Through the years of doing my personal work and then my professional work, I have come to view our body as our most intimate partner…always with us…willing to hold things we aren’t ready to see and willing to reveal things to us when we are ready…like the most compassionate of lovers.
The beauty of this perception is that we can begin to grow into trusting what arises in this intimate partner, to practice getting curious with this loving compassionate body…spirit, partner.
As we work and grow from this perspective and practice moving and making art with this body spirit, things begin to arise that we have been carrying for much of our life…the body does that for us…it takes and holds and stores things. It agrees to stuff and be in collusion with our very early perceptions and attempts at meaning making, safety and coping. Then, perhaps, these agreements begin to feel constrictive and we realize we can no longer live comfortably within their constraints. This is the impetus that drives many of us to grow.
The courageous among us take steps and find supports to get curious, to invite something to shift, something to feel better. This experiential way of working may seem incidental in the beginning…’we are just dancing and drawing pictures’ right? Right…but something much deeper is happening.
We are offering our body, the spirit of our body…our BodySpirit, ground and space and attention we may never have given her before. I say ‘her’ because I see the physical body as a feminine principal, elemental and of the material/mater world. This is an important point at this changing time in our world, when women’s groups and circles and activism is leading an evolution…a ground swell of change in response to a ‘too small’ container.
As we give our BodySpirit space, permission and attention, we are both being taught by her as she unfolds and reveals and guides us into movements and memories that awaken and lead to healing…and, we are expanding our capacity to listen, respond, observe and witness her healing, her releasing, her expanding into something bigger…the something bigger that is our Soul life. The Soul life that is stretching her wings, taking her breath, expanding her lungs and arms and heart…finding the words and the neural connections…unlocking the grips of perfection and body image that locks us down into a life too small…a body notion too small for ‘all this’…all this going on…in here. All This…ALL THIS…that we need, each of us individually as we find our voice and power, ALL THIS that we need collectively, as we wake up to our embodied truth, voice and power.
So into the BodySpirit we go…
As we unwind from the warped and distorted ways in which we see our selves, our experiences and the stories we tell our self, we expand our capacity to witness our current experience with more compassion and clarity. We grow and expand and learn to validate our own journey. This is the process of mastery and of individuation not only from what society or our families or our religion think we should do or be like…but individuation from our own inner rigidness, judgment and perfectionism. This is the process of our Soul making and is the journey to our essential Self and to our unique and beautiful Luminous Life. This is the embodied empowerment journey that our country and our world is crying out for. Awakening this embodied feminine BodySpirit as our most intimate of partners, for our self, our families, our communities and our world…this is an intimate revolution.
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