Presenting
The Transcendent Way Body Approach
“What Your Body Means”
Our body reflects what is going on with us, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually.
Scientists know that the heart has neurons too, not just our brains. This higher intelligence often communicates with us non-verbally through our bodies. These messages are often very simple and easy to decode, once we get the hang of it.
It is a powerful action to greet any ache or pain or disease or even physical trauma, with the understanding that its purpose is to communicate something of infinite importance to us.
As we understand and open up to the broader understanding of the heart — the ache, pain, disease or physical trauma — often becomes less of a problem or heals up entirely.
The more present we are in our bodies, the more intelligent, compassionate, wise and aligned with our Higher Intelligence we become.
Frequently, our health improves because we are more in truth.
(Lie detectors work by measuring the stress on the body caused by being untruthful.)
The Body Blueprint.....
Top of the Head or Crown: Our Crown Chakra is involved with our feelings and beliefs about All That Is or the Tao.
There may be subtle feelings that the Creator/Universe/Tao is a judging or even a punishing Energy...
These kind of beliefs can result in a blocked Crown Chakra and a feeling of heaviness, pressure, pain or darkness at the top of the head.
Tingles and/or feelings of lightness or relaxation at the crown suggest the chakra is opening. An open Crown Chakra means we will experience the Tao/Universe as infinitely compassionate, even with us personally, rather than judging.
...Sometimes life can seem indifferent to us or even punishing. But if life brings us up short, perhaps it is only trying to get our attention. Maybe we are on the wrong path or missing something important. What we experience as punishment, is only the Universe becoming firm.
Think of how a parent yells loudly to stop a child from running into the street.
We are here to learn after all and when we open up our hearts and minds, life often goes much softer with us.
...Just as teachers are easier on their A students than with the rebellious ones at the back of the class...when we stop resisting "what is", learn to accept and to listen to the still small voice within...life goes gentle with us.....
(In fact, if we are truly sincere, the Universe often transforms even our worst mistakes or biggest problem into something helpful for our lives....)
For thousands of years, the ancient spiritual traditions in India have believed that Self-Realization (termed 'Self-Actualization' in the West) occurs when the Kundalini rises from the Root or Base Chakra at the bottom of the spine.
As it moves up through the body, our Kundalini gradually clears each chakra in our body of fears and misunderstandings. When the Crown Chakra is cleared of all fears and misunderstandings, Self-Realization occurs.
This process is very safe but transformation does include some moments of great uncertainty.
When the Crown Chakra opens, the ego or conditioned personality of the individual dissolves/merges with the true Essence within.
The ancient Hawaiians used to call Self-Realized or Self-Actualized people “Companions of God.”
In Eastern artwork, Self-Realization is depicted by a 1000 petalled lotus emerging from the Crown Chakra, symbolizing transcendence of the emotional prison of the ego and union with the Eternal.
Forehead: The Third Eye or seat of Intuition
Eyes: Seeing and the “I” as in the eye of the soul..... Any trouble with the eyes reflects on this issue. (The experience of dizziness might come when we are frightened to acknowledge what we are seeing.)
Nose: Smell, also “knows”
Our sense of smell brings us out of our intellects into our bodies.
A smell might suddenly transport us back to our childhood where we might vividly remember the scent, and what we were doing and how we felt.
There is just no arguing with an experience involving smell.
Likewise, a child knows (i.e. nose) (Children often intuit the truth even if they feel they cannot express this to the adults around them.)
Louise Hays suggested bleeding noses can be associated with feeling unloved.
Ears: Hearing
Sometimes ringing in the ears and other similar symptoms come as we are opening to more sensitive vibrations. Gradually, we open to hear the more subtle meanings in what people say to us. We may even be opening to hear the higher frequencies such as angelic voices and sounds.
Mouth/Upper Jaw: How open to life are we? How open to receive life?
Sometimes if we felt as children, it was not safe to express ourselves, we end up developing tension round our jaws, restricting how far we can open our mouths.
To release the tension and free yourself up, it can be helpful to massage the hinge of your jaw. Also practice expressing yourself more. Gradually dare to speak up; reveal your real feelings; and just generally, tell the truth more, as compassionately as you can.
