Die Arbeit, Die Sie Frei Macht (The Work That Sets You Free): Freeing the body

When I return to the simplicity of the body’s folds and the grandeur of its movements, it reminds me of a beauty and power beyond words.

Yet I spent a decade away from it, living in a religious community in Brooklyn that didn’t see the holiness of this focus on the body. And living within that mindset, I also forgot. 

When I moved away to Long Beach in 2020 in the height of the pandemic, in the midst of isolation, I started to ask again what the body could teach me. 

These painting began to emerge, showing themselves in stages of growth. 

And then I got struck by Covid, and spent a year - 12 very long months- dealing with Long Covid, in which my body and mind were stuck in a amygdala trauma loop of fear and fog. 

I spent every day trying to return to the calm of my body. Trying to remind myself through my brain and body that I was safe, that I was free. 

How do we remind our body that we are free?

 The title of the show, Die Arbeit, Die Sie Frei Macht (The work that sets you free) references Arbeit Macht Frei (Work sets you free), the words hanging over the Aushwitz Nazi extermination camp. Yet it shifts its meaning, from one of trauma to a liberation mindset.

As a Jewish person, with my grandmother a survivor of Aushwitz,  I see my body as continuously striving for redemption from those years and from the fear loop past down of what could happen again.

When afraid, my instinct is to compulsively do something to feel calmer, to engineer a sense of safety.

Yet hit by Long Covid, I could not do very much. I could barely have conversations. I learned to calm myself down through the body. To find safety not in actions or accomplishments but in what I already had.  Using the Dynamic Neural Retraining System and the Pain Reframing Therapy, I learned how much the body could heal and liberate itself. How much more it could teach me of joy and freedom if I let it. If I became its partner. 

That is the real, daily work that set me free. 

Finding the beauty, power, and safety that already exists within me, beyond words. 

We were formed inside another creature and then released into this world, perfectly containing all of the essential components that will continue to multiply and pound and shed and grow throughout our lifetime.

Despite our weariness, we stand up. We run, we jump. Sitting in front of the body as it does these things puts me in a state of jaw-dropping wonder.