We are taught that the body is an ignorant animal intelligence dwells only in the head. But the body is smart. It does not discern between external stimuli and stimuli from the imagination. It reacts equally viscerally to events from the imagination as it does to real events.
Interpretation
The body and mind are interconnected, responding similarly to real and imagined stimuli.
This quote by Gloria E. Anzaldua highlights the often overlooked intelligence of the body, suggesting that the mind and body are not separate entities. It emphasizes that the body reacts to thoughts and feelings as if they are real events, underscoring the significance of understanding the body's responses and acknowledging the mental images that can affect our physical state.
In practice
In a wellness workshop discussing the mind-body connection, this quote could be used to emphasize the power of thought.
We cannot educate white women and take them by the hand. Most of us are willing to help but we can't do the white woman's homework for her. That's an energy drain. More times than she cares to remember, Nellie Wong, Asian American feminist writer, has been called by white women wanting a list of Asian American women who can give readings or workshops. We are in danger of being reduced to purveyors of resource lists.
The struggle is inner: Chicano, indio, American Indian, mojado, mexicano, immigrant Latino, Anglo in power, working class Anglo, Black, Asian--our psyches resemble the bordertowns and are populated by the same people. The struggle has always been inner, and is played out in outer terrains. Awareness of our situation must come before inner changes, which in turn come before changes in society. Nothing happens in the "real" world unless it first happens in the images in our heads.
I am visible-see this Indian face-yet I am invisible. I both blind them with my beak nose and am their blind spot. But I exist, we exist. They'd like to think I have melted in the pot. But I haven't. We haven't.
Nobody’s going to save you. No one’s going to cut you down, cut the thorns thick around you. No one’s going to storm the castle walls nor kiss awake your birth, climb down your hair, nor mount you onto the white steed. There is no one who will feed the yearning. Face it. You will have to do, do it yourself.
Like all people, we perceive the version of reality that our culture communicates. Like others having or living in more than one culture, we get multiple, often opposing messages. The coming together of two self-consistent but habitually incomparable frames of reference causes un choque, a cultural collision.
[When asked "Dr. Einstein, why is it that when the mind of man has stretched so far as to discover the structure of the atom we have been unable to devise the political means to keep the atom from destroying us?"] That is simple, my friend. It is because politics is more difficult than physics.
And whereas this House desires to obtain a full knowledge of all the facts which go to establish whether the particular spot of soil which the blood of our citizens was so shed was, or was not, our own soil.
An evil deed is not redeemed by an evil deed in retaliation.
And in that fraction of a second before anything actually happened, Santino Corleone knew he was a dead man.
No matter how much we try to run away from this thirst for the answer to life, for the meaning of life, the intensity only gets stronger and stronger. We cannot escape these spiritual hungers.
Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?
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