Slowly, beginning to become more transparent will result in your jaw relaxing as you teach your muscles it is safe to be true.
You will also find that the more you accept yourself, the more people will accept what you express, especially if you do so with sensitivity and compassion.
A slightly metallic taste in your mouth signals that your shadow side is up to be noticed.
(Just noticing unpleasant thoughts or actions helps our shadow side dissolve into truth. It's not easy to admit we aren't as nice/kind/gentle/or compassionate as we thought...But seeing our own darkness makes us more compassionate with others in our lives.)
This process brings us into greater illumination.
Our heads: Westerners are taught to value our heads/intellects most highly, often at the expense of their heart and body wisdom.
When we fall in love, we fall out of our intellect, into our heart. We become more present with what is going on with our emotions and our bodies. Usually, this heightened phase is transitory. But a self-realized person is fully aware of their body and their minds 24/7.
The exulted status of the intellect in the West means we are often numb/unaware of the rest of our body, excepting our heads.
It might be a shock to see how out of touch with the body we are..... This lack of body awareness means we miss many signals coming from the heart, subconscious and the body intelligence.
This numbing results in recklessness and stupidity.
An example of this on the collective level is the building of nuclear reactors on fault lines, or even the Flint water crisis...
If the administrators were fully present in their bodies, they would have felt other people as part of themselves and could never have allowed lead contaminated water to be piped into people's homes....
Headaches can be the result of emotional conflict. We may wish to really awaken but perhaps on some of the levels in our unconscious, parts of us may wish to remain asleep.
Perhaps we had a past life where we were punished for being truthful and for living with integrity. Perhaps our unconscious and the cells of our body are still carrying echoes from these experience so danger signs flash when we start to wake up.
Once we realize the reason for our hesitation, it becomes far easier to awaken to a larger understanding in life.
Neck: Site of throat chakra, the energy zone concerned with expression.
How freely can we speak up and express ourselves and our point of view? How safe does it feel to acknowledge and speak the truth?
Back of the neck: Self-esteem
Do we hang our heads in shame or hold our heads high? Sometimes pressure on the back of the neck suggests that we feel we cannot stand tall, or that we have something to be ashamed of.
Notice too how much flexibility is in the neck. How far can we turn our heads?
Sometimes growing up, our conditioning taught us to look at ourselves, others life in a certain way. The limitations of our outlook might be reflected in a reduced flexibility of our neck movement. It is as if we have gotten frozen in a certain way of seeing things.
As we move past this old childhood conditioning, we may find we suddenly find our neck has a new flexibility. We can turn further left and right, maybe on the way to almost 360 degrees like an owl!!!!
Alternatively, we can practice stretching our neck to the left and right, to increase our range of movement. As we do that, we might experience some emotional shifts and see we are beginning to grow beyond our conditioning.
Shoulders: Responsibility
Think of Atlas who carries the world on his shoulders. Sometimes we might feel burdened with responsibility for the world, our families or our personal problems, which we feel we have to fix somehow.
Perhaps our shoulder pain signals the habit of taking too much responsibility upon ourselves. The cure is to learn to give it over. Giving our cares and worries over to a higher intelligence to figure out, leaves us feeling lighter and happier. Paradoxically, this helps us deal with our problems better.
If you are suffering from shoulder pain, know that the issue being healed is over-responsibility. As your shoulders heal, the issue is being solved emotionally. When finally there is no pain, your psyche has succeeded in healing this issue.
The pain leaving signals that the psyche has healed that level. There may be more levels of the issue to be faced but at least that level of wounding has been successfully healed.
*****Note: When you really get going on the spiritual journey, you will feel yourself giving over as a physical event. Your whole body, including your shoulders, will shift into greater relaxation and relief.*****
The High Heart area, the area just above the heart: Is connected to your soul, work this life.
As we clear the tension out of this area, along with our fears of truth and unconditional love, we might feel as happy again as a small child. We deeply feel that it is possible to experience heaven on earth.
In spiritual mastery, we experience all the wisdom and innocence we had as a toddler, together with the know-how of an adult.
