When poorly, my mind struggles, very much, to home in and concentrate on anything with any degree of integrity. One thing that did, miraculously, manage to enrapture me this week however, was watching Coldplay on BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend in Glasgow. Watching the concert, you'll observe a phenomena peculiar to such events and that is this: 60,000+ people feel compelled to hold up their arms and point up to the sky. Heck, I was lying in bed and felt the need to do it!

It got me thinking did this. Our bodies obviously mirror how we feel, we know that. Yet that gesture of holding our hands high and into the sky is, I feel, almost spiritual in nature. It screams, 'I'm open to the world, I'm open to life and I'm open to the universe beyond'. (Strangely, just writing those words down caused something visceral to occur within me. My stomach lurched and my eyes welled up. I think it's saying, 'See! There is life within me. I do want to live!' But I've interrupted myself...)

What causes that compulsion to throw your hands in the air on such occasions? Well, in this instance, it was listening to the music. Somewhere deep inside, it offered the opposite to attrition; to a deeply languid soul it gave nutrition. Instead of enervating it was invigorating.

Watching Chris Martin, the lead singer of Coldplay, you see that using his body, he is a master of self expression. He becomes almost amorphous, if that's the right expression, as each limb feels the cadence of the music.

It made me ponder upon the circumstances when my own body moves of its own accord, as if separate from my mind. Whenever I've been abroad, for example, on returning home I seem to naturally comport myself differently; almost floating instead of walking, like an eagle gliding on thermals. It's as if tasting the air of another land, living a different life, helps me feel that despite the caged circumstances I currently find myself in, I've at least managed to spread my wings and fly, even if only for a short time. The way I move then reflects that.

I often quote the final words from the poem Words From a Totem Animal by W.S. Merwin:

Send me out into another life

Lord because this one is growing faint

I do not think it goes all the way

Another life may not be possible today, but I've learned this week that moving my beautiful body (not beautiful in a super model kind of a way but beautiful in a 'I'm wonderfully made' kind of way), even if it's stretching up to the sky, keeps life surging through me. It offers small pockets of air in a suffocated mind, thus granting a grateful nod from my mind to my body that says, 'Ok, you win today, I'll curl up and die another day'.

A small but important victory for the body over the mind.

Suzy

A Moodscope member.