Embodiment & the Bible by A.C. SeipleНамуна

When I’m in the thick of stress, it’s like the volume of everything in and around my body and is turned up to the max. If I’m overwhelmed enough, things shift to feel a bit different. If the stress of a situation or season becomes simply too much for my brain and body to navigate, it’s as though the volume collapses, as though something inside me collapses.

I wonder if you’ve ever walked through a time in your life when you experienced this kind of shift, an experience when your body was no longer moving through—or pushing through—life, but instead, seemed to fold. Maybe it was a time you felt frozen or numb, a time when regular functioning just didn’t seem possible, whether that was getting out of bed, going to sleep, or eating.

Nerdy fun fact for your day: We all have something called an autonomic nervous system. And this is something to be grateful for since it is what keeps us breathing while we sleep and regulates our heartrate to stay in safe zones, not going too high or too low. Our autonomic nervous systems help us navigate life, especially stressors in life, so that we can flexibly move between experiences that cause distress, experiences that overwhelm us, and the joy of settling into those blissful moments and seasons when we feel anchored in peace.

We’re learning a lot about our autonomic nervous system through something called Polyvagal Theory developed by a researcher named Stephen Porges (look him up if you’d like to know more!). And something that I think is incredible is that the ancient psalmists seemed to already be deeply connected to what we’re learning about today. Even without fancy clinical jargon or research to make sense of what was happening in their bodies, they were simply in tune with what was happening within—and told God about it.

Take a moment to really let that sink in–in our sacred Scriptures, we have preserved voices that speak from the depths of their souls, across different experiences of safety, stress, and shutdown. They didn’t try to get themselves together or present a shiny spiritual version of themselves. They were connected to the very real and raw experiences of being human, together, and authentically cried out to God from these places.

As you read through these Psalms today, see what it’s like to notice how the psalmists speak from deeply painful and vulnerable places, places where they experienced embodied overwhelm. When they ask their soul why they are downcast or depressed, the Hebrew here literally means to dissolve, or appear to have dissolved. It’s almost as though they’re watching themselves, feeling as though they’re falling apart. See what it’s like to check in with your body, noticing if you can resonate with what these voices describe.