Forget Your Bestie — Ask Your Body for Advice
Engaging the body in matters of the mind.
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- The Quickie: Engaging Spirit through the body arouses a state of perfect peace. Through body consciousness, you can receive deep wisdom and forethought in your decision-making and interactions with others.
My Life as a Spiritual Seeker
I’ve been practicing meditation (more like attempting meditation) for around 10 years. My first exposure to structured meditation was at Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF) in San Diego. There, we would practice posture, mantras, and breathing techniques that facilitated a more engaged, focused meditation.
Attending service at SRF helped me to build a solid foundation of practice. As humans, we often learn through our senses, which makes growth in (non-sensual) spiritual practice ever more challenging. However, service at SRF met that need. It provided time and space to work through what meditation looked like from a physical perspective.
Over the course of the last decade, various other experiences supported my meditation practice, including:
- An Educator’s Mindfulness Training, which helped me understand the importance of calm in the physical body and the use of strategies like music, guided meditation and sensory activities to help initiate the process.
- A Zen Mindfulness Class, which taught me how to focus the mind at various locations of the body while allowing thoughts to come and go without judgement.
- Kundalini Yoga, which allowed me to recognize the blissful peace that follows breath and sustained movement.
- Time in nature, which opened my eyes to the Oneness of All, and provided space to feel the incredible peace in that knowing.
From that first attended service in 2010 to just a few weeks ago, I would say that my meditation had improved from an F to somewhere around a C-.
Improvement? Sure.
Proficient? No.
A full decade had passed, and I still had not reached a level of practice that was meeting my spiritual needs. Then, after having my daughter and returning to work, my mind went into overdrive.
With almost every attempt at a peaceful, THOUGHTLESS meditation, my mind dominated the scene. Meditations would leave me feeling more anxious than when I began: they had become a think-tank of all that needed to be done, and the unfortunate consequences of the failure to do so.
The Universe Provides
As the Universe will do, It provided the key to unlocking what was missing in my practice — the “Inner Body” (The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle).The “Inner Body” is described by Tolle as one portal to accessing our highest states of consciousness and enlightenment.
My initial response was confusion: The physical form is nothing but a lump of matter — holding our Souls hostage until death! My mind’s processing had essentially demonized the physical form, believing it to be a hindrance to spiritual progress, to attaining enlightenment. Until that point, I had believed the purpose of spiritual work was to separate form (body) from true nature (Spirit).
I was so wrong, and to think that way is absolutely detrimental to Spiritual evolution, to attaining wholeness.
The body, when experienced in its wholeness, will remove awareness from the mind. Inner Body meditation is a spiritual experience and it has nothing to do with the mind — it is pure feeling. For the first time in my life, I was feeling existence outside of the physical space (the head) where mind exists.
My thoughts had ceased, and there sat peace.
I can liken this feeling only to at drug-related experience. Ever had your wisdom teeth removed and been prescribed pain meds? Meditation on the Inner Body, feeling wholeness, engaging Spirit there, feels like that. The thinking mind shuts down entirely, which allows full consciousness to shift into the body. You feel every cell at once, and every cell is in a state of perfect bliss. You almost sink into the feeling. It is perfect peace — no prescription necessary.
Benefits of Inner-Body meditation
Inner Body meditation has been a stepping stone to more frequent “no-mind” meditations. The state of peace that has been provided through the body has transferred to my mind. Peace is no longer a far-away place. I am able to feel it, at will, throughout the day. My mind understands and is more easily able to step into the experience.
More importantly, and why I write, is the positive impact this practice has had on the world around me: my husband, my daughter, family, friends.
I feel more physically connected to my husband. Rather than reviewing the list of tasks, roles, and concerns that accompany a marriage, I am able to attune with my body sharing space with his spiritual form. Through this consciousness, I experience the warmth of his loving presence.
I am able to choose calmness with my daughter. With each trying moment of toddler-rearing, I am now able to take a brief moment out of the ego-mind to enter into the body, where there is peace. I then use this peace to respond in a more harmonious manner. This loving position is felt by my daughter and is frequently reciprocated.
I find peace in all situations. Previously, any conversation with my father was bound to leave me annoyed or disappointed; at work, facilitated meetings brought about anxiety and distress. Now, the peaceful state of the body allows space for acceptance and breath. It is more powerful than any perceived pain or imagined fear.
In Practice
While I believe that everyone practices meditation differently and that everyone’s path to enlightenment is unique, here are a few strategies that I use that might be helpful in beginning this practice:
- Get comfortable — though I tend to have more engaged meditations when my body is in a seated, upright position rather than lying down
- Close your eyes and release the tongue
- Take 3 deep breaths — in through the nose and out through the mouth, imagining all of your mind’s madness (worry, fear, etc.) flowing out with each exhale
- Go into your body — find tension or discomfort in its parts and release it
- Aim to feel the body in its entirety, all at once — less of the form and more of its essence
- Feel joyous energy in the navel and sex organs — the location of the Root Chakra; Feel loving energy in the chest — the location of the Heart Chakra
Ask and think with the body
Take your practice a step further by thinking with the body. You will find that it is filled with peace and wisdom — the antithesis of the erratic ego-mind.
The next time you want that bowl of ice cream, engage the Inner Body. Ask what it wants. It is the mind, not the body, yearning for these perceived, fleeting moments of happiness: the body has no material needs.
The next time you are anxious about a deadline at work, engage the Inner Body. Ask how it feels at this moment. All bodily systems are functioning as they should: the body responds with peace.
The next time you are too tired or too distracted to show love towards your partner, engage the Inner Body. Ask where it stands. Given its physical nature, it is invigorated by the presence of others: the body energizes you to act in love.
The next time your child tests your patience, engage the Inner Body. Ask for its input. In this single moment, you recognize the ego, the power struggle and the learned behaviors: it offers wisdom to react differently, peacefully.
Any time you have to make a decision — with your career, your family, or just your day — engage the Inner Body. Ask for its input. Every time you do this, you take power away from the thinking mind and you grow in your intuition — that “gut feeling” that is powered by God Energy, which will never steer you wrong.
Want to chat more about engaging the Inner Body? Let’s have Zoffee! (that’s Zoom+Coffee :))
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