Your Body is Your Friend

Can you imagine actually living in your body? Most of us don’t. We live in our heads and experience our body as a vehicle that carries us around to where we need to go. As James Joyce once said, “Mr. Duffy lives a short distance from his body.”

We see our body as an object in our mind rather than the subject of our heart. We then feel it needs to be what we think it should be for us to feel okay. If we feel we have too much weight we go on a diet. If we think our nose is too big, we get plastic surgery. If we believe our skin is not okay, we buy a variety of products that promise to tighten it, erase the blemishes, and get rid of the pores. We believe that aging is bad, and we do many things to our body to try to slow it down. It is okay to do these things but pause for a moment and realize you are seeing your body as something separate from you and it is not okay as it is.

Being disconnected from our bodies, we manipulate them, try to control them, exploit them, and demonize them (think of most of our really strong swear words and they are about our bodies). This cuts us off from realizing our body is our home. When you come back home, living in your body, rather than looking down at it from your head, you access gifts that are beyond your wildest imagination.

Rarely, if ever, can we stand naked in front of a mirror and celebrate this enormous gift we have been given. In fact, for most people, it is soul-crushing to do this. We are unable to see that we have been given the exact body we need to learn and grow in this schoolroom called life and aging is a natural thing that brings us many gifts if we just stop fighting it. Looking at it from the limited view of what is not okay, we are unable to connect with the beauty and the wisdom of our bodies.

Being this cut off from our bodies can be so damaging.  First, we are cut off from the awesome intelligence of our bodies. If you doubt the intelligence of your body, take a moment, and recognize that you were once a zygote, which was created when your father’s sperm and your mother’s egg came together. That one cell knew how to divide and divide and divide again becoming your skin, your nervous system, your digestive system, your respiratory system, your reproductive system. Let that in. How did one cell know how to do all of this? Because it was impregnated with the intelligence at the heart of life. Now ask yourself, are you the one that keeps the 60 or so trillion cells you are made of working together in a unified whole and orchestrating the millions upon millions of actions that keep you alive?

Your body is also a doorway into a level of bliss and joy that you may not, at this point, be able to comprehend. Yes, your body is physical, but your true body is an energy body that permeates and penetrates every cell of your being and even goes beyond your body. To get a sense of this energy body shake a hand as you are reading. Really, really shake it. Now stop shaking. Can you feel the tingles? That is your energy body responding to the shaking.

You don’t need to go around shaking your body and your hand all the time. You access this energy body by simply having your attention and your body together. Focused attention is the sunshine that your body needs in order to open and let go. The more your attention is in your body the more you will experience it coming alive.

This energy body, this river of energy has been with you your whole life and it is a doorway into joy, love, and wisdom. But your mind has contained it with its illusion of control. The more you live in your body, you will be able to make contact with the unconditional joy that permeates the natural aliveness of your energy body.

So I invite you to spend time with your body.  Lie on the earth and allow your body to melt into its embrace. Do yoga not to become accomplished in the poses but to come into your body and listen. When you do an ordinary movement like walking, really be in your body and be astounded at all it takes to be able to move through life. When you wake up in the morning, bring your attention into your body, really feel it from the inside, and then thank it for all it has done for you and will do for you today.

In the beginning, you may only be able to be in your body for moments. But those moments can accumulate until you discover it is indescribably delicious to come home to your body.

If you want to explore this further, I invite you to listen to my radio show available on the 25^th and Feb 1st at 5:00 AM & PM PST. LISTEN HERE. After the 1^st of Feb it will be available at any time on demand HERE.

Offerings:

Being Healed by Our Compulsions online self-paced course, is a good place to discover how to not struggle with life, using your compulsions as your teachers. And because our world is so enmeshed in struggle right now I want to offer you the course for a sliding scale from its regular price of $149 to $50. And if the $50 is beyond you, let us know. This will be available through January 31st. CLICK HERE to learn more about the course. Please email Aja at aja@maryomalley.com for your coupon code. CLICK HERE to see a masterclass video to get a sense of the course.

If you haven’t yet, I invite you to check out the audiobook for Belonging to Life narrated by me. Belonging to Life is an invitation to know again the joy of belonging to Life. It is available now on Audible and Amazon! See it on Amazon.