The English poet Wordsworth said that “Innocence Regained' is superior to our childhood innocence. It is superior because it includes the experience of all the ego battles and spiritual fires necessary to achieve it.
As we clear our high heart area of fears and misunderstandings, and move into our true soul work, our presence here helps the world and even Mother Nature. Our lives prove that it is possible to live a true and loving life here on earth.
Heart: Seat of the 4th or heart chakra, the chakra concerned with love.
When our heart is closed, we might feel tension in our heart area. If we pay attention, we will see fear and distrust woven into our thoughts.
When the heart opens, sometimes we might feel tingles and warmth but perhaps also physical pain. Reflecting on our thoughts and emotions, we might see and feel how closed we have been, how unforgiving of ourselves and others.
It is possible to experience phantom heart attacks which feel like a real heart attack, but no physical damage occurs. A phantom heart attack changes us profoundly and opens us into experiencing more devotion to all of life.
The negative pole in the heart chakra is fear. Fear must be faced in order to embody more unconditional love. But if we fight fear, it gets bigger. The best approach is like taking a photograph of it.....
We clearly witness how much fear distorts our perceptions and causes us sorrow. As we feel that sorrow, fear lifts and love expands.
There is a child's expression that goes: Cross your heart and hope to die... Indeed when we go contrary to the impulses and wisdom of the heart, life becomes a chore and we become deadened to joys, tastes, emotions, and even hopes. When we go against the heart's input, we also set up the experience of an inner crucifixion because really that is what we are doing to ourselves.
For instance, someone who resists their true work for a “safe” job, or to take over the family business, will at some point have to experience the inner cost of having made this choice.
But it is also possible and good work to consciously sacrifice one's own needs at times for others.
So discernment is necessary.
Tip: If we are having so little fun in life, that death looks inviting, then we need to admit we have crossed our heart and we need to wake up to the truth of our Beings.
The impulse to suicide always comes from the ego which tells us it is safer to kill the soul than to just wake up and get to know our true selves.
Survivors of suicide attempts such as jumping off a bridge, consistently report that they realized on the way down that they made a terrible mistake....
Nor is it any solution to settle for a waking death in life. We are here to enjoy ourselves, share ourselves, honour and express ourselves and assist others to do the same thing.
Lungs: Trust in life
Ribs: Related to lungs. How relaxed are the intercostal muscles between our ribs? Are we able to take a deep expansive breath with ease?
Children who feel unsafe take shallow breaths. Many adults still are taking shallow breaths even when they are in charge of their own lives.
It is possible to shed fear by consciously learning to breathe deeply. Alternatively, if we move through some fear emotionally, we may find ourselves taking deeper breaths.
Solar Plexus or 3rd chakra: This chakra is characterized by control in the negative and communion/merging with God in the positive.
If most of the people in a country, are functioning at the solar plexus level rather than the heart area, the government will reflect this.
This is why it is said we get the governments we deserve.
The presence of so many cameras in our cities and the focus on collecting personal information, plus the proliferation of laws and regulations at all levels, suggest Western society may be at the solar plexus level, rather than the heart.
When you are clearing the solar plexus level, you may feel pain directly under your sternum. You might also feel a kind of a tense umbrella under your ribs. You can extend your hearts energy over it which can help promote healing. Also, focus on softening your mind and having more gentleness for yourself and others. Reassure yourself that it is safe to do this.
The more your consciousness rises up through the Solar Plexus Chakra into your heart, the more loving both you and your experience of the world will become.
We each have a great deal of power in the way we live our lives. Societies change as the result of individuals and small groups.
Stomach: Our stomach receives nourishment and begins the process of digestion and absorbing nutrients. We also can learn to stomach our divinity and embody our truth, rather than standing aside from ourselves.
Our cells have a real intelligence and you might know the moment you swallow a bite of some food, that you are in for trouble, even if the taste is all right.
Pain or difficulty in the stomach area can reflect our trouble stomaching our own divinity. Our Western culture promotes stepping aside from our own soul power.
Trouble stomaching/digesting/embodying your divinity, is the issue behind acid reflux.
Understand that suffering through the symptoms is the cure and as you move through your emotional blocks round the issue, the physical ailment will disappear.
