I Love Going to Hospital - Being A Mammal - Part III

Part of my work involves getting up at 3.30am to coach clients scattered around the world.

At first I reacted with horror; now I get up at 3.30am anyway.

In Tokyo, the light is already peeping through the clouds by 4am.

The streets are deserted, the traffic lights aimlessly changing in vacant stupidity. It's quiet, and there you see a tall, erect-looking man, thumping along the side of the river alone, wondering why he would want anyone to love him?

And I pass by Meguro hospital - where I was once admitted for a minor operation - I start reflecting on how I've always loved going to hospitals; and often thought that strange…

When I was two, I was admitted to hospital for 6 months.

I suffered from massive, life-threatening 3rd-degree burns on both sides of my inner thighs. I was strung up and held in the same position for 3 months, giving time for my skin grafts to consolidate and regrow. Strung up, because no two year old could be let free while the grafted skin was in such a delicate condition.

When they finally took me down, I had forgotten how to walk.

Of course, I didn't know any of that.

I only knew that I saw my mother briefly once a day. She had 3 other children to manage. This was a big change for a 2 year old, who had once spent all day with mum.

And so, I bonded with the hospital.

I bonded with figures in uniforms: nurses, doctors, anaesthetists and the rest. In case you're wondering - no. I don't have any weird fetishes with uniforms or nurses.

I missed out on that part.

Instead, I just weirdly love going into hospital.

I love being cared for, being helpless, being an infantile again.

I feel strangely comforted by the bleak interiors, the antiseptic obsessions, the routine. In fact, last time I was hospital in Japan, I had no visitors. I was there for 5 days, and pushed my other world away. It's what I wanted. I wanted to be two again.

And I think there are many people who love going to their Alexander lessons for similar reasons.

They come not just to learn, but to be touched, cared for, and - indeed - loved.

They come to be babies again. Why is it that tablework so popular?

Tablework is an infantile regression.

Teachers try to fool themselves with all kinds of rationalities which - to my mind - are mostly nonsense. An effort to rationalize away what is really going on.

Tablework satisfies a species-level yearning for the bonding that is so hard to find outside in a society that bans teachers hugging children, that sees a strange man being kind to a boy as a pervert, that calls woman seeking youthful love "cougars".

Our stressful society, distorting our primal needs into ugliness.

I wonder if teachers and therapists understand this hidden role they play?

Of course, no-one can admit to this. Being hidden is what gives it permission.

Tablework is about changing your student's nappy? NO. Come on!

But I think it is.

I think that basic passivity, that "allow me to take your arm" is an excuse for people to regress, to be "mothered" again by a surrogate. Even if they have to pay.

There is nothing wrong with this - in fact, it's a beautiful thing.

I know I have been vociferously adamant that I don't see how Alexander's discovery is communicated by this infantile re-enactment. And I still stand by that. And yet…

I do feel those urges that lead people there.

I just want to do it in a hospital. On a bed, not a table.

(I hope you can see me laughing out loud?)

As a species - we are wired to crave touch.

Welcome to be a mammal.

ThinkingBody Online.

Picture credit: Pixabay.com