Tag: body wisdom

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Embodied Joy

Embodied Joy

Yesterday I danced in the kitchen and felt JOY.  Earlier this week, I watched a funny movie and felt JOY moving through me as I belly laughed again and again. Last Saturday I got sweaty hiking up a mountain and felt JOY.  And who could forget the sex that left me breathless with JOY?

I think I’ve had it all wrong about JOY. For years I believed that JOY was an emotion that lives in the heart. If you had asked me what JOY was a month ago, I would have said something about JOY being a loving emotion of the heart. But now I’m beginning to think JOY is a full body emotion. JOY is embodied.

Why are little kids so JOYful? They live in their bodies!  Little kids don’t think their way through life, they jiggle and wiggle and dance through life. Life is a full body experience for little kids. Why are many adults so serious and JOY-less?  I’m guessing it has a lot to do with thinking their way through every experience.  By adulthood, body has become secondary to brain and life loses a lot of its JOY.

When I manage to get out of my head and allow myself to experience life through every sensation in my body, JOY spontaneously bubbles up inside of me. JOY fills me.

Hmm, even the language we use to describe JOY is body centered; we are JOYful = our body is full of JOY. We don’t feel JOY so much as fill with it!

Life is a full body sport. So, now I am on a mission: I want to embody JOY as often as possible. To feel myself fill with JOY every day. My body already knows how to do this. I simply need to get my head out of the way and allow my body to do what comes naturally.

If you pass me on the street next week, I hope I’m wiggling and jiggling with JOY.

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Who Speaks for Our Mother?

Bear Canyon
Beautiful Bear Canyon by Nancy L

Every part of Mama Earth is alive and has a spirit; each blade of grass, pine tree, fox, flower, stone and drop of water is infused and flowing with spiritual essence and consciousness. Our Earth is a pulsing, flowing sacred system. And we are completely interwoven and interdependent with every other form of life in this system. All of life is interconnected; the idea that human beings are separate from other life forms is simply an illusion.

Stone Memories

Our human actions have a huge effect on our Earth Mother. The history of human life is physically and energetically imprinted into the elements of Mama Earth. Her elemental structures hold our human stories of war and violence, love and connection, loss and pain; our Mother stores our history within her water, soil and stones. Like a great elemental library, the sacred body of Gaia “remembers” the entire history of life on this planet.

“Human history is a Gaian dream.” 
~Terence McKenna

Although humans may have long forgotten the stories, Mama Earth continues to hold the history of all those who lived here before us. These traumatic imprints were created through human neglect and ignorance, and they can continue to haunt us for generations. When a piece of land holds a story of human aggression, loss, disconnection, trauma or suffering, those energies continue to impact the animals and people who live, work and interact with that place years later.

Healing Mama Earth

Without some form of balancing or clearing process, a traumatic event may continue to negatively impact the land and the people who live on the land years later. Mother Earth can stay ‘stuck’ in a state of imbalance for generations. But each of us can help our mother release old traumas and heal.

Whenever we consciously treat our Earth Mama with the love and respect she deserves, we actually help her restore balance and heal. And we heal our own relationship with this beautiful blue planet in the process.

Carl Sagan once asked, “Who speaks for planet Earth?” I believe it is time for each of us to speak out for Mama Earth.

“There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the earth.”
~Rumi

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The Tao of Flow

Still Water

There was something formless and perfect
before the universe was born.
It is serene. Empty.
Solitary. Unchanging.
Infinite. Eternally present.
It is the mother of the universe.
For lack of a better name,
I call it the Tao.

∞

Since before time and space were,
the Tao is.

It is beyond is and is not.
How do I know this is true?
I look inside myself and see.

~Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching 

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We are of Water

St. Vrain Waterflow
St. Vrain Waterflow

We are of water,
and water is of us.

When water is threatened,
all living things are threatened.

What we do to water,
we do to ourselves.

Water is sacred,
a human right.

Water is our unifier
because we are all made of water.

~Ruben Saufkie, Sr.
Water Clan, Hopi Indian Runners

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We Have Come to Be Danced

Red Vine Dancing
Red Vine Dancing by Nancy L

We have come to be danced
not the pretty dance
not the pretty pretty, pick me, pick me dance
but the claw our way back into the belly
of the sacred, sensual animal dance
the unhinged, unplugged, cat is out of its box dance
the holding the precious moment in the palms
of our hands and feet dance

We have come to be danced
not the jiffy booby, shake your booty for him dance
but the wring the sadness from our skin dance
the blow the chip off our shoulder dance
the slap the apology from our posture dance

We have come to be danced
not the monkey see, monkey do dance
one, two dance like you
one two three, dance like me dance
but the grave robber, tomb stalker
tearing scabs & scars open dance
the rub the rhythm raw against our souls dance

WE have come to be danced
not the nice invisible, self conscious shuffle
but the matted hair flying, voodoo mama
shaman shakin’ ancient bones dance
the strip us from our casings, return our wings
sharpen our claws & tongues dance
the shed dead cells and slip into
the luminous skin of love dance

We have come to be danced
not the hold our breath and wallow in the shallow end of the floor dance
but the meeting of the trinity: the body, breath & beat dance
the shout hallelujah from the top of our thighs dance
the mother may I?
yes you may take 10 giant leaps dance
the Olly Olly Oxen Free Free Free dance
the everyone can come to our heaven dance

We have come to be danced
where the kingdom’s collide
in the cathedral of flesh
to burn back into the light
to unravel, to play, to fly, to pray
to root in skin sanctuary
We have come to be danced
WE HAVE COME

by Jewel Mathieson