After a very long and glorious period of self-nurturing R n’ R, I recently felt my inner warrior start to awaken once more within me. She wanted some expression, something to dig her teeth into. So I set myself a goal: To run up the mountain path outside our village in two weeks.
Well, today was the day! It was time for action. Two days ago I hadn’t even managed to run halfway up, so with much uncertainty, and my inner voice screaming, ‘This is nuts’, I headed for the hill.
I knew I was going to need to dig deep. I knew I was going to need to engage my will. Apart from using creative visualisation and single-minded focus, skills I’d mastered as an athlete in my teens, I decided to enjoy the run rather than making it about getting to the top.
The power of the present moment
So I just kept taking the next step, rarely looking up, because I knew the sight of those steep slopes looming large ahead of me would have conquered my spirit and inspired me to quit rather than carry on.
Being in the moment with each step, playing with a sense of joy, listening to my body and taking it at a more gentle pace than I would usually, I DID IT (the pic is me after my run!).
It was tough, the toughest physical thing I’ve done in a very long time and wow it felt good. I felt ALIVE, in my body, appreciating the way my body moved, working with my mind to accomplish such a feat!
This aliveness is something I haven’t experienced for many years. My life was dogged by disease. From back injury, anorexia, chronic depression, constipation, fatigue and burnout to cancer.
As someone who yearned to live life to the full, this was devastating.
My healing journey has been a magnificent deepening of self-acceptance, nurturing and honouring of what’s true for me. One that required me to get out of my head and into my body.
Awakening vitality
To feel alive we need to be ‘connected’ in our bodies – aware of our senses, aware of our feelings.
We don’t need to push our boundaries like I did earlier, that’s just something I love doing – it’s intense – and my sense of aliveness skyrockets.
But many people spend so much time in their heads – thinking, rationalising, analysing, churning things over in their minds – and they miss out on the juiciness of life because they’re numb from the neck down.
Disconnected from their bodies, they’re shut off from a huge source of inner intelligence. An intelligence that can guide us to make decisions that are true for us so that we live healthy, happy lives, fulfilling our highest potential. Living in flow, rather than with force.
I speak from experience. For most of my life, I was stuck in my head, out of touch, and with a poor relationship with my body. Thinking everything through, questioning my decisions, unsure of myself and most definitely living with force rather than flow. It was exhausting and unsatisfying.
What are we disconnecting from?
In a nutshell, we don’t feel safe to be in our bodies.
Certain unpleasant past experiences, especially childhood memories and health challenges, led us to develop a disempowering relationship with our bodies, and ourselves. Any further event that unconsciously triggers the same internal response through our beliefs, thoughts and feelings will reinforce this.
As well we’ve grown up in a culture that values and honours the mind and can at times denigrate the body. Or it focuses solely on appearance, proclaiming certain body images to be desirable, whilst others are not.
And often we’ve learned that ‘feeling’ or ‘expressing’ certain feelings is unsafe, or they feel too uncomfortable, even wrong. So we suppress, or repress, these feelings. But we can’t simply stop ourselves from feeling, so-called negative feelings. We stop ourselves from feeling anything at all.
We think we’re protecting ourselves by ‘not feeling’, but the opposite is true. Over time we shut off more and more of our life force, blocking our source of vitality, creativity and pleasure. We start to feel fatigued, rigid and empty.
This was me. Right from an early age, my mum said she never knew what I was feeling. I blocked a lot of feelings, but particularly anger. I didn’t even know how to feel anger until a few years ago. And BOY can I feel it now!
I guess I’m still working through some of the repressed stuff since the magnitude of my outbursts sometimes seems rather out of proportion to what caused them, but it feels good to express it. Because once expressed, I feel lighter.
And as I grow with this, I’m learning to channel it and transform it rather than directing it towards someone else.
When disconnection is helpful
There are times in our lives when dis-connection, or dis-association, as a way of self-protection serves a purpose – when some form of physical or emotional pain is extremely intense.
If you were subjected to any form of abuse – sexual, physical or emotional, or if you were involved in an accident or exposed to war, then this body-mind survival mechanism likely kept you alive.
Our natural response is to release traumatic energy from our bodies by shaking. However, unless a person has done a lot of mind-body work and is ‘flexible’ in their response to life, this impulse is likely switched off.
