What do you sense when you feel your body? Take a few moments sometime today or the next day and see if you scan your body what you become aware of.
Is it tensions? Aches? Do you sense the gentle softness in your chest/heart? Or courage? Clarity? Gratitude? Do you feel warmth in your pelvis? How do your legs feel? Do they feel like clouds – soft and expanded? Energized?
Maybe you feel “vulnerable” in your belly. And if you stay with it, you see all the feelings that have been waiting for your attention – to be felt, seen, understood and released.
Most of us spend the majority of our time in our personalities – our familiar thoughts, feelings and sensations. Often these body patterns are also our history stored in the body. This becomes our house – our bodies.
It isn’t really home. It’s uncomfortable. So, we don’t want to stay connected to our bodies. We would rather distract, stay busy. Anything to not feel what’s actually here.
Unconsciously, we dissociate or numb out or distract…not realizing that whatever is there that we are avoiding will still be here when we try to be present. And, what has happened over time is that we have built these inner structures/patterns in our bodies that we lose connection with our real selves.
Wait, what???
Think about it this way – if you go to the gym and lift weights, your muscles will get stronger and your capacity will increase. Our personalities are without our conscious awareness also doing the heavy lifting most of the day – as we don’t presence in our bodies. We don’t have to try. It’s just happening automatically.
We feel okay. Sometimes good or great. The body though – it is feeling and holding everything “we” aren’t feeling.
Healing is often the reversal. Sensing the body, presencing brings us back into connection. Many times we start with the pain – physical, or emotional, or mental. What we’re retrieving is our real selves.
The beauty, lusciousness, preciousness, loveliness of who we really are!
This is what I do. I sit with people guiding them to open to what’s in their bodies. Whether it is deep warmth of your heart or the ice of fear from the hurts you endured.
This allows our real selves to be supported and become familiar. Or to allow the hurts and to transform them into an aspect of our real selves such as compassion.
Meditation in the park is one way to connect again. To come to sensing with the support of nature. The practice is supporting the nervous system to relax and to help you to feel more embodied – to build your inner muscles to feel rather than dissociate or numb or distract.
If this resonates and you feel called to explore this work more deeply — whether through somatic psychotherapy for California residents or psychospiritual integration mentorship available worldwide — I offer a free 20-minute consultation.
You can also join our free Saturday morning meditation group at Arlington Park in El Cerrito — a gentle, supported way to begin reconnecting with your body in nature.
This understanding comes from my studies in Diamond Logos teachings under Faisal Muqaddam — a rigorous path that weaves together depth psychology, spirituality, and somatic embodiment. It is one of the foundations of my psychospiritual integration work.