COMING HOME INTO YOUR BODY
Tracking Body Sensations to Achieve Authentic Adulthood
When the body is fully open, we can trust our own feelings and actions; they anchor us in an inner home.
-Marion Woodman
How often do you really feel comfortable in your own skin? Are you usually relaxed and “at home” in your body, or do headaches, knots in your stomach or other unpleasant sensations plague you throughout the day?
If we think of our bodies as out-picturings of our subconscious, these unpleasant physical sensations are usually the result of traumatic life experiences we never processed and resolved. If these painful events remain unresolved they become chronic conditions. If they persist long enough, our bodies will eventually express them in the form of “dis-ease” in one manner or another.
As we experience more of these unpleasant incidents without resolution, our bodies gradually become “persona non grata” to our Presence. We develop ways to “live inside our heads” or outside our bodies in a dissociated state.
And then we wonder why our lives have become difficult and unrewarding. More and more, we live in a state Thoreau described as “quiet desperation”. We worry and stress when things don’t work out as we hoped or planned.
So what to do? How can you complete these unprocessed feelings and experiences? How can you change the beliefs and self image you created to cope with your unresolved childhood trauma? How can you make a “home” in your body, so you can live a life of ease, openness, joy and love as an Authentic Adult?
A key component of The Body Transcendent work is learning to develop the habit of paying attention to your body sensations from a place of Unconditional Awareness. This will help you begin the process of reclaiming your rightful home in your body as an Authentic Adult, and will accomplish the following results:
- You will interrupt the “circuit of complaint”. This inner dialogue of negative thoughts and feelings whirring away in your “monkey mind” will be stilled as you learn to pay attention, in real time, to what is going in your body.
- Your mind can begin to tap into a rich source of feelings, life energy, and wisdom because these body sensations are the royal road to your subconscious and super-conscious “Unified Field of Intelligence.”
- You get real-time feedback about the physical cost of your thoughts, beliefs, and feelings and a powerful reference point for making new choices and behaviors from this moment forward.
When you truly accomplish these transformational conversations, you will find yourself feeling more and more relaxed, relieved, calm, confident, and clear. Your intuition and insight will begin to operate easily and spontaneously. Instead of trying to control, and figure things out in your head, solutions to seemingly insoluble “problems” will begin to pop into your Awareness.
When you “upgrade the software” that has been maintaining your life in survival mode with a program that supports thriving through life, you reclaim your rightful ownership of your home here in your physical body with a consciousness that supports what you truly want for yourself – NOW!
AN EXERCISE: DECONSTRUCTING “STINKIN’ THINKIN’”
New findings from brain state research indicate that permanent life changes require a Theta state of consciousness. It is in this state where you can talk directly to your subconscious/super-conscious Unified Field of Intelligence. When you tune into your body with Unconditional Awareness, no matter what it feels like in the moment, you are automatically operating from a Theta state, where your “word becomes flesh”, and you can literally rewrite your internal reality.
The following exercise is the beginning step to becoming an Authentic Adult. This process differs from repeating “positive thoughts”, or affirmations, which is often the equivalent of putting on a clean shirt over a dirty body.
Think of an upsetting experience you had with someone. Perhaps you thought, “He’s an idiot (or worse)! Why do I listen to him anyway? Why do I need him in my life? I hate him!”
Now check in and see where these angry thoughts show up as a body sensation(s). Where do you feel this in your body? Do you enjoy this feeling? (I doubt you will when you really take notice of what this “stinkin’ thinkin’” costs your body.)
You can deconstruct these negative thoughts by embracing what is happening without judgment. This is Unconditional Acceptance. Remember, what you “resist persists.” When you stop resisting, the emotional charge that powers these thoughts is freed to run its course and start moving to completion.
Try one or all following statements to help you maintain the state of Unconditional Awareness. Pay attention to what happens in your body as you say them:
- It’s okay for me to feel this (sadness, fear, anger, etc.) in my body right now.
- I don’t need to fix anything right now. I can just be with what is happening in my body.
- I’m safe feeling this fear right now. I don’t have to do anything but notice where this is happening in my body.
You’ll notice that your body starts to relax and calm down from the original agitated state. This is what it means to truly “let go.” It happens naturally when you are fully present in your body as sensations come up in response to your “stinkin’ thinkin’.” Now you’re commanding a new neural pattern to arise and begin to replace the old one. (There is an axiom in neurobiology – “Neurons that fire together, wire together.”) You can repeat this process whenever your thoughts turn negative and it will preclude the negativity from continuing to be reinforced in your cellular memory, which has become “hard-wired” from repeated reactions of this kind.
Keep noticing what happens when you “stop the world” inside your head and begin to observe your body sensations with Unconditional Awareness. You will continue to open more space for new possibilities and insights to enter your inner dialog. Then you can consciously steward this “conversation” in the direction you most want to go – right now!
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