Brave tale of battling 'body blindness'

Jenny Powell: physical and emotional redefinition. Photo: supplied
Jenny Powell: physical and emotional redefinition. Photo: supplied

''Body blindness'' can have serious physical and psychological consequences. In her memoir, Dunedin poet Jenny Powell describes living with condition.


THE CASE OF THE MISSING BODY
Jenny Powell
Otago University Press

By CUSHLA McKINNEY

Unless we are injured, ill, or practice some form of mindfulness, we take our bodies for granted and see our thoughts as translating seamlessly into action without conscious effort.

Integral to this process is proprioception; the transmission of dimensional and sensory information about the body - its location in space, the relative positions of its various parts, the velocity and speed of its movement - to the brain, where it is integrated and used to generate an appropriate physical response. When this goes awry, people exist in a state of ``body blindness'' that can have serious physical and psychological consequences.

In The Case of The Missing Body, Dunedin poet Jenny Powell describes living with just such a condition. Born with joint hypermobility syndrome and dyspraxia (poor motor control), the first four decades of her life were a constant struggle with a body that moved, bent and dislocated itself, seemingly outside of her control.

Then, during a physiotherapy session for a shoulder injury, she suddenly realised that she could feel where her shoulder blades were and that she could consciously direct them to move in certain ways. This first, revelatory experience was the start of a slow and ongoing journey of physical and emotional redefinition.

These experiences are related in the voice of a woman called Lily, a narrative choice made to provide the distance necessary for Powell to write objectively about an intensely personal experience, but also one that is in keeping with a story in which the sense of being - and not being - plays such a central part.

In a series of diaristic episodes, Lily records her thoughts and feelings during and between training sessions, as well as exploring the developmental, psychological and physiological underpinnings of her disorder.

Her descriptions of the gym - mortifying self-consciousness, the panic engendered by unfamiliar equipment and exercises, and the sense of accomplishment as each is mastered - will be familiar to anybody of a certain age or (in)ability who has ventured into this world of the young and beautiful.

However, it was the sections in which she discusses the importance of the body in identity formation, and how her perceptual problems were compounded by impaired psychological development, that I found most interesting, and I wonder whether a similar therapeutic approach might prove useful for other conditions, such as eating disorders, that are characterised by a disjunction between physical and mental self-perception.

With an appendix outlining her syndromes in layman's terms and references to other material, Powell's memoir also provides a useful resource for anybody interested in exploring these issues further, and she is to be congratulated for being brave enough to publish such a private story.

Cushla McKinney is a Dunedin scientist.
 

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