Living in a Body

Living in a body is both weird and normal. Normally weird? Weirdly normal? What is a body anyway? Is it simply the flesh and bones and sinews that keep us contained and moving? Or is it more?

I curiously wonder whose body is really calling the shots and sustaining me?

Is it the 37 year old’s body that greets me daily?

Is it the 13 year old’s body who shut down from the world on deep levels after leaving all she knew and loved, having moved half way across the world to Panama with her family?

Or could it be the body who’s experienced 10 years of aches and pains from finding her way through Lyme disease, a car accident and living in a highly sensitive body?

I believe we are simultaneously living in more than one body, while living in one body. Let me explain.

We have the physical body, the emotional body, the mental body, the spiritual body, and the etheric (energetic) body. All of these bodies are communicating (bickering, whining, crying out for help, homeostasis and hope) and have created the person and the body (bodies) we live in today, right now, in this moment. And it can get a bit congested with all the stories and stuck experiences, preventing clear connection with the Us that we know is good and whole and playfully curious about life.

My findings on how to support these bodies are universal but they are also deeply personal to my own experiences... And I get to share them through written word and inspired movements with my own heart and intuition. Here is what I find to be helpful:

Slow down

Breathe

Be in nature

Listen and be with your sense body (not mind body)

Be in connection with those you feel safe with, seen, and truly cherished

Create

Did I mention slow down?

Do these in varying combinations

What does that actually looks like on the ground for me?

I wake up and stay in the dreamy state, slowly allowing my body to ‘come to’ and assimilate after being in the wildly creative and limitless dream land.

I breathe slowly in the bath tub, allowing the water to support my being, reminding me that I’m safe and ok.

I walk barefoot in nature, the grit and gravel encouraging me to slow down and experience the connection of the earth beneath my feet.

I sit with the rocks and trees, syncing up to their steady and solid rhythm.

I dance and move freely and intuitively, sometimes as soon as I wake up; other times in nature.

I soak in the supportive touch and interconnected alignment cuing I receive from other healing and movement practitioners.

I cry, scream, kick and scream some more in safe supportive places (nature, bathtub, car) in order to move emotion through, both old and current stories and experiences.

I write. For no one but me.

How do these findings translate to meeting others’ bodies with the body work sessions I offer?

I continue to find that slow, deep (energetic or physical), breath and presence-filled strokes remind the body that it is held, it is safe, and it is a wonderful thing to be alive in the body.

This feeling and experience helps recalibrate one’s system and can be an integral part of one’s healing. In addition to helping the body feel really good, sessions can often times unveil and support parts of the client that busy lives and a general sense of not ok-ness covers up. It can also sometimes ignite in them ideas for how to keep supporting these hidden and tender areas (physical, emotional, or spiritual) and how to continue on their healing, human path.

I can only speak for myself, but it’s been really fucking hard to thrive in this fast-paced world that isn’t always (usually) kind to our bodies and nervous systems.  I wish I could say that I know what it’s like to confidently and safely live in my body every day with all the slowing down and healing work I’ve participated in throughout the years. But I don’t yet. Not every day. Not every moment. But I have my days and I have my moments where the work I’ve done clicks and I experience the joy of simply being alive.

In my deeper, slowed down spaces, I find myself asking if healing on all levels and in all bodies is even possible? And my immediate answer is, in this life, I really don’t know. But the truer and deeper part of me believes that reconnection into the aliveness that feeds our souls is possible. We are able to breathe life back into these battered bodies so that we can feel alive in the spaces that have been vacant. I don’t believe we’d be put here without access to the most innate and endless (re)Sources of life and love in our beings.  And that, my friends, brings me hope.