Accessing your Body’s Deep Wisdom
When your gnostic sensibility emanates out into your physical reality, we call it embodiment. It’s the union of parts (the spirit expressing through matter). It’s not an interconnection of parts, it’s their total communion (how can something be merely “connected” to something else that is part and parcel of itself?)
One of my mentors described “getting all the kids in the room before teaching the lesson.” She was referencing the scattered sense of having various structures in your body holding tension from specific events in your life (it could be as simple as grief in your lungs and fear in your kidneys, or it may be much more complex). To get all the kids in the room means to call back any lost parts and to invite the evolution that accompanies a greater sense of wholeness in embodiment. This is an embodied phenomenon because it exists moment to moment (and your body is always here now, waiting for you to join it).
Most of us know that our bodies hold onto stored, unprocessed life events in the presence of perceived threat. Here’s what that looks like: The Nervous System instructs the fascial system to constrict and “brace for impact.” Specifically, the midline structures of the body collapse, producing a rounding of the posture and an energetic closure to future life experience. The midline structures are those that fall along the “deep frontal line” according to Tom Myers’ Anatomy Trains, which is essentially one continuous fascial plane that connects your tongue to your toes (look this up on Google if you haven’t seen it!)
Under the influence of perceived safety, on the other hand, the body is able to be soft, supple, and open. The kyphotic and lordotic curves of the spine are invited to express themselves to perfectly dissipate ground reactive forces (vs. collapsing or becoming militantly straight). There’s an adaptability that lends to resilience, even in the face of stressors. The invitation is for your capacity to expand and for your physical frame to support it (I’m currently studying the Bowspring postural algorithm for this purpose).
To access the body’s deeply held wisdom is to choose (because it is a choice!) openness and self-honesty, to be guided by a playful impulse to explore the complex (and oftentimes foreign) terrain, and to meet yourself with compassion as you enter your discovery.
This process doesn’t carry the heaviness of excavating trauma, because it’s an unfolding of great wisdom deep in your bones waiting to be accessed instead!
If you’re seeking a trail guide to your inner terrain adventure, book your visit above.