Learning to trust and love your body again begins with feeling safe inside your body.
There are many reasons why you might not feel that your body is a safe space, maybe you find yourself often triggered because of trauma. You might dislike the way your body looks or the way it moves {or won't move}. You can be mad that your body experiences brokenness and pain that you don't understand like anxiety or fibromyalgia. You might blame your body for losing a baby or not being able to breastfeed one. You might use your body as a tool to attract people to you or as your offering to the world believing that the real you isn't worthy of presentation. Whatever your relationship to your body is, as women in this century my bet is that it isn't a good one.
Why Not??
What has happened that has made us believe that a connection with our own bodies is unimportant? Well, I feel like that is another post that could go on FOREVER, but the short of it is that at some point nearly all of us disconnect from our bodies.
When we are detached from our bodies, we tend not to care what is happening to them, we don't give them the nourishment, movement, and rest we need to flourish. We eat what our minds say we want, not listening to cues from our bodies. We push through and work well past when our bodies ask us to stop. We say mean things to our bodies and about our bodies, our bodies become the "other" something that is not us but a burden we have been yoked with.
In his book, The Body Keeps the Score, Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk says this... "Trauma victims cannot recover until they become familiar with and befriend the sensations in their bodies. Being frightened means that you live in a body that is always on guard. Angry people live in angry bodies. The bodies of child-abuse victims are tense and defensive until they find a way to relax and feel safe. In order to change, people need to become aware of their sensations and the way that their bodies interact with the world around them. Physical self-awareness is the first step in releasing the tyranny of the past."
This meditation is meant to help you become familiar with and befriend your body by finding safety there. This sacred space that you go to in your mind, but feel in your body is a connecting tool that can help your mind and spirit to recognize that your body can be and is a safe place to explore and heal. Please let me know what you think, and as always if I can help you on your journey to healing I would love to connect.
In Love,Amber
