08/19/2026
OUR BODY SPEAKS
By: Armando Gutiérrez Ronderos
Day 19 — Embodied
What Am I Saying Bodily?
*Today’s Maxim*
My body is not something I have. My body-self is who I am bodily.
Contemplation — Seeing
We have acquired many ways of speaking about our bodies.
- My body is getting old.
- My body betrayed me.
- I need to control my body.
- I hate my body.
- My body won't cooperate.
Even the familiar phrase “I have a body” can quietly place the person somewhere else—as though the real me lives inside and carries a body around.
But what if our body is not an object possessed by the person?
What if the body is the person living bodily?
Before you possessed words, you were already speaking bodily.
You reached.
You recoiled.
You cried.
You rested.
You startled.
You relaxed in familiar arms.
You sensed presence before you could name it.
And you continue speaking bodily now.
A tightening chest.
A clenched jaw.
A warm face.
A racing heart.
A deep exhale.
Tears arriving before explanation.
Shoulders relaxing in the presence of someone you trust.
These are not merely things your body is doing while you stand somewhere apart observing them.
This is you living bodily.
Your body-self is the third person of the human trinity, living in indivisible intrapersonal dialogue with soul-self and spirit-self.
Your body-self is not the container of your personhood.
Not machinery operated by your mind.
Not an inconvenient animal requiring control.
Not the temporary packaging of your spirit.
The body bears witness.
It also keeps the score.
Our embodied life carries history.
A name can be spoken and your stomach tightens.
A familiar voice can cross a crowded room and something within you settles.
A smell can carry you fifty years backward before you have formed a single thought.
A hand approaching your shoulder can produce warmth—or recoil.
A song can bring tears whose story you thought you had forgotten.
A photograph can awaken something for which you still have no words.
The body does not stand outside the person reporting information back to us.
The body-self is us, speaking bodily in indivisible intrapersonal dialogue with soul-self and spirit-self.
And raw honesty allows us to hear that dialogue without first requiring it to become acceptable.
Love may be there.
So may hatred.
Joy.
Jealousy.
Shame.
Desire.
Disgust.
Fear.
Grief.
Rage.
Tenderness.
Relief.
Longing.
Whatever is present deserves to be heard truthfully.
We do not need to make what is present more respectable before we are willing to hear it.
We do not need to clean it up.
We do not need to explain it.
We do not need to make it sound better than it is.
Raw honesty does not create what is there. It allows what is there to be unveiled.
And perhaps that is why stillness can sometimes feel
uncomfortable.
When the noise quiets, we may begin hearing a dialogue that has been taking place all along.
The Great Unveiling does not require us to manufacture something new.
It invites us to hear what is already speaking.
*Contemplation—Our Way of Being*
Become quiet enough to hear yourself bodily.
Do not begin by interpreting.
Notice.
Where are you relaxed?
Where are you tense?
What is your breathing doing?
What happens bodily when you remember someone you deeply love?
What happens when you remember someone you have grown to hate?
What happens when you remember a place where you felt completely safe?
What happens when you remember a place where you did not feel safe?
What happens when you remember being celebrated?
What happens when you remember being humiliated?
Do not correct what surfaces.
Do not explain it away.
Do not make it spiritual.
Do not make it psychological.
Do not demand that it make sense.
Simply ask: What am I saying bodily?
And then listen.
Perhaps you recognize what is being said immediately.
Perhaps you do not.
Either is enough for today.
Be still...
for in stillness the perfume of our memories surfaces.
Some memories carry sweetness.
Some bitterness.
Some arrive so faintly that we barely recognize them.
And some have filled the room for so long that we no longer realize we are breathing them.
Remain there.
Not to fix.
Not to manage.
Not to become.
To hear.
*The Field—Living*
Today, practice raw honesty with yourself.
Listen to your self-talk.
Listen bodily.
When someone enters the room, notice what happens.
When a particular name appears on your phone, notice.
When someone praises you, notice.
When someone criticizes you, notice.
When you look in the mirror, notice.
When an old memory unexpectedly arrives, notice.
When you encounter someone you love, notice.
When you encounter someone you have grown to hate, notice.
Resist the immediate question:
Why am I doing this?
Begin instead with:
What am I doing bodily?
Perhaps your jaw tightened.
Your breathing changed.
Your shoulders dropped.
Your stomach turned.
You smiled before deciding to.
You moved closer.
You pulled away.
You began crying.
You felt nothing at all.
Do not force meaning upon any of it.
Your task today is simpler:
Hear yourself.
Stillness without raw honesty can become another hiding place.
And raw honesty without stillness can become another accusation.
Bring them together.
Be still.
Tell the truth.
Listen.
You may be acquiring language for an intrapersonal dialogue that has been taking place for years.
Carry This With You
And when words have not yet arrived:
Be still... for in stillness the perfume of our memories surfaces.
