Back to Body

Recently I had this revelation while going for a walk (I have no idea what spurred the revelation on, I just found it interesting so jotted it down). I realized that our culture is body obsessed; we live excusively by our senses (if we can’t see/taste/touch it, it isn’t real) and indulge these senses to the point of excess. But, somehow, we’ve managed to remain completely disconnected from our actual bodies.

We no longer have any concept of what our bodies want or need and we haven’t just lost the ability to, we’ve actually lost our belief in, our ability to communicate with and listen to our bodies. We no longer recognize their voices.

I just realized! It’s like our mind’s only means of interacting with and experiencing the world is through our senses, but disconnected from our body (as we are) the experiences are hollow and our minds (which we live out of) keep stuffing themselves (figuratively and literally) in an attempt to fill that void. As if throwing more chocolate pudding in will make the experience more real or solid – make us more able to taste it.

What we really ned to do is shift out of our minds and try living in our bodies every now and then. We need to learn to become embodied on a more regular basis.

The Crux of the Story

I tell you all of this as a kind of aside to get to this point: earlier last month I was lucky enough to get to attend a workshop by Sonia Choquette.

Sonia’s workshop was on developing intuition (or sixth sensory skill as she calls it). This is one of my favorite topics and I have a collection of books exclusively on this (not that I’ve read them all, I just collect them), so I was very excited to get to go. And it was worth it too, the workshop was great – even if it wasn’t anything I expected it to be.

Interestingly, Sonia was actually the second person that weekend to tell me that she didn’t believe that our Spirit lives within our bodies as most of us take for granted (I think) – something I hadn’t really pondered before. Rather, they (Sonia & the other woman) believe that our spirits are much bigger tand less constrained than our physical presence. And that these huge spiritual presences that animate us aren’t always fully present in us.

Sometimes they wander away. Sometimes we kick them out.

When we let ourselves get caught up in our minds we often force our spirits down and out because their input is illogical, unreasonable, unrealistic. Like with our bodies, we spend so long ignoring and shoving at our Spirits we’ve actually forgotten how to recognize them! (So, I guess we can’t blame them for wandering away from us when all is said and done.)

Which I guess is the long way of explaining that Sonia’s workshop was all about pulling your Spirit back into your body; all about learning how to embody and experience it. No notebooks or notes were allowed; it was six hours (not totally, we have lunch too) of action: “Do this…” “Try this…” “Just try it…”

She called the activities tools for your tool belt. And they were as varied as dancing, breathing, singing, thumping your chest (the cure for mental constipation), and squeezing your butt cheeks together (no word of a lie).

I loved it.

I told Wakizashi afterwards if I had to tell you what I had learned (information-wise) that I hadn’t known before my answer would be: nothing. But, what I gained was invaluable and honestly difficult to put my finger on. Because Sonia’s method is not to hand out more information but to force learning through doing, everyone’s lessons are different, catered specifically to what they needed right then.

First, for me, I learned that my biggest block is my own lack of self-trust. That I (my ego/mind) am the only thing keeping me from flowing with it. I need to realize that I’ve got this thing, and just go with it.

Second, and this I think is the heart of her lesson and the one that will matter to all of you too: We need to spend more time in our bodies. We need to move beyond our sensory experience and learn to really be in our bodies again.

I (we) need to make a conscious effort to feel and experience what it’s like to have our spirits fully present in our bodies. And we really need to learn to hear both our body and out Spirit again.

I tell ya, every where I turn the lesson is always about coming back into wholeness again. It’s enough to make me want to shout, “I hear you, I hear you!”

Do you hear it?

As part of my Cella course at the Woman’s Theological Institute I need to do some Psychic Skills studying. This course counts as half (only 6 hours not 15) of my requirements for that unit. This post is officially my documentation for that purpose! Plus, it seemed useful for all of you, which makes it doubly good doesn’t it?