Oh boy, I'm a week behind on this blog. Agh! I feel a little out of practice with consciousness reports now. I've been sick on and off and ON again for about two weeks now, which has resulted in me feeling a little hazy a lot of the time. This weekend I had a hacking cough that would not quit. I felt like a 19th century tragic heroine with consumption. Or some such disease. But I am feeling better today. Still coughing, but out and about.
The importance of your body really comes through when you're sick.
This seems an obvious thing-- your body (I keep typing "boyd" instead of "body!" Who is Boyd?) is important in your life. Right. But when everything's in working order, I don't think about my body nearly as much as I think about my thoughts. It's when my stomach feels funny or I can't stop coughing that I suddenly appreciate how well (Knock on wood! Knock on wood!) my body usually works.
It's just so funny how your self can so often feel like it's just made up of your mind. Like, I exist up here, somewhere between my eyes, and everything below that is just... a vehicle for my thoughts to be expressed, perhaps. They talk about this a bit in the Radiolab episode "Emergence". We feel that there must be something or someone sitting in our head and controlling our thoughts and actions. But there isn't! And our brain is just an organ when you come right down to it, even though it feels like this living thinking thing.
Back to being sick-- it's weird too that this virus or whatever, gets inside of you and makes you not only feel a certain way, but act a certain way. I had to keep coughing this weekend, I could not stop. I also had to blow my nose and drink tea and all that, but coughing is so interesting, you cannot help it. I hadn't coughed like that in a really long time, and it was not voluntary, it was that some little illness got in there and made me do it! And my conscious mind couldn't help me there, because I kept thinking "I am so sick of coughing. I want to stop coughing." But next thing I knew, I had to cough again. So even though my mind feels all powerful, the body is pretty powerful too. But it is tough to not feel like a big brain that just happens to have a body attached to it.
Comments (4)
This post really reminded me of when I had mono and the impact on the mind/body relationship. During the month I was in bed sick my body was super exhausted and my brain (in the beginning) was extremely slow to process anything. Toward the end it was really my body that had to catch up and heal while my mind was going nuts since I was stuck in bed. Also, at the same time I knew consciously I shouldn't be tired- all I had been doing was sleep. It really made me feel like my mind and body were enemies. Yet they are one in the same... so interesting point. In emergence it mentions the idea that there is a control panel and I think our default way to think is that our mind is the control room...
Posted by Valerie | October 1, 2007 10:11 PM
Posted on October 1, 2007 22:11
I wrote a comment to your posting on my blog.
here's the link.
Hope you feel better!
Posted by john | October 5, 2007 11:28 PM
Posted on October 5, 2007 23:28
http://mtblogs.qc.cuny.edu/mt-tb.cgi/3904
HEY I didn't paste the link sorry,
JRC
Posted by john | October 5, 2007 11:29 PM
Posted on October 5, 2007 23:29
I also feel like a big brain attached to a body. Yet, I feel like our brain thinks about or body a lot. I mean...think about going to the beach. You buy a brand new bikini, and you are looking all sexy...you hit the sand, and suddenly you don't feel so sexy. You feel pale and flabby....
Our minds are certainly conscious of our bodies...maybe more than we realize...if they weren't we wouldn't have all these eatting disorders...and such a need for diet pills and exercise equiptment.
*I know you were talking about illness...but for some reason your post made me think of our body awareness...and maybe because i'm female...I thought of our self perception of our own body beauty.*
Posted by Jessica | October 8, 2007 4:15 PM
Posted on October 8, 2007 16:15