Reconnect with your body

My journey home, to wholeness and health

We live in a culture where value is placed on knowledge, logic, thoughts, the mind… and we tend to spend a lot of time living in our heads. (I know I have!) Connecting more with our body – and therefore of course our heart, gut instinct etc., can bring about a more balanced experience of being in the world. That’s not to say this is a quick or easy journey – but well worth it.

My path led me (after decades of ‘thinking’ about the mind body split) to experience it within myself and to explore my own challenges around this.

Years ago, when I first sat down to meditate, I realised that there were huge areas within my torso that were numb and that my body was even blocking me from feeling them.

As I began to try to soften my mind and journey into my body my breath became increasingly shallow. I felt like I couldn’t get much further than just below my collar bone. This was not how I typically breathed, however when I focused on my breath this was how my body responded. Why?…

Our bodies are miraculous

It is easy to think of them as a vessel that simply homes us during life, an organism consisting merely of building blocks.

But our body has an intelligence of its own, a knowing and an ability to take care of us in ways we are often unconscious of.

Reconnecting with our body can have a profound effect on the quality of our lives and our relationships with ourselves and others.

Energy and emotions in our body

There are clues in our language that emotions reside in the body. Through loss we may feel ‘heartache’. When nervous we get ‘butterflies in the tummy’. Frustrating situations can be a right ‘pain in the neck’. …And sometimes we truly feel that we have ‘the world on our shoulders’. But what happens if our experiences and feelings are so big that they overwhelm us and we cannot cope with them? When faced with difficulty in life, our bodies can safeguard us from emotions that can feel too difficult to face. Instead of feeling and releasing strong emotions, the body may tuck them away, in a safe place to protect us. This is both a blessing – because it helps us cope in the moment – but also a challenge for our health.

In the longer term these locked away emotions manifest as blockages of tension in our bodies, lives and relationships. They can lead to new habits in terms of how we think, relate and behave as well as physical symptoms. When the body stores these emotions and protects us from feeling them, it can also block positive experiences: joy, laughter, love.

Transformation is possible

When the time is right, through exploring the sensations with kindness, intuition, guidance and/or bodywork, blockages in the body can be gently explored and released.

Living more fully is about living with all aspects of ourselves – our joy and sadness, our mind and reconnecting with our home – our body.

By living fully we can experience all emotions in a healthy way that they pass through us and out. This is my personal experience and that of my clients.

I am a big believer in the power of the body’s innate intelligence. I believe that reconnecting to the body can create huge positive changes in our lives. Our bodies become more open: releasing tension that holds unhealthy postures, cause pain and create dis-ease. Our hearts also open creating more space in our lives for love and laughter. Through our bodies we can feel more connected to ourselves, live move fully and connect, with love, to those around us.