Movement is the language of deep transformation

I often call this the age of dissociation, the age of collective freeze. Living in the head, many of us have become dissociated from the sensuous world in and outside themselves. Many people have lost their capacity to accurately feel and sense themselves as a result of making the mind over important or losing themselves in new age spirituality. The result is that many of us feel lost, led by fear, and alienated from ourselves.

Are you looking for a sense of oneness or wholeness?

In the search for inner peace, belonging, meaning, authenticity, and true connection, many of us cling to the promise of “Oneness” promised by a variety of spiritual trends on the condition that we further dissociate ourselves from our sensory physical self and the felt physical world around us.

I believe that feeling “One” is often confused with feeling whole and connected. The latter is what we experience in our bodies when we stop separating from ourselves and from nature and the sentient world around us. I believe that coming home to ourselves physically, emotionally, and spiritually helps us to become more aligned with who we are at the core of our being. And to feel that, deep down, we belong and matter. And that we are truly needed for who we are.

We need a movement from hard to heart for ourselves and others

Our Western world has successfully separated the harmonious, interdependent, unified, and interrelated whole of body, mind, soul, and spirit. Which has left many souls homeless and feeling lost, and many bodies deprived of their life sparkle. With the mind on the throne claiming higher consciousness as its own, we have lost the intelligent, highly conscious powers of the heart. Many of us, in the thrall of ranking, have severed our source of life and wisdom. For many, this comes with the price of feeling constantly anxious, stressed and overwhelmed, burned out, empty, and disconnected from their core.  Resulting in the physical-emotional habits that are at the core of depression, loneliness, diseases, chronic pain, overall physical tightness, emotional, and physical burnout, and fragile self-esteem to name a few.  

Many of the behavioral habits, following from this,  infringe on our bodies and the nature around us. 

It is time for us to come down from our ‘tower’ and reconnect and unite with the healing powers of our Self Wise and Nature

Fortunately, we are an amazing intelligent system that is essentially self-supporting and wants to fuel our dance through life. Our neurobiology is eager to show us how to inhabit our bodies again and re-attune to our sensual self to heal, uncover ourselves and flow as we grow. 

To address this self-healing capacity you need to review how you see and experience yourself. How did the expectations and belief systems that you grow up with, and the experiences that were given to you by your family, school, religion, and society form your self-image? How are your body, mind, soul, and spirit present in this image?

The answer reveals itself by how you move and are moved from within.

In my belief Your body, mind, soul, and spirit together tell your life story through the way you express, emote, sense, think, feel, move, and hold yourself. They are intertwined and interconnected with the animated, sentient, intelligent life around us. In their unity with each other and the life around us, they were the life compass for our early ancestors and the reason humans could evolve into highly intelligent beings with bodies capable of very complex movements and interaction with others. By redefining your self-image from fragmented to interrelated, you restore this experience of feeling whole, alive, grounded in the here-and-now, and in unity with what is in and around you.

Embracing your own wise body is the first step in befriending yourself

A very important, often overlooked,  part of the journey of coming home to yourself, is building an attentive, respectful relationship and communication with your body. Feeling better in your body calls for listening to the wisdom of your body. This requires learning the language of your body and understanding its signals from a larger-than-just physical context. It starts with befriending your body and returning to your senses and sensations.

I feel that self-expression is the domain of our soul. I once read a quote that stated that dance is the language of the soul. For me that resonates as such that dance for me is self-expression: a highly personal signature that each of us creates through a unique, magnificent combination of how we move, our use of words, sound, creative expression, emotional expression and the choices that we make to give meaning to our life. It is through this expression that we meet our soul and the heart of our passions, our deepest longings and our deepest truth. Who are you?

I see each soul as an unique expression of a bigger creation. The Divine Creation as it is often called works for me. And I like to think of this like the Divine Creation is exploring its talents, gifts and creative possibilities through each one of us: human and other sentient life. What are your talents and gifts?

I believe that the deepest mission my soul has for this live is to live its full potential. To bloom and radiate in the richest way possible to honor and serve all life. And to grow and learn through the experience of being human. What is your mission?

For me the physical body is more than a vehicle that helps us move through life. I feel that our body is highly devaluated in western society. It is a magic place to live in! Recently I read a quote that expresses the body’s magic:

“ Your physically felt body is in fact part of a gigantic system of here and other places, now and other times, you and other people. In fact the whole universe. This sense of being bodily alive in a vast system is the body as it is felt from inside“ -Gene Gendlin

Every single cell in your body is part of the whole web of life. Just think about it! Your body is collection of millions of these unique cells collaborating together like a micro cosmos in this greater cosmos and it operates on the same universal laws. The cells form highly specialized alliances that take care of your physical form, structure, your internal and external movement, your connection with the environment, your energy management, and they store all your emotions, feelings, and thoughts.

Your cells connect you with your instinctual wisdom, intuitive wisdom, ancestral wisdom, and universal wisdom. It is all in your DNA! Your body expresses you in all its movements. It connects with your senses, sensation, emotions, meaning, and the energy and sensuality of life around you. It connects you with the heartbeat of the earth, the life force energy. Through being present in your body, you experience life and feel alive. Without your body your soul has no place to go.

I feel that living an embodied life is to feel this intimate connection with the heartbeat of life itself. And herein lies our commitment to treat our body and mother earth in a loving and caring way. To honor all life. What is your relationship with your body? How would you like to feel in your body?

Mind is not that simple to define in a few words. In my perception, it is both our Ego and our linear, thinking brain. They are closely interconnected but each have another function. I define the Ego as the conscious and commenting voices in our ‘head’ that guide us to make decisions.  Our ego also is in close contact with our inner smoke alarm ‘the amygdala’ which keeps track of uncomfortable emotions and sensations. The ego, therefore, has the important role of protecting our vulnerable Selves from pain. Our ego forms in our earliest years of life. It learns through past unbearable pains and fears how to protect us from pain now. That’s why our ego often shows up in the role of the inner critic or inner saboteur or keeps us trapped us in limiting habits.

It also is a fantastic storyteller, beautifully interweaving memories of past experiences with the emotions and sensations we experience in the present. But these stories often fuel our inner critic and inner saboteur. This can create deeply entangled and distorted patterns and habits of perceiving, thinking, doing, and moving.

Another aspect of the mind is the linear thinking brain which is located in our neo-cortex. It is wired to find meaning through the understanding of cause and effect. For this reason, our mind is very past and future-oriented. It has the important job of storing experiences as memories, processing and organizing them based on cause and effect.

By design, it also has the gift of converting intention into action and planning and organizing our lives accordingly.  With this gift, dreams can become reality. Our thinking brain is localized in the neo-cortex. This is the cognitive part of our brain. Learning, and our ability to understand and process abstract, non-natural symbols like words are some of the functions of the thinking brain. Among other things, the thinking brain helps us consciously express ourselves in the world.

That brings me to the conscious part of our mind. Our conscious mind governs Self Awareness and that can be the catalyst for change. If we can listen with presence and intelligence we discover with what thoughts, beliefs, and feelings we created our self-image. Most of us have a self-image that is by far complete or accurate. The good news is we can change our self-image if we change the filter through which we see ourselves and the world. For this we need options.

To create options we need to be able to perceive differences. This is the field of the conscious mind. When we play and have new experiences we allow for different input and awareness of other options or possibilities. And for me one of the super powers of the brain lies in creating a world of possibilities and choice! What moves you? What move would you like to make ?