How bodywork can be a way of nonviolence

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you … ?—1 Corinthians 6:19

Our relationship with our body often is wearisome, particularly in our “your-body-should-look-like-this” culture. And the idea of the body as a temple is prone to be purely theoretical, lacking any practical application in our daily lives. We may often leave connecting with God through a bodily experience to the mystics, finding ourselves uncomfortable with the mystical experience in general.

Bodywork: Katie Boyts works on a client. Photo by Martha Morgan.

But I am fascinated with how to connect peacemaking, bodywork and our personal relationship with Christ and community.

In my peace studies thesis at Goshen (Ind.) College in 2005, I focused on how helping people cope with posttraumatic stress was a form of nonviolence. In my research I discovered a group looking at trauma differently from the traditional model. They argued that working directly with the body, rather than solely with the psyche in talk therapy, was highly effective for healing.

Three years later I completed a massage therapy program in Portland, Ore., and earned a license to touch the human body. I continue to find that

(1) the practice of touch is a form of nonviolence;

(2) touch has the capability to aid in the healing process, optimizing our self-healing capacity;

(3) bodywork can be an integral part of our faith practice, a method of prayer, a practical way to connect with God.

With these ideas in mind during my studies in massage therapy, I felt drawn to Thai massage, which has its origin in Thailand at least 1,000 years ago. It has the characteristics of yoga, meditation and acupressure and is often described as passive or lazy yoga for the recipient and active yoga for the therapist. The inherent intimacy that comes with these movements calls the giver to maintain a heightened awareness of intention, breathing, pace, rhythm, the recipient’s body language and energy movement in the body.

As I practice this massage I see increasingly the ability of bodywork to exemplify nonviolence and service as we provide well-intentioned touch, calm and connectedness. In Thai massage the therapist prostrates to the client in humility, asking that we increase awareness not only of the body but the presence of God among us. We therapists are to pray prior to touching the body and meditatively thank the tissue, the body and the person afterward.

In these moments I see more clearly how the body is a complex, God-created organism that shows me the magnitude of what violence and nonviolence means. The mechanism by which we experience these clarifying moments may be called the release of endorphins or the presence of Holy Spirit, but at its base this healing and shalom is God within me.

The human body is how we experience consciousness. Our hands, mouths, legs personify the way we understand the world around us and are the tools by which we create our culture, context and experience. Thus, if we view our bodies as weapons, they will be weapons, and we will interact with the world as weapons. And if we view the body as a healer, we will be healers, engaging in life as agents of healing.

Our physical actions can only personify what we believe, so shifting our perception of the body, and thus our consciousness, will shift our tendency toward violence. Violence is a sensual experience, and Christ practiced and taught nonviolence because of the sensual violation violence exhibits. Nonviolence can also be a sensual act and at times should be.

Bodywork challenges the common notions about the body that violence claims. The body is no longer an obstacle or collateral damage or a tool of weaponry; it is no longer an ambiguous way of interacting with the world; it becomes a tool of healing, a symbol of safety and comfort. Touch becomes a form of prayer, a way to connect and relate. It becomes a radical, revolutionary act in this violence-saturated world.

For Mennonites, the practice of community is an essential piece of our understanding in living out our commitment to Christ. Our relationships are central to our experience. Bodywork is rooted in this belief. Intentional, healing touch only exists relationally, and viewing bodywork as a method of prayer or as a space created primarily for experiencing God’s presence enhances this belief.

Matthew 18:20 reads, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” Jesus demonstrated this in his healing ministry; he created connections with people primarily through touch, healing their afflictions, turning violence on its head by providing a contradiction to violence. His relationship to body, his own and those he taught, was one of connection and healing, lacking awkwardness or fear.

An example of this in our communities today is the laying-on-of-hands ritual. It remains a congregational practice for which I am increasingly grateful. Not long ago my congregation in Portland participated in laying on of hands, and though during prayer, when I felt the well-intentioned touch, no miracles occurred, and life remains a difficult task, I did feel something beautiful move in me, a physical sensation that communicated caring and Christ’s love. It is in this space of touch that the Holy Spirit of the Triune God is most tangible. I invite God in. I invite the other in. I invite my whole self in.

Kathleen Norris quotes the sixth-century monk Dorotheus of Gaza, who saw our world as a circle, with God at the center and our lives as lines drawn from the circumference toward the center. The closer the lines crowd in toward God, the closer they are to one another, and the closer they are to one another, the closer they are to God.

This is a profound depiction of life: the closer we are to each other, the more we experience nourishing touch, the closer we are to God. And the closer we are to God, the more difficult it becomes to see violence as a sensible and justifiable act. These bodies, which are created in the image of God, hold God within them and act as tools of our agency, are magnificent, and so should be our relationship to them. Do we not know that our bodies are temples? Or do we know and simply choose not to understand?

Katie Boyts attends Portland (Ore.) Mennonite Church. For more information on Katie and her work visit www.katieboyts.com.