Radical Acceptance, Building a Relationship with Your Soma…
Building a relationship with your Soma
Whether you are shifting your nutritional norms to shift your body weight or just feel better all around, it is important to build a relationship with your body. Much like a relationship with a friend, child, or partner, this takes care, time, and attention. If we want to have a good relationship with someone, we do not constantly criticize and berate them. When you really start paying attention to your inner dialogue about your body, you would be amazed at how cruel we can be to ourselves! This is extremely counterproductive and damaging to our overall quality of life. Our somatic experience is intimately tied to our emotional, mental, and spiritual worlds.
I propose radical acceptance. Laying hands on our bodies with gratitude and healing. Looking at ourselves with grace. Finding even one beautiful thing about us every day. Thanking our legs for walking us, our feet for bearing so much weight, our lungs for giving us breath. What a privilege and a challenge it is to be alive. I would like to offer you a few tools to work with this relationship. Invitations below!
Invitation…some tools from me to you…
Po (Skin) breathing. Sit or stand in a comfortable position (after some practice, this can also be done while in line, driving, or having a conversation). Provide a gentle alignment along your spine if possible. Breathe into your lower belly (dantian). Imagine a golden thread from deep within the earth spiraling up through the bottoms of your feet at kidney 1, bubbling spring. The golden tendril spirals up into the lower dantian, filling it with golden healing nectar. Bring your awareness to the outer edges of your body. Your skin. Take your time. Notice your scalp, the back of your thighs, the bottoms of your feet, the skin between your fingers and toes. This is the land of your wei (protective) qi and your po spirit, animal instincts, body and senses. Inhale through the pores of your skin as if you were breathing in the scent of a beautiful flower. As you exhale, surrender, let go of anything that is no longer useful or needed. Let go of anything that is in the way of your contentment and perfect peace. Continue this for a few minutes. Feel the connection to your somatic landscape. Keep breathing. When you are ready, bring your awareness back to the room. Gather into your lower dantian by placing one hand over the other on the lower belly (dantian).
Radical Acceptance. Find a comfortable position sitting or laying down with the spine gently stacked and in alignment. Begin by pausing and taking a deep breath into your lower dantian (lower belly). Linger here for a few breaths as you shift down from the chattering mind into the landscape of the body. Turn your awareness from outside to inside. Do a simple body scan, starting at the top of the head and moving down. Take your time. Simply notice. There is no right or wrong. Say hello to your neck and shoulders. As you move down through your trunk, hips, lower limbs, simply notice. Discomfort, tingling, relaxation, openness, tightness. Any sensation at all. There may be an area that is calling your attention. Stay with it without judgement. Be kind to it. Befriend it without trying to change it. Find a handle (a word, phrase or gesture that encapsulates the felt sense). Be with it. Radically accept it. Place your hands over it if it feels right. Breathe and be with it. No matter what it is, it is okay. Even if you feel nothing. What does feeling nothing feel like? Give yourself the freedom to feel with no restriction or judgment. If the sensations start to shift, simply notice it. When you are ready, pause and take a few breaths. Let that sink in. place your hands one over the other over your lower dantian to gather in. come back to the presence of the room you are in. open your eyes.
*Radical acceptance was developed from my experience of using inner sensing and body felt sense tools and exercises taught and developed by my alchemical healing mentors, Lorie Eve Dechar & Benjamin Fox, as well as my long-time practice of qigong & inner alchemy.
Developed in 2020, the year of the great dark transformation, and reaching the light in 2021
