Our Physical Body

What it is: Just as it sounds: Our skin and everything under the skin, the brain, the organs, and everything between the ears. It is the skeletal system, fascia, organs, and blood, veins, and ligaments. We usually know when our physical body is full or not, hurt or not, happy or not, healthy or not. The signs are visible and generally recognizable. Our western medical culture places a lot of emphasis on this body and that it not experience pain or discomfort.
 

What it represents: Our physical experience in the world, our physiology, our ability to heal.

How the physical body should behave when balanced: We feel open, flexible and healthful, our vitamin and mineral elements should be balanced, and we should be free of pain, toxicity, and acidity.
 

Masculine or Feminine: Masculine
 

Quality of someone under-balanced toward physical: The body ages more rapidly, breaks down more easily, and loses elasticity. Organ function is disrupted, there are issues with absorption and elimination, and there’s a feeling of tightness, heaviness, and stress on our skeletal frame.
 

Qualities of someone over-balanced toward physical: There’s too much focus on physical strength, beauty, and anti-aging. There’s also doubt that the body can heal itself, and an over-reliance on outside factors like drugs, surgeries, and injections to bring the body’s radiance and worth back. There’s a tendency to bypass elements of nature (whole food, water, air quality, yin time, quiet, physical touch, uninhibited sexual experience, balanced movement) for the sake of the fast and immediate.

How to bring the physical into balance: Simple movements and slow, balanced repetitive sequences, meditation, walking, massage, barefoot or bare hand earth play (dirt, water, soil, sand), yoga, stretching, and weight bearing exercises that let you feel the strength in your own body and the union of all things physical.
 

source: editors of goop