(Feel free to take antacids if needed) but basically the difficulty will lift when your psyche has made the shift more into your own power.
Bulimia reflects a fear of stomaching nourishment. Sometimes, there are deep feelings of worthlessness and terror of one's true Nature.
The Good News....... All these ailments lift as the underlying issue is solved.....
Liver: Anger
We've known the liver is connected with anger for a long time. The English word “liverish” describes someone who is irritable or crabby.
Sometimes people rely on rage for strength. But anger is a false strength and crumples under pressure because underneath anger is fear and beneath that, is grief at separation from the Tao.
If you push back at bullies, they often fall apart or run away.
The person who embraces and feels into the grief underneath their anger begins to merge with their true Nature. Strength, wisdom, compassion and an expanded awareness, are the benefits that come from this.
Spleen: Obsessive thinking (We describe a person who is acting in an unpleasant manner, as 'full of spleen'.)
The cure for obsessive thoughts is to learn to observe them. Just observing them helps neutralize their impact on your own future as well as the subject of your thinking. As much as you can, find the energy to replace the negative thoughts with constructive ones.
Navel: Where the umbilical cord attaches to the baby - the point of joining to the mother during pregnancy. This area may carry our deepest feelings about how we felt about our moms and what they were feeling about us when we were in utero.
The mom's emotional state affects her unborn child greatly because even the cells of the baby's body, were formed inside her. But also, even if your mom was depressed or you were not wanted, everything can be healed as you recognize the wounding and ask the Tao for help.
You are infinitely loved by the soul that created you. You will heal as you realize this...It takes time. Really, the reason the spiritual journey takes so long is that it takes time for our minds and bodies to really understand how loved we are!!!!!!!!!!!!
The best circumstance for the spiritual journey is at the feet of a Realized master.
Arms: Embracing. Reaching out.
Self-Realization comes as we learn to embrace all of ourselves, not just our positive aspects. Whatever we embrace, we grow bigger than. Whatever about ourselves that we disown and fight, grows even larger and more horrendous!!!!!!!!!!!
Embrace your frailties and you will discover your greatest strengths.
Transformation requires great patience!
Elbows: Change
Hands: The ability to give and to receive.
thumb: problem solving
second finger: blaming
middle finger: anger or sexuality
ring finger: intuitive, instinctive
little finger: family and imagination
Just beneath the navel – The 2nd or Sacral Chakra, also called the Hara:
The 2nd Chakra, symbolized by water, suggests the flow of the soul, the river of love expressed. Western culture tends toward alienation so we are taught to distrust our deepest selves. We might unknowingly take on veils or blocks to their own deepest energy which then, unnoticed, become “our reality”.
Resistances show themselves by the feeling of tension, in this case in the belly. Or there can be the feeling of heaviness, pain or the image of a stone might arise in the mind as this chakra is considered.
Children going off to school may complain of tummy aches as they learn to control and block their deeper energy.
There is an expression: Trust your guts. This saying encourages us to refer to our inner internal sense of the best action, to learn how to go with the flow.
****It is important to understand that blocks or resistances can all melt in an attitude of self-compassion. They can also melt through loving understanding coming from another who has melted their own resistances to their soul energy.
If you ask the Tao to help you release out your resistances at a pace you can handle, with all the support you need, you will begin your deeper spiritual education.****
Kidneys: Fear
Hips or Lower Jaws: (Related to the mouth or upper jaws). How open to life and ourselves are we?
Trusting ourselves and life is key to personal power. If we are too restrictive with ourselves, we place a kind of psychic girdle on our hip movement and experience of life.
Think of the belly dance or the hula. The fluidity of the dancers' movements illustrate how at home they are with their inner power, their instinctive energy and with life.
Contrast this with the rigid hips of goose stepping soldiers. Military training highlights a belief system based in external authority which requires rigid adherence to rules. The more fluid belief in internal authority highlights a sense of flow and an ability to listen and refer to the still small voice within, our inner wisdom.
Genitals: Our maleness or femaleness
The 1st Chakra, also Root or Base chakra: At the base of our spine, this chakra is our root and carries issues of survival and how worthy we feel; how safe; and whether we feel we can live our truest energy and still be supported by life rather than having to act in fake ways to make money.
