2/365: What does my body need now?

This is a question that I've asking myself recently. It assumes an awareness of a body, the fact that it has needs, that it may be within my capabilities to meet some or all of those needs, that I am interested in meeting those needs, and that I intend to meet those needs.

There was a time, not too far in the past, that none of those assumptions held true. OK, yes, I've always known on some level that I had a body, of course. But there were also parts of me that felt quite a distance from my body, as if it were separate from me. Not in a schizophrenic sense do I refer to different parts of me, but rather in the way a person might say, "I just wasn't myself this morning" or something like that.

There has been a distance, a distrust even, that I have felt toward my body. So the fact that it had needs (food, shelter, etc.) was not something I was interested in knowing about, thinking about, and certainly not acting on. Some of this probably stems in my parents' religiosity, some of it in their lofty, academic thinking and approach to life, some of it in my own life experiences.

Point is, I'm figuring all this out now. Hmmm... Much food for thought.