How to Cultivate a Healing Alliance with Your Body
In our modern world, we’ve become so accustomed to the notion that our minds are separate from our body’s; that there’s an external solution - outside ourselves - that will remedy any ailment - any discomfort - we may be experiencing.
I came to a point in my health journey - a cataclysmic point of intersection - where my body was screaming at me. I had a choice. I could continue marinating in anger, fear, and self loathing (and angrily watch as my physical body molded to those energies). Or, I could choose a path of love and transformation; I could choose to move through life with my body - not against it.
If you’ve been there, or perhaps are there now, you may feel - deep inside - that the way you were / are existing - in constant resistance, anger, and fear - was / is not sustainable. I know I did.
At that point of intersection, the only thing scarier than turning inward to transform my health (a journey of which I had NO idea where to even begin) was spending the rest of my life at war with myself. Spending the rest of my life loathing the very skin I was in. Spending the rest of my life literally creating dis-ease in my body.
That was an alternative I could not live with.
Choosing small, daily rituals to cultivate a different relationship with myself - a warm, loving internal dialogue - has been one of the most transformational shifts in my healing.
The simple truth is: the way we speak to our body’s directly impacts how it feels - and more importantly - how it heals.
This week, I invite you to take inventory of the internal dialogue directed towards your body - towards your health:
What is the tone of the majority of your thoughts towards your body? Is there anger at its pace of healing? At its shape?
Then, I invite you to find stillness. In stillness is where you create space to heal, space to connect with your body, space to cultivate gratitude for your body, and most importantly, space to foster an alliance - a deeply loving relationship - with your body.
I invite you to sit with the words below and set aside 10 minutes to journal how they resonate with you. 10 minutes to truthfully reflect on the relationship you have with your body.
For a deeper integration, check out my guided mediation: Vows to Healing My Body.
Begin by closing your eyes. Take a deep breath in through your nose… and let it all out of your mouth. Feel as you surrender, collapse into the surface beneath you. As all of your weight melts into the ground beneath you. There is no where else to be. Nothing else to do, except be here. In this moment. In your body. Right. Now.
In this moment, feel the space for change you are creating. Feel the space you are clearing for healing to take place in this moment.
Allow yourself to let go.
Let go of the judgment of inadequacy. The fear of malfunction.
Release into the warm embrace of your glow. Surrender into the icy hot sensation of radiance - the tingling warmth of health.
Exhale into this feeling
Release into this sensation
Ground into the truth of your glow
Where does your body need more compassion? Where does your body need more acceptance? More tenderness? More unconditional love?
Notice, and let the light move there.
Feel a warmth cascade over your body - a tingling that is gently pulling you towards your highest, healthiest self. The self that is radiant, that is glowing, that is the embodiment of warmth. The embodiment of health. Feel the healing presence of this energy as it moves through you.
Start to feel as every system, every organ, every tissue, every cell begins to work in harmony with one another.
Say thank you to your body for holding all the stress, all the anger, all the despair, all the worry, all the sadness. Say thank you for absorbing it so that you could go on. So that you could face another day. So that you could survive the pain and move forward. Say thank you for carrying all of that for you.
Release all the heaviness, all the stress, all the sadness, all the grief that has been stored in the cells of your tissues.
Relax into the lightness. Into the tingling warmth moving around your body. Feel the healing energy radiating from within you.
As you allow yourself to embrace, perhaps for the first time, the absolute beauty and divinity of your being, notice as a smile moves across your lips.
Thank you to this body for moving me through this life. Through the hardship. Through the elation. Through the fear. And through the moments of all consuming love. In every moment, I choose to nourish you. It’s my turn to take care of you.
I love you.
Thank you.
You heal now.