The Kundalini is activated most easily through an experience of unconditional love from an enlightened teacher. It may also be activated through a love affair (or mechanically, through use of techniques without a teacher, although this latter way is not encouraged.)
Once the Kundalini is activated, it will gradually rise and begin a physical and emotional transformation until all the fear and misunderstandings are cleared out of each chakra.
This process takes years and includes moments of great insecurity as fear is faced and the ego dies.
When the Kundalini reaches the Crown Chakra, the last wall of the fear-based ego collapses and enlightenment or self-realization is achieved.
This enlightened state is depicted in Eastern religions by the 1,000 petalled lotus.
Legs: Moving forward
Knees: Relationship, humility as in being open to learn. Retaining the same openness to learning that we had as a child is the key to staying young at heart and interested and engaged in life.
We lower ourselves when we kneel to pray. Our heads become closer to the ground. It is harder to put on airs when we are in this position. In the same way, the lover kneels to propose to his beloved. He puts himself below her in order to ask for her hand in marriage.
This posture is the opposite to standing on a stage lecturing people. Kneeling suggests more of an inner listening and supplication.
Ankles, like wrists, are the connectors for actions using the feet and hands. A person who is having an out-of-body experience that has gone on for too long, can be brought back into the body by rubbing wrists and ankles.
***Both ankles and wrists may be connected to the birth experience too, the left ankle and wrist relating to the mother's consciousness and feeling and the right ankle and wrist relating to the father's consciousness and feeling at our birth.***
Feet: What we stand for and our understanding (under/standing!)
Traditionally in Indian society, people bow down to the guru's feet. This is a bowing to the embodied wisdom of the guru, the high awareness woven into the guru's understanding.
During periods of insecurity, devotees are encouraged to energetically or imaginatively hold onto the guru's feet. This steers the psyche to get over the insecurity by rising up in vibration to better approach the guru's understanding.
Achilles' tendon: The legend goes that Achilles' mother, Thetis, dipped her infant in River Styx to make him invulnerable but as she was holding onto his heels, they did not get wet, leaving him with this area of weakness.
He later died of a small wound to his heel.
All personalities have a weak spot. The other side of our greatest gift will be our greatest weakness and the reverse. Our weaknesses transform into strengths as we embrace our vulnerability and give it all to the Tao for healing.
We die to who we have been, as we become more than we were before.
Back: Your unconscious and the past. Any tension or pain in the back of the chakras will relate to blocks to receiving love that are present in the unconscious. Again, this can all be released as attention and love is given to the problem or issue.
People also can get sore backs when they feel burdened.
Lower back: Self support, financially and emotionally.
Behind the heart-Tension or spasms illustrate blocks to receiving love on the unconscious levels. When the tension subsides, the psyche has made a shift into receiving love.
Skin: Our biggest organ, which outlines our separateness, creating the illusion that we are alone rather than part of All That Is.
We might express our sensitivity through our skin.
(Burning ourselves is related to anger at ourselves. Burning food relates to unconscious anger, as well.)
Blood: Our life's blood. Zest of life, essence, oxygen, river of life.
Bones: Sometimes when we are clearing, even our bones can hurt when the issue is “bone deep”. Don't worry....it will pass. Otherwise bones give us our structure and mobility. Old bones, becoming fossils, turn to stone, reminding us that we are of the earth, earthly, part of things, rather than anything superior.
Right side: Male/masculine: ability to take action in the world, ability to problem solve.
Left side: Female/feminine: taking it in, to transform, for example, through pregnancy just as the earth takes in the seed and transforms it into a tree or plant. (Transformation is problem-solving working through the inside.)
Heat: Warmth is often associated with a deep relaxation into unconditional love.
If our bodies feel hot, we are burning unconscious anger, perhaps undergoing a spiritual fire. If we pay attention, we will notice old thoughts and beliefs coming up to be seen and discarded....burned off.
Perhaps the hot flushes of menopause are associated with the dumping of old issues of internal anger in preparation for a wiser and more unconditionally loving second half of life.
