Defense

America is a defensive place. What the dangers are differs depending on who we talk, but the overall vibe I at least get is that many people do not feel safe. There are real dangers of course and there are those who capitalize on our anxiety. I wanted to talk about how massage can be an effective strategy to mitigate some of our fears and tensions, without being over idealist. Truth is the world is not perfect, has never been perfect and probably won't ever be perfect. Within the imperfection though we are free to create a little ease for ourselves as we go about our lives.

The annual defense budget for the United States is around 610 billion dollars, officially. That’s a lot of money; about $ 2000 per person if everyone chipped in evenly. We should also probably assume that unofficially our defense budget is quite a bit more. Then there's all the interior defense we support. Police, prisons, security guards, bodyguards, alarms, locks, fences, and so much more. I am not a Utopianist. I am unaware of any culture that lacks any forms of self-defense and would be skeptical of any culture making such claims. I imagine having some means of defense is just apart of being alive. When we look at this from an evolutionary perspective we see our other ape siblings are all capable of warding off unwanted intruders. It seems all multi-cellular life from plants to fungus to us animals each have their own means of defense. There is nothing unnatural or morally wrong with police or militaries, but to me, it seems we are out of balance with how much money, and energy goes into defending ourselves. So I want to explore why. I want to know what is it about our culture that puts in a perpetual state of being on guard.

So what does it say that we apply so much money, into defending ourselves? What are we communicating to each other through our financial interactions? What fears are we projecting? How many of these fears are real and how many are dark fantasies? Of course, I don’t know the answers to these complicated questions but I do have a theory about how we might be able to decrease the energy we put into defense. It doesn’t require political will, innovation, cooperation, leadership or any other word that's overused, under-practiced.

Instead of looking our metastasizing defense budget from a political or social lens, I believe we should go inward, into our bodies. We will observe our bodies for tension, stress, and fear. Let us discover where we are expending our biochemical energy into holding guarding patterns. For tension to exist in the body, our muscles have to stay in a contracted state, which uses up our limited energy. To experience how much our biological energy our excess tension and stress consumes let us flex a part of the body for just one minute. I’m going to make a fist and hold it clenched. How much energy did that take? How much energy are we constantly utilizing in our bodies because we are not releasing our fears? Are our bodies natural defenses in balance with the threats they are facing?

So here is where I am supposed to mention massage as a means of easing stress and tension in the body. I want to do that. Massage is a tried and true way of relaxing the body as well as a practical way to better know the many muscles that live in our bodies. We can learn where different muscles are and what their functions are. We can learn whether or not we are using our muscles in a healthy way. Through massage, we can become more aware of our cycles, and patterns. We can know where we are compromised and learn what behavior can exasperate injuries. All this is true and is why massage has become so popular as a modality of health, but I think there yet a deeper layer to this.

As we search inward for what we are defending ourselves from, let's look at some of the world ’s ugliness for a minute. There is much beauty in the world, but for now, let's explore precisely what we want to defend ourselves against. So what are some of the blemishes of modern life, that keep us on guard?

How many of us know our neighbors? How does not having a relationship with people we live right next to. How does it feel not to have any relations to people we share our space with? Anxiety and suspicious are natural responses to social isolation. Concepts such as “safe spaces” emerge out of this social environment. We can create communities in which we are giving a sort of social promise that we will be respected, but how often are we in an actual space where we feel safe. Spaces where we are not just physically safe, but safe to be vulnerable, to be weird, to be authentic. How many "safe space" actually provide this. What does it say that we have to identify these spaces with signs rather than from our lived experience? When's the last time we were in a space where we weren't being observed and recorded by a device of some kind. A device that will log our words into a byzantine databank accessible by whoever for as long as we have surplus energy to feed the said databank. Can we ever be comfortable when we are being constantly watched and recorded by corporations, governments and who knows who else?

I write all this not to fear monger although there does seem to be good money in that grift. I write this because there are real-world issues that we should be defensive against. What precisely should we be on guard against? The answers will be different for everyone of course but when we know what we need to be defensive of we can learn to relax about our other worries. I believe this is the same process for bodies as well as nations. We are invested in military and police for the same reasons we can't relax our shoulders. We are anxious. There is plenty to be anxious about and we should be aware of threats. If we are trying to make the world a better place we should learn to be more attuned to our bodily needs. Our bodies are the part of the world we have the most control over. When we are more sensitive to our physical tension we are better able to separate real dangers from our own anxieties. It is my hope that as we as individuals cultivate the wisdom to make these distinctions we will as communities better learn to separate whats harmful from what is merely scary. I hope as we become more open, peaceful and paradoxically safer we will radiate that energy into the greater world.

Anthony Bruni