The body is a myth-making machine, and offers up, time and again, in our aches and ills, a deeper story, a more meaningful narrative that begs to be remade.

I saw this myth-making in action many years ago, when I led a women’s circle. I asked the women to tell a story about themselves. As they did, they did something I hadn’t expected: all the stories were about the body. 

The Body’s Myths

Every myth I heard was different. One woman talked about her flat chest and how the boys in school made fun of her. Another talked about her “chipmunk cheeks” her mother discussed with her friends. Another talked about the body brace she wore from ages 13-18 and that she never felt like she fit in after that. 

As the women told their stories, I saw the myths buried below the stories’ facts—to learn how to fit in, to stand up for oneself, to accept oneself. I saw, too, the heroism demanded to face and transform those myths.

What is a Myth?

A myth is a symbolic story. Traditionally, it is “a story that is make-believe on the outside but true on the inside,” according to Robert Atkinson, in The Gift of Stories: Practical and Spiritual Applications of Autobiography, Life Stories and Personal Mythmaking. 

But that dual vision can also be applied to the body’s mythic coding, I learned first-hand.

I was grappling with a colon issue at the time, and had just written my life story for a graduate school assignment. (I was also reading Atkinson’s book simultaneously.) So, as the author suggested, I went hunting in that manuscript for the symbols of my body, and the underlying myth.

Red: A Mythic Clue

When I went hunting in that manuscript, the symbol “red” was everywhere.  

• It was in the color of the first chakra when I couldn’t digest formula at six weeks old. 

• It was in my father’s legacy of Scarlet Fever that I had in childhood.

• It was in my red school uniform and the red play clothes I insisted on wearing.

“Red” represents the right to have what you need to survive. It is my task, my soul work, one of my personal myths as I travel through this physical life and the life of my body.

How to Release a Myth

In American Music, author Jane Mendelsohn tells the story of a massage therapist who works with a PTSD patient and, accidentally, releases his myths. The premise of the book is that “…the past sits in our own bodies, buried beneath our muscles and bones,” notes Jennifer Gilmore in a New York Times book review. Over time, the past “…turns mythical.”

Our task then is to surface those myths, using whatever means we can—bodywork, journaling, artwork, movement, sound and so much more—and transform them emotionally.

M. Carolyn Miller, MA, designs narrative- and game-based learning. She also writes and speaks about the power of story in our lives and world. www.cultureshape.com