Cold: If we feel cold, we could be releasing trauma from childhood.
Soothing cool energy in the body is feminine energy.
Rigidity: Perhaps rigidity in the body is akin to rigour mortis, the rigidity that occurs after a person's death. Perhaps our own stiffness and rigidities reflect how dead we are to the impulses and feelings of our soul.
Just think of the flexibility of babies and how they can cry for ours without getting tired because they are expressing their soul energy without the energy drag of defences. To really live an enlightened life, we have to flow along with things rather than trying to control them. Rigidity in the body can lift as we feel the underlying sorrow underneath the anger and connect up to Whom We really Are.
Mental breakdown/breakthroughs: Sometimes our soul has to use a battering ram and break down the door in order to wake us up. A mental breakdown is basically a spiritual event, whether this is understood or not.
Once the spiritual journey has begun, the person loses control of his life and the soul is basically leading. If this is not understood, the individual will be returned to the breakdown state again and again, until he or she surrenders to this process consciously and learns how to evolve.
Subtler Breakthroughs: When listening to truth, we might feel tingles or shivers up and down the body.
Feelings of Pressure: If you feel a pressure coming from what seems outside your body, you are in the process of a soul retrieval and your soul is knocking on the door of your mind and body, asking to be integrated into your life.
Many of us walled off parts of ourselves when we were children because we didn't feel these parts were allowed. We chunked down from our full divine knowledge to fit into our family's emotional climate.
When these parts return, we might feel a physical pressure. Just speak to pressure and tell it that you are welcoming it back in and you will listen to what it wants to tell you.
Keep thinking and speaking to the pressure until your body relaxes and allows the energy creating the pressure, inside. You will feel peaceful. You will have also made an emotional shift into more trust and awareness.
Additional Notes....
When you drop emotional complexes and confusions and shift into a higher awareness, you will feel lighter emotionally and physically.
People will often ask you if you have lost weight, as well!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Others will always sense the fact that you have dropped emotional baggage. You are basically modelling to them that it is possible to do this....Dropping emotional complexes can be challenging. This kind of deep internal emotional work can be as exhausting as the first trimester of pregnancy. Cut yourself some slack and slow down and sleep in, if you can.
****A powerful life is a slow life because there is so much to notice and pay attention to inside our bodies and outside.****We might feel freer to awaken spiritually when we realize that Western society teaches us to be alienated from our hearts, our bodies and to feel separate/superior to others and Mother Nature.
Just as young adults might recognize the connection between their current problems and their early imperfect upbringings, and steer toward healing, .....We can do the same thing as a society....
Each one of us is part of All That Is, not separate from it, and certainly not superior to other people and Mother Nature....(Indeed, underneath any feelings of superiority, is the deep grief of being disconnected from our true Nature.
(The Good News is .....this deeper material can be gradually felt and acknowledged....as this is done, we connect up with our true Nature and All That Is.)
(Just knowing this helps....)Feminine energy can't be contained in a box. So the more organized and controlled we become, the more we lose out on spontaneity, kindness, co-operation, gentleness etc.
(There is a happy medium....)Your intelligence is not only in your head. The heart has neurons as well. Your highest soul intelligence is in the cells of your body. That is why Eastern spiritual traditions emphasize becoming fully present and aware within our body at all times. When we are lodged in our bodies rather than just our heads, we can hear the messages of the still small voice within.
We feel our soul's input physically, in our bodies.....Each one of us is responsible for our own life. Responsibility means being aware within our bodies and responding to our soul input.
This Above All To Thine Own Self Be True..... True yesterday and will be true tomorrow....
Life gets easier as we remember physical pain and illness, while inconvenient and perhaps unpleasant, is a message from your soul. As your psyche integrates the desired lesson and understanding, the illness and the pain will leave.
If it feels all too hard sometimes remember, each of us must face our own deathbed, when we will have to acknowledge the way we lived our lives.
When you decide to wake up, your whole life takes on more meaning, delight, purpose, joy, and depth. It really can't be put into words, except to say, on your deathbed YOU WILL BE REALLY GLAD YOU WENT TO THE TROUBLE OF WAKING UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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