Spirit in Flesh: Bringing Together Body and Soul
Thinking and knowing more about ourselves doesn’t necessarily change our actions, our experience of being in the world. It gives us more information, which can be helpful, but in order to actually live differently, we need to connect to both what’s beyond our minds, and also underneath our minds.
This is why talk-therapy often isn't that helpful for folks in shifting root-causes or healing long-standing patterns. So many people come through my door who have been in talk therapy for years, can tell you all about why they are the way they are, but can't seem to shift their lived embodied experience in the world.
We can know all about a pattern or a problem, study it head to toe, and then continue to repeat the same behavior. Because we're bypassing important pieces of our wholeness.
We're bypassing the body's experience. We're ignoring the soul's yearning. We're disregarding the important piece that connecting to the spiritual and energetic layers of existence brings.
This is why, with so much emphasis on the mind, knowledge and science, our world is still in a deep spiritual crisis.
We need the wisdom of the spiritual realms to bring us into connection with the wider unfolding of the universal aspect of life, which helps us find a sense of belonging embedded in a cohesive whole.
And we also need the wisdom of the body and soul. Going underneath our minds brings us into direct relationship with our body, our feeling state, our soul’s yearning, and in turn, a sense of belonging within.
This realm, that of body and soul, is the one that gets most neglected.
Not only in psychology, but also in many spiritual landscapes and practices. We tend to avoid the “messier” realms of the body and emotion. The raw and the real human.
So even with a good mental understanding, and a strong connection with Spirit, many people are still so deeply lost. Because they're living disconnected from their bodies, and therefore, their soul's expression.
And even when the body is acknowledged, it's often still talked about as an individualized system, disconnected from the living matrix of Earth.
It's so easy for the mind to separate. To create categories and boxes. This is, in fact, the purpose of the brain in order for us to make sense of the world.
And because we've placed the mind/brain/science/knowledge as hierarchically more important than feeling/intuition/spiritual connection/embodied wisdom, we've gone too far in the direction of separation and dissection that we've stripped ourselves, and Earth, of Soul.
This is in part born from the programming that the institution of Colonial Patriarchal Christianity (please note this is not the same as the teachings of Jesus/Yeshua) has instilled in us. The separation of body and soul.
Two of my favorite quotes on this subject are the following:
“There has been a strong effort to separate the body and soul. The intention of that message is disconnection. When we separate body and soul, then we can control bodies.” - Sonya Renee Taylor
“The soul belongs with the body, but it has been chased out of it by the impulse to dominate - to controls others, nature, and ourselves. For domination is the one thing the soul will flee from.” - Clark Strand
When we dominate ourselves, try to control or change or negate our body’s experience, or allow the external systems of control to infiltrate our beliefs and practices, we aid in this separation of body and soul.
When we reclaim our body as sacred, and as a place to encounter and experience the Sacred, we invite the soul back into the body. We experience the body as a landscape through which to experience the fullness of life. A landscape through which the soul can come alive and receive the sacred here, and now.
This is the creative life force. The way in which we change worlds. It is the fuel that enlivens our actions here on earth. Based not on acting against, but acting for.
The body, the ego (or sense of Self), our emotions, are all such integral parts of a healthy spiritual practice, a healthy experience of living a spiritual life as a human, on this earth.
Please don't try to deny yourself this sensual, primal, wild, and raw gift of being a body. This is why we are here. To experience this gift of embodiment.
I’m going to be writing about this more because it’s a common theme I find in my practice and amongst my students, where there’s an intentional (often times unconscious) disconnection from the body in order to live a perceived spiritual life.
But for now, let this question guide you:
How can I invite myself back into my body, as the home of Soul, and as the landscape to experience connection to Spirit?
Work with me
These sessions anchor into the vast interconnection between the physical, energetic, emotional, spiritual, and mental bodies. These sessions blend techniques of energy healing and chakra repair, cranial sacral therapy, myofascial release, visceral manipulation, and sometimes deep tissue work to target the muscles themselves. | Spiritual and energetic guidance, facilitated through the experience of embodiment. These sessions guide you into deeper communion with yourself, your body, and your energetic expression. They aim to foster trust in yourself, deepen your intuition, cultivate healing, and bring you closer to the truth of your soul. They can include soulful embodiment work, guided journey work, energy training and tool building, plant spirit medicine, and/or ceremony design. |
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