Sanctuary for Heart Magic :Unwinding Spines & Unleashing Hearts utilizing Network Spinal Chiropractic in Boulder, Colorado: embodiment

EMBODIMENT

Finding the ground

Embodiment. Seems like in some way we are all on a quest for greater embodiment. To be present, in this moment, participating in the full experience of life. In spiritual circles embodiment is a popular topic and is often referred to as being “in” our body, feeling the sensations, and moving our bodies with the inner rhythms of our being. It seems that the aim of the embodiment movement is the shift from living in our head/thoughts into a more visceral, connected or integrated experience of existing. Along with embodiment comes the idea of being grounded, which we often associate with a down or into our physical body direction.

For many people there is an experience of overwhelming activity in their day to day, which can feel scattering, lead to being hyper-mentally focused, and or an experience of being “up”. This up or scatter is what people attempt to bring down through embodiment practices. These practices are incredibly beneficial, particularly if we feel disconnected from our physicalness or from our feeling body, but they are not the full picture of embodiment. While they can greatly support us feeling more alive and engaged if we are stuck in our heads, the overarching goal of existing is not to be more “in” our physical body. Rather the goal, so to speak, is to be or express more completely in and through all our bodies, of which the physical body is but one expression of who we are.

The most pertinent questions here now are how do we be grounded, energized and expressing through all of our bodies? And how do we become aware of the life and intelligence in all aspects of ourselves? Our physical, emotional, mental and soul bodies are all vital expressions of our beingness. True embodiment is being present in all directions and levels of ourselves. Being grounded up, down, in and out. If we are too physically focused our spiritual bodies might not be energized. If we are too spiritually focused our physical, mental or emotional bodies might not be energized. There can be any combination of these occurring. You might wonder how you would ground up and out, since this is not the typical direction that people associate with the ground. As a reframe, think of ground as everywhere and more as a state of being rather than as a dense form. Throughout the entire universe there is ground. Ground is not just down into the earth, but it is water, it is sky, it is the infinite cosmic expanse. Ground is also not just physical, but it is subtle and etheric. In fact the most coherent and stable ground is pure light itself; ever present, always here and the source of all life.

GROUND OF BEING

All bodies

If ground is everywhere, then you can experience ground in your physical body, ground in your emotions, ground in your thoughts and ground in your soul. You might wonder what it looks like to be grounded in all of your bodies. Being grounded in your physical body means your sensory-motor skills are intact and things are running smoothly with all of your physical body parts. You are also not overly tense and breath moves freely through your body. Being grounded in your emotional body means you know what you are feeling and you can feel your emotions when they are present. You don’t try to think your emotions and you are not numb to them either. Rather emotions are present, you feel them and the energy of them moves. Being grounded in your mental body means that you have clear, coherent and organized thoughts. You can pay attention to detail, follow things through and also see the larger perspective of how things fit together and impact each other. Being grounded in your soul body means you know your multifaceted, multidimensional nature. You feel connected to your heart and the hearts of others through yours. You know knowledge without needing to learn it in book or from someone else. You regularly feel ecstatic states of bliss and rapture.

Each of our bodies do have different directionality, frequency and relative size or distance. Physical body density is slower. You can see the size of this body with your physical eyes and the directionality is down/in. The emotional body is less dense, but still has substance or thickness to it even in its non-physicalness. Emotions can feel heavy or light and the direction can be up or down. The mental body is less physical as we don’t directly see thoughts with our eyes like we do our physical body. The frequency of thoughts is higher than emotions or the physical body, and the direction tends to be up. The soul body is the most subtle of our bodies. It has the fastest frequency, and is the largest and most expansive of all of our bodies. Its direction is up and out, and eventually all pervasive as you reach full fusion or unity. I share all of this because as you learn to ground in each of your bodies, knowing how they move and where to find them is useful. If you are constantly drawing your energy and awareness down and in, then it may be more challenging to find coherent thought or expansive states of unified bliss and rapture. Opposite of that if you are always up and out, your physical body or emotional body may be a bit more elusive to you.

Embodiment includes of all you, in all directions and all rhythms. Sometimes you may need to find up, at other times down, sometimes in and at other times out, until eventually you are rested in the allness of everythingness that has no direction and no distinction of bodies because it is just one unified whole. This is the ground of all being. The source from which all life sprouts forth from and returns to. The source of existence and existing. We are all already this. The journey of embodiment is the expression of this source into infinite forms (ie. what we call creation or the universe), until the eventual return of the essence of these forms dissolves back into the source from which it emerged. Returning to itself. Expanding out and contracting back in. Embodiment is the creation, it is the expansion out. The return to source is the dissolution of all bodies and forms, aka disembodiment, but that is a topic for another time.

