Body Art, and Living “The Symbolic Life”

To talk about the body is not only a subjective act, but also a political and cultural one.” Dr. Denise Ramos

"Above Sea Level" Studio C & C, Montreux, Switzerland

Years ago, while paddling around coastal waters, I experienced a rare and unusual sight. I watched as a school of Flying Fish launched into the air from below the watery surface. Silvery bodies glimmering in the sunshine, they soon sought refuge diving back into the waves, as birds flying overhead chased them for a meal. However, after submerging for a few moments, they soon launched into flight again towards the hungry birds! After watching this cycle repeat over and over again, I realized that when fleeing underwater, the flying fish were likely fleeing from sea predators within the ocean as well. In this moment, neither the depths of the sea nor the flights into the air offered succor to these creatures.

Years later, while metabolizing some of my own trauma and training professionally in Depth Psychology, I was drawn to the significance of the symbol of the Flying Fish. Valiantly flying overhead to escape becoming a larger fish’s meal, they were faced birds with sharp beaks once aloft in the air! The plight of the flying fish suddenly resonated with human parables such as “out of the fire and into the frying pan,” or “the grass is always greener on the other side.” Fairy tales such as The Three Wishes resonate with this theme helping us process with messages such as, “be careful of what you wish for!”

In the wholeness of human experience, there is no escaping the depths of the unconscious. Many of us strive to reside in the “present moment,” and indeed I counsel my clients in techniques for this type of “mindful awareness.” However, there also is an indication for listening and watching for messages from the unconscious as a wellspring of information. In this attitude, we develop an “observer ego” to notice what happened immediately before we became triggered “into the depths,” for example.

How Does this Relate to Our Bodies?

Within Jungian circles, the human body is observed as a “living symbol.” Our visual appearance communicates to others our feelings about politics, social constructs, statements about gender and sexuality. Tattoos, piercings, scarification, and styles of dress communicate nonverbally to those we come into contact with. Words are not always enough, or necessary…

Those of us who have experienced trauma know that mere words can fail us when we’re trying to express the depth of our feelings. In the absence of being able to adequately “Symbolize” our experience through language, image, or a physical process such as dance, traumatic emotional states become stuck on the physical plane, sometimes manifesting as a symptom or illness in the body. Participating in the Arts can assist in unlocking and “Symbolizing” intense emotions that are otherwise frozen in the body, wreaking havoc in the unconscious!

Of the relationship between mind and body, Carl G. Jung states:

The distinction between mind and body is an artificial dichotomy, an act of discrimination based upon the peculiarity of intellectual cognition, rather than on the nature of things. In fact, so intimate is the interacting of body and psychic traits that not only can we draw far-reaching inferences as to the constitution of the psyche from the constitution of the body, but we also can infer from psychic peculiarities the corresponding bodily characteristics. (1971: 916)

Like the Flying Fish, we sometimes become trapped between life experiences and the depths of our own Souls. Jungian Psychology helps us navigate these depths for messages containing the “hidden gold,” meant to restore us into alignment with our higher Self.

Carl G. Jung warns of what happens when we do not heed the call to dive more deeply into Selfhood:

Now, we have no symbolic life, and we are all badly in need of the symbolic life. Only the symbolic life can express the soul—the daily need of the soul, mind you! And because people have no such thing, they can never step out of this mill—this awful, grinding, banal life in which they are “nothing but.”…[T]here is no symbolic existence in which I am something else, in which I am fulfilling my own role, my role as one of the actors in the divine drama of life…That gives the only meaning to human life. That gives peace, when people feel they are living the symbolic life, that they are actors in the divine drama…Everything else is banal and you can dismiss it. (1977: 274)