feel the most fragmented? And what can we learn here?
Nerve - sinew, bowstring, having vigor, lacking itself
In previous posts I’ve written about the nervous system in the context of growth work and activation states and polyvagal theory. The reductionist perspective of analyzing which subsection of the spinal cord causes which type of reaction can be useful. The language of trigger and flight, fawning and dissociation gives us context to comprehend confusing physiological experiences.
Learning the chemistry of nerve impulses, how all actions are stimulated by an exchange of positively and negatively charged ions through cell walls, gave me a whole new layer of appreciation for polarity and how intimately it shapes the physics of our universe.
But the map is not the terrain.
Just as we are coming to understand fascia as so much more than the previously assumed inessential protective layers, that they are complex organs with their own communication system and coordinated processes, a web that interconnects all bodily systems, I think we will come to recognize the nervous system as an intelligence of connectivity beyond what reductionist thought can explain. These tendrils of sensitivity are our feelers. Our antennae. The field through which beings both experience unique individuality and form tapestries of shared reality. How we have the sense of both “I” and “we.”
The origins and development of the word nerve sheds light, too. It once was used interchangeably with tendon, perhaps a mistake since they are both cord like, but perhaps linked to a memory that muscular and neural are not so very separate, that feeling and action are deeply interwoven, that body and mind are moved by the same strings. Another definition, nervus once also meant the string of a musical instrument, what we play to hear life’s sounds arranged into melody and harmony. Sensitivity is required to play any meaning of nerve well, without giving into the latter definitions of nervous, meaning lacking nerve, lacking vigor, lacking the ability to play.
Immunity - the privilege of separation
This word is derived from the Latin immunis "exempt, free, not paying a share," and has also meant “exemption from service or obligation.”* Our immunity is actually made up of cells from other systems, it doesn’t have a singular cohesive system but rather has agents within skin, lymph, and other organs. It’s designed to distinguish healthy cells from sick ones, self from invader, living from dead, in every part of the body, serving longevity.
How does a force designed to protect turn on the self it is supposed to preserve?
Without a satisfactory answer from allopathic medicine, I turn to the mythic to make sense of a senseless disorder. Perhaps these agents woven through my systems are mistaking sensitivity for pathology. In a world where people are rewarded for privilege and encouraged to believe in the solidity of individuality, the expansiveness of my increasingly animistic sense of self seems like a threat.
As we are truly boundless, the melting of perceived boundaries could be confusing to cells pattered on a program of poreless walls and noncooperation.
Becoming imaginal
In their metamorphosis, their are cells within caterpillars that attack the cells that hold the codes of the butterflies they are becoming. Even though the mutation is inevitable, the immune cells cannot recognize the imaginal ones as part of the same self, so far they are from where the caterpillar began.
Perhaps my immune cells who think I am only human are mistaking that which feels beyond the boundaries of skin, that which dreams in the new world, for invaders. Maybe there is an obligation beyond even this particular body’s experience of wellness, to melt into someone who feels more, who is not exempt from sharing life.
Perhaps neuro-autoimmune disease is part of the necessary disruption of this era, as transgressive as that feels to say, training us to feel in new ways, or at least honor our capacity to feel. To not be exempt from sharing with life. I’d like our bodies to learn how to be in this disruption and mutation with less pain and more play. But for now I’ll keep listening for the strings.
Thanks for playing in the word and meaning realm with me.
