This week, we are going to prepare for our descent into the body. This is the stage in the process when you are INVITED to come more fully into your body and to explore the relationship between your experience of embodiment and your experience of the moment itself. In other words, to come to understand embodiment as a spiritual practice. And not from a place up high, not from a place where mind and body are disconnected from each other, but where they are intertwined with and reflect each other. We will move into physical experiments and exercises next week, but for this week, I invite you to simply initiate the relationship between presence and embodiment. That is, how do you experience presence within your body? Where is your body feeling like it is living in the moment? Where in your body are you feeling alienated from the moment: fragmented, armored, cut of? Where is there aliveness that brings you into the present? Where is there a kind of deadness that severs you from the moment? And, to what extent, can you connect your past experiences, or your myriad of life circumstances, with those parts of you that have left the moment?
When we are in a survivalist interface with life’s challenges—rather than a depthful embrace of them—we are limited in our capacity to be here. Those limits begin as embodied limitations. Our bodies compartmentalize in an effort to protect us, and often, those coping mechanisms become entrenched ways of being that limit our access to reality—to life, in all its forms—for years, decades, or, sadly, our entire lives. So, for example, by shallowing your breath, you shallow your life. Because if you don’t breathe deeply, you can’t live fully. When you tighten your belly, you restrict your ability to feel. The more armored your physical body, the more congested your consciousness. Similarly, for when you get too lost in your head. Safely sheltered up high, or trying to transcend everything, you can’t feel into life. You think life rather than feel it. When we are open and fluid, we can avail ourselves of our whole spectrum of resources. Our bodies are not meant to be hiding places. They are meant to BE the expression of life-force itself.