Close your eyes and check in with your body. Start with the top of your head and scan down to your toes. Check for places where you’re holding tension. What’s your posture or pose like? Where are your muscles relaxed or contracted? Write about your current state.
People say we “hold tension” like it reflects negatively on our character. I just want to say hey, maybe this tension is carrying me right now, but I don’t think we’re supposed to say that here in the always-be-positive land of the lean-into-adversity go-getters. And then again maybe I’m just troubled by this prompt because I am carrying a bit more tension, I think, in my neck and shoulders these days, and I don’t know what to do about it.
With education you progress, it seems, from a machine to a bench to a desk; but here, eyes straining behind dusty spectacles, legs and arms bent in a collared shirt and wrinkled slacks, I sit before a more cerebral machine as it shapes me into an image of itself.
C.B. Crenshaw 