Our conditioning deems this type of involuntary movement as ‘out of control’ and akin to being crazy so we unconsciously suppress it.
If not released, the traumatic energy gets stuck and is held somewhere in our body, blocking our natural flow of energy.
This too leads to fatigue. When not observed, questioned and honoured, you could wind up on a path to more serious disease. And if it doesn’t lead you there, it will certainly lead to a lack of satisfaction, enjoyment and fulfilment in life.
Your body speaks your truth
Fatigue, illness, discomfort, pain – to me, these are messages from the body saying something isn’t right. In some way, we’re misaligned with what’s true for us – through belief systems, habits and spiritual deprivation.
Disconnected with our bodies, we don’t necessarily hear these messages. And if we don’t have a loving relationship with ourselves, where self-nurturing matters, we ignore them. So they have to scream louder or get so severe that we’re forced to listen. This is when we experience a wake-up call. Mine was cancer.
The good news? Your body knows how to heal itself. When you transform what’s blocking your natural flow and free your life force to nourish you, healing begins – a process that restores your vitality and brings you home to yourself, whole and complete.
Your body also lets you know when something is true for you. You’ll have your specific signals but generally, you’ll feel more expanded and open.
I’ll cover in another article how we become misaligned with what’s true for us and what we can do to re-align. For now, here are some tips to help you ‘get in your body’, open to your aliveness and unlock your vitality:
Get present
- Connect with your breath: get still, turn your attention to your breathing and breathe gently, without force, in through your nose and out through your mouth. Breathe right the way into your belly. Initially, it also helps to count whilst you breathe, 4 on the in-breath and 5 on the out-breath.
- Scan your body: let your attention drift down to your feet and notice your feet. Notice any sensations or tensions in them. Notice the temperature within and around them, and the airflow, if any, moving across them. Savour the moment. Then let your attention drift up your body, through each body part
- Become an observer, within and outside yourself: notice without judgement what’s going on and develop a sense of curiosity and wonder, as if looking at everything through fresh eyes.
Stay open to your feelings
- Recognise when you’re shutting down from your feelings. When we don’t want to feel something, we may do several things: like shifting our posture, for example crossing our arms or legs. We may constrict – physically pull ourselves in. Or ‘energetically’ fly out of our bodies, into our heads. Sometimes we use alcohol, drugs, excessive work or exercise to numb ourselves. Be aware of your strategies for avoiding your feelings.
- As soon as you recognise your desire to flee, stop. Allow the feeling, keep your heart open to yourself, and observe it without any attachment or making it mean anything. Stay within yourself, observing and allowing yourself to go deeper into the feeling. You’ll hit ‘edges’ where again you’ll want to shut off or run away. Stay with it, it’ll pass. This is not the same as wallowing in your feelings – it’s simply accepting and allowing what is, without any judgement.
Become a master of your ‘Yes’ and ‘No’
- Generally, we feel more expanded and open when something is right for us. Play with this to get to know your unique sensations. Recall a time when you felt happy, in love, inspired – see what sensations arise and where you experience them in your body.
- If our internal radar is giving us a sign that something is a no, we’ll usually feel somehow constricted or uncomfortable. To understand your ‘no’ recall a time when you were upset or unhappy – what and where are the sensations that match this experience.
- Follow your yes and not your no! If you’re at the point where you don’t know what makes you happy any more or you don’t know what you want in your life – this is a good starting point.
Ask your body for answers and follow its guidance
- If you’re experiencing an illness, pain or discomfort – get still, connect with that part of your body and ask it what’s going on. What does it need?
- Receive your wisdom – allow the answer to come. Don’t force it. Wait patiently, connected within and if necessary ask the question again.
- Act on what it tells you – this is important as it builds up a sense of self-trust and safety within. Over time, you’ll become so aware and connected that you’ll intuitively know what to do to support yourself and stay healthy.
Commit acts of Love
Love is healing. It’s also the key to growth and personal flourishing in your aliveness. So how can you be more loving towards yourself and your body? Fill yourself up with what you love – doing what you love and spending time with the people you love.
These practices will support you day to day and help you reclaim your vitality and feel more alive and free.
Sometimes we need help to ‘get in our body’, transform what’s blocking our natural flow, re-connect with what makes us feel alive and free and create a life that’s true for us. If you’d like support, I’d love to help.