Dr. Amanda Love, Network Spinal Analysis Chiropractic, Boulder, Colorado

Connected Movement

Motion guided by thought

Unless you are a dancer, athlete or have practiced a lot of body awareness you probably don’t really pay too much attention to how your body moves. Rather than tuning into our body’s natural movements or allowing our bodies to be moved we tend to think or do our movements. Thinking our movements comes from our thinker deciding it wants to do something and then our body following through on that thought with the necessary actions. For example say you are sitting on your couch and you have the thought that you would like an apple from the kitchen. Your body then gets up and walks to the kitchen in response to this thought. This is the process or act of doing. This motion is guided by the thoughts in your head and often not in connection with the larger rhythms of your consciousness.

When motion is guided by thought alone it is mechanical in nature, meaning you have to do the motion and there isn’t a sense of aliveness inherent within the movement itself. In this previous sentence you are the thinker (as that is what most people identify themselves as) and the thinker/you is guiding the motion. The process of pure doing, or moving guided by thought, involves effort and there isn’t a synergistic flow to it or something that is energizing it; you have to put all the work into it. Another way to say this is that the movement is not connected. Disconnected movement is movement guided by thought that feels like you have to do the work to produce the action. This is how most people move most of the time.

When our thoughts are the primary motivator of our movements we are then thus limited in our movements by the thoughts we think. Our thoughts decide what movements we take, where we go, where we don’t go, how we are and aren’t able to express ourselves through our movements (including the movement of voice/sound) and what we think we are physically capable of doing. The effects of this are vast and include how the movement of a single joint in our body moves or doesn’t move, the way a muscle or group of muscles tense up, or the posturing we hold ourselves in and extends into the expression of our purpose and what we move towards and away from in life. When our movements are guided by the mechanical nature of thought intelligence we experience the limitation of our thoughts through this physical body which intelligence moves within.

Intelligently Guided Motion

Beyond the thinker

You may be wondering what can move us besides our thoughts? Believe it or not there is something more intelligent then your thoughts that can guide your movements. We are largely conditioned to believe that we are the thoughts we think, or one step beyond that, that we are thinker of the thoughts we think, and that our identity stops there. This creates a limited perspective on who/what we are and that limited perspective is what gets expressed through these bodily forms as movement.

What is this intelligence that lives beyond our thinking minds which can inform our movements and how do you access it within your own consciousness and experience? One of the first pieces I’ve found to be fundamental for people in discovering themselves beyond their thinking mind is the development of body awareness. What this means is learning how to drop your awareness from your head/thoughts into your body and simply rest it there. Through learning how to rest your awareness into different parts of your body you begin to notice yourself and your energy within your body rather than be focused in your thoughts. This opens your awareness to the more subtle aspects of your being. This is simple in application, but requires a consistent practice to discipline where you allow your attention to go as it will almost always want to immediately go back into your thoughts.

Navigating your awareness into your body you begin to learn presence and how to simply be without doing. It is then through the next step of turning your attention towards your beingness that you become aware of yourself at that level beyond thoughts. It is also here that spontaneously organized movement can arise that is generated not through your thoughts but through your being. Here movement is effortless and not limited, controlled or determined by your thoughts. It is also not mechanical, but instead has it own coordination and defies what the thinking mind previously thought possible. The mind cannot makes sense of it, nor is it necessarily supposed to be able too. Here, you the person, must have also developed enough trust, faith and surrender or you will not be able to experience beyond your thinking mind. Without trust, faith and surrender the mind is simply unwilling or not ready to let go. It needs more time to keep its confined, limited and illusionary sense of safety a little longer before experiencing freedom.

At first some people experience this more organized, spontaneous movement as scary, strange or other worldly, but it is simply the waking up of your awareness to the beingness aspect of itself where thoughts don’t interfere and the intelligence beyond your thinking mind can get a moment to enter your body and organize it in a more efficient configuration. Life is always evolving and moving towards greater organization, intelligence and knowledge of itself. This is built into the blueprint of creation. It is natural that we are waking up to this next aspect of ourselves where we tune to the more subtle aspects of our nature and our thinking minds get out of the drivers seat. Here a more highly ordered and energized intelligence (that we are) can stream through and use the vehicle of the thinking of mind to express through rather than the thinking mind running the show. Overtime and with more tastes we become more stable and rested at this level of our being and our identity shifts from thinker into illuminator or simply pure awareness.

Dr. Amanda Hessel, Chiropractor, Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado