Our physical body – that is to say, the energy body we call physical – is, contrary to our subtle energy field, something we all agree exists. We can, without a doubt, experience it with all our senses. But although we’re totally dependent on our physical body for our existence here on Earth, we tend to lose contact with it for a variety of reasons, including tension, trauma, unhealthy food and society’s focus on the intellect. It is therefore important to re-establish communication with it. We’re using the word ‘re-establish’ deliberately, since most of us communicated with our body as a child.
We might have lost contact with our body growing up, but in the course of a day we may communicate with it a lot more than we think. How do we know that we’re nervous, for example? Perhaps by feeling our stomach knot or getting sweaty palms. Maybe our knees knock together. All this is information from our body. It is saying, ‘This is a situation I’m not comfortable with. Let me run away from it!’ To take other examples, when our body is tired, we get sleepy. When our body needs nourishment, we get hungry. There are many ways our body communicates with us.
We are all also equipped with an inner compass, or a pilot, if you like. It can be called ‘a gut feeling’, ‘intuition’ or ‘following your own star’. This compass guides us both in difficult situations and in everyday decisions, based on our own criteria and our own truth. It can manifest itself so that we simply know what is right for us, that we see one alternative shining more brightly than the other, that we hear an answer or that we feel which direction our legs should take us in.
The way we have built our society has led us to disregard these small pieces of advice from the body. There are for instance many people who suppress the hunger signals of the body with endless diets or by choosing a profession which gives them security rather than following their own dreams. But the more we disregard these bodily signals, the further we travel from our true path. When we switch off our body’s signals and live as if other people’s opinions are more important to us, we gradually lose our original communication with our body.
There may be lots of reasons why we stop communicating with our body. Stress can be a real factor. When we’re busy achieving everything we’ve made up our mind to do, it’s easy to lose touch with ourselves. Or the cause might be a traumatic incident in our childhood. It may be the fact that we weren’t seen, we weren’t loved, we were lonely, a beloved family member died, we were subjected to psychological or physical abuse, or something similar. The pain can become so strong that finally it feels too hard for us to be present in our body. Every time we are, we experience the untreated pain. The result may be that we learn how to switch off the pain. Or that we even choose to leave our body, leaving only a small part of ourselves there.
There are people who live the majority of their life with parts of themselves outside their body. Have you ever experienced suddenly seeing yourself from the outside? Or said that you were ‘beside yourself’ – without realizing that you actually were beside yourself?
When we are in this position, it becomes even more difficult to communicate with our body – partly because we don’t want to feel pain, partly because when we aren’t completely present in our body, we intercept the signals of our body less clearly. The first step towards re-establishing contact with our body is therefore to be aware of where we are. The following meditation may help.
(If you experience any kind of problem during meditation, or wonder how to get started, first create a quiet space for yourself then follow the steps below. The appendix at the back of this book has more tips on establishing a meditation routine. You can also download the meditations by visiting www.astarte-inspiration.com. We hope this support is of assistance to you.)
Sit on a chair, close your eyes and take a few deep breaths.
Feel where you are present in your body right now. Are you present in your toes? Are you present only in the upper part of your body or only in the lower part of your body? Are you more present in the right half of your body than in the left? Are you present in your stomach?
Explore and feel for a while.
Become aware of where you are outside your body. Are you above your body? Are you below your body? Are you to the right or to the left of your body? Are you in front of or behind your body?
Thank yourself for the steps you have taken, and thank your body for what it has shown you.
When you have finished, you may open your eyes.
You may wonder whether what you experienced during your meditation was real or was just a figment of your imagination. It can be hard to tell the difference. We suggest that you trust your experience. This is your reality, your communication with your body. What if you didn’t feel anything at all? Even that tells you something about yourself. And if you feel that you are only fantasizing during meditation, that tells you something about yourself too. It is all information about where you are right now. If you have any questions regarding your experiences during any of the meditations, please contact us on Twitter (@spiritualpasswd) or Facebook (The Spiritual Password).
Regaining communication with your body is like getting back into speaking a language you haven’t used for a long time. You still remember quite a lot, but don’t recall what everything means, so you may feel uncertain about your experiences.
In addition, next time you do the meditation, you may have a completely different experience. This is because you aren’t in the same situation. You aren’t starting out from the same point. No experience is right or wrong. So, no matter what you experience during meditation, just leave it at that without bringing your intellect into the equation. Without analysing.
MÄRTHA:
One day when I felt a bit absent-minded and cut off from my feelings, a friend of mine asked me where I was, because, as she pointed out, I wasn’t with her. This made me look at myself with new eyes and I realized that I was more or less floating freely outside my body. I discovered that I normally looked at myself from above and it struck me that whenever I thought I was present in my body, I was only present in my head and chest, never in my legs. This was the beginning of my new body awareness.
In the previous meditation, you may have realized that you weren’t fully present in your body either. You may have filled your body to your throat or your chest. Or maybe you were only present in one half of your body or in one of your toes. You may have experienced a line or a border that you couldn’t manage to cross, a barrier that prevented you from taking up a great deal of space in yourself. This may be a defence that you’ve put up for yourself in order to avoid unpleasant feelings or memories, for example grief, anger, loneliness, or even something completely different, known only by you.
What’s filling the rest of your body when you aren’t present? Only you know that, too. It might be other people’s experiences or truths that you’ve made your own and are living by. It might be other people’s energies. By that, we mean someone else’s way of thinking or experiencing the world, which is not necessarily your own: your mother’s way of looking at herself as a victim, your father’s strictness, your teacher’s way of assessing you. It could be anything.
All kinds of trauma may settle in the body in the form of muscle tension. No doubt you’ve felt the level of tension increase in your body before an exam. Your neck and shoulders stiffen and you get a knot in your stomach. When the exam is over, the tension disappears too. But when it comes to trauma, the tension isn’t always released. Your body may retain it in order to protect you.
As we have seen, the atoms of the body may be perceived in two ways: physical (weight and mass) and non-physical (charge and wavelength). That is to say, everything in our body is both physical and energetic. So, when our body carries trauma, it does so both through physical tension and through tension in our energy. This means we can dissolve the tension both with physical touch and through energy work, i.e. meditation, healing, energy reading, and so on. Different methods can give the same result. And behind all this lies our true potential.
MÄRTHA:
When I was learning the Rosen Method of bodywork, I was scared to death of reaching my heart of hearts. I was convinced that deep down I was an evil person and I was scared of having my true self revealed. But one day when I dared to open the door and was face to face with myself, there was only love within my heart of hearts: love of myself and of the world that I’d been afraid to show in case it was taken away from me. So I’d conjured up the most frightening thoughts, images and feelings as a fence around it.
Since then I’ve realized, through my own experiences and through meeting other people, that what we hide deep down is often what we’re afraid of having taken away from us. What we hide is not how terrible we are but our greatness and our inner source of infinite love.
In the previous meditation, you got to know where you are present inside or outside your body. In this next meditation, which is about breathing out resistance to being present in your own body, remember that you may have the same experience again or a completely different one. Both are real. The only thing you have to do here is to encounter yourself. And if you feel you can’t do that fully, that will also tell you something about yourself.
Sit on a chair and close your eyes.
Take deep breaths in and out. Every time you breathe in, breathe in more of yourself and your own energy. Every time you breathe out, breathe out resistance, other people’s energies or any other feelings that emerge.
Sit like that for a while, breathing in more of yourself and breathing out other people’s energies. Let whatever wants to emerge come up to the surface.
Feel where you are present in your body right now.
Are you only present in the upper part of your body or only in the lower part of your body?
Perhaps you are present only in the right or the left part of the body…? Or perhaps you are present from your knees downwards.
There is often a line of resistance preventing you from going further than your chest. Are you encountering that?
Go to the division line (or one of the division lines if there are many) between where you are present in your body and where you are not.
Meet the resistance and breathe it out. Inhale more of yourself and your own energy, breathe out more resistance and feel it giving way. (You may need to breathe in and out a few times before it loses its grip.)
Go to the next place where you feel resistance and breathe out what you find there. And every time you breathe in, draw more of your own energy, more of yourself, into your body.
Keep on breathing like this until you feel the resistance go. It doesn’t matter whether it takes two breaths or ten minutes of breathing.
Thank yourself for the steps you have taken.
When you have finished, you may open your eyes.
Did you manage to let go of the resistance? Did it feel the same or different in the various parts of your body? Did you have more space for yourself in your body or not? Remember that whatever your experience, it’s valuable information for you.
Initially when you start communicating with your body in this way and allow yourself to feel, you might notice pain here and there. It’s as if your body’s saying, ‘Now that you’re finally taking notice of me, I want you to know that I’m actually in pain here – and here too.’ It’s best to take it easy when such pain emerges, to feel its presence and thank your body for letting you know about it and work with it.
It isn’t always easy to meet pain and discomfort. When we’re ill, we take medicine in order to feel better, and when we’re in pain, we often just want to ignore it. That’s why we should be glad when pain manifests itself. We should try to be grateful to our body for responding to us.
When we encounter aspects of ourselves that we feel uncomfortable about, however, it can be all too easy to judge ourselves. If you experience this during meditation, just try to encounter yourself with acceptance, curiosity and happiness. Let it be like a first meeting, where you’re receptive and have no preconceived ideas. And remember that your meditations won’t always be the same. Just allow yourself to go on this journey with greater awareness of yourself.
The first step towards encountering yourself with love is accepting where you are right now, with all your shortcomings. So, the greatest gift you can give to yourself right now is to tell yourself that you’re good enough the way you are.