my hippy memories

Last night my yoga teacher warned us that the "work" we'd done on opening our hips might bring back some surprising memories from the past. Because, she said, we store many of our memories in our hips and pelvis.

The cynic in me thinks that such statements are a kind of uninformed hooey. Memories in my hips...yah, right. I mean, I wasn't born yesterday. I learned about the brain way back in gradeschool.

But then there's this other part of me that knows how our bodies are imprinted with our experiences. How each fissure and wrinkle and roundness of my body tells the story of me. One of my heartfelt losses when my leg was amputated, was the loss of its tales. I don't have a photograph as a memorial, and can just barely remember the thick scar running down my knee.

And I also think of my neurobiology class from Gary Lynch, a world-renowned memory researcher. Where I learned that our memories are all the effect of biochemical processes. While current research points to this happening in our brain (and not our hips), I don't buy that there's a total disconnect between the two.

As my body moves around it stimulates emotions, desires, passions, resistances, and sensations. So why not memories, too?