Make Peace with Your Body

The Body as a Healing Companion

Your body has been with you since the moment you arrived on Earth. It is your vehicle and your medium of communication and creation—and on the healing journey toward wholeness, your body is your messenger and your faithful companion.

Through our body, we can become aware of our inner state. Our thoughts and emotions manifest as physical sensations that constantly send us messages. Our souls communicate with us in many ways, and one of the easiest ways to listen to our soul’s voice is to cultivate a practice to become aware of our bodily sensations. By paying attention to our feelings, we can recognize whether we are on the right path toward our heart’s calling or veering away from it.

When we experience fear, anxiety, unworthiness, pain, hopelessness, anger, guilt, sadness, or any other emotion or pattern within the mind that brings discomfort, a sense of lack, a void, or the overall feeling that something is not quite right, we become aware of such emotions and thought forms through the sensations in our body. And they simply don’t feel good! That is how our souls gently nudge us to shift our attention away from the demands of this world, in which we often feel trapped, and toward what is true for us at a deeper level—as souls who are whole and are here to share their light.

Of course, these feelings are a part of being human. We all experience hardship and challenges and react to them in different ways. However, part of our purpose as souls is to see these challenges as opportunities for growth and to learn to respond from an elevated perspective and a deeper inner knowing that is closer to the Truth of our Being.

When we react—which means to act in the same way we did in the past—from a place of judgment or guilt, we may remain in a cycle of unnecessary suffering and risk turning the precious opportunities for growth that life offers us into obstacles to our soul’s growth and expansion, and our healing as humans.

The discomfort, void, or numbness that low-frequency emotions may produce in our bodies invites us to face—with compassion and love—what is ready and waiting to be seen, accepted, transformed, and thus, healed.

The thoughts, experiences, patterns, or emotions we have identified with and held on to, in one way or another, live in our body. They may remain dormant for a very long time; we may be able to suppress them; they may be disguised as desirable or acceptable qualities; they may become who we think we are; we may reject them, or find very successful ways of distracting ourselves from them, yet sooner or later, they will emerge, or we may be forced to look at them for the purpose of allowing, accepting, and surrendering them.

Until this happens, they become the weight we are constantly carrying upon our shoulders, the constant tension and tightness in various areas of our bodies, the underlying feelings of anxiety and lack of trust that permeate our days, the symptoms and disease that hinder our lives, the numbness and void that suck up our vitality, the dull lens through which we look at life, the fear and doubt that creep in upon the verge of change and transformation, the inner critics and controllers that can never know peace or fulfillment; they become the overall feelings of pain, suffering, and struggle we often experience as human beings.

Healing begins when we are willing to sit compassionately and with complete honesty and innocence with the stories, symptoms, patterns, thought forms, and emotions that remain trapped within our bodies and mind. In order to do this, we must be willing to go through the physical discomfort these inner ghosts often bring—while they are allowed to be and thus released or transformed.

This is very scary for our egoic mind. But within our heart lies the courage to face the challenges of this journey with compassion and grace and to heal our wounds.

The fact that we suppress, hide, or run away from what scares us doesn’t change the fact that it lives within us. We carry our hurts around and project them onto others and onto different situations. The truth is that living with them is much more difficult and painful than being willing to witness and heal them. Invariably, we’ll go through this process many times during our healing journey, and that is because we have rejected and suppressed so much. Often these entanglements and patterns unwind and are released one at a time.

This is why healing often feels like walking in circles. We heal one aspect, and then life brings to the surface another aspect we get to heal. We think we find ourselves back at the beginning of the journey. While it may seem this way, the truth is we are making progress; it’s as if we are climbing a mountain by taking the long trail that surrounds it in a circular upward motion.

Sometimes we may be tempted to take shortcuts and climb in a straight line to the very top, but these shortcuts can be slippery, and sooner or later we may fall and find ourselves facing exactly what needs our attention and is ready to be healed.

Healing requires our willingness and commitment to be present with the experience each moment brings, and sometimes what is experienced brings discomfort and even pain. But as we bring light into the darkness, the darkness begins to dissolve and what is true remains.

Our souls are the light that brings healing and awareness, and that light enters this world of form, duality, and often darkness through our body. We are the light that heals the world. And how do we heal the world? By loving and healing ourselves first. Nobody can do this work for us—although they may accompany us—only we can learn to fully love and accept ourselves.

Healing restores the mind to its original state of peace and wholeness. As we heal, we walk the pathway Home; with each step we take in the direction of our Truth, we leave the world of pain and separation, struggle and disease, lack and fear, and return to Heaven. We bring Heaven to Earth.

Many spiritual traditions and even our culture have taught us that the body is an obstacle on the path toward wholeness, something to reject, ignore, or transcend. But that is not necessarily true. We have come here to bring the essence of Home to this world—through our bodies, not despite them.

Our body is our vehicle and our instrument. We share our love through the gifts that we are: our voice, our acts of kindness and service, our forgiveness, our creations—through our pure Being.

When we constrict, close, reject, or stop the flow of light that wants to move through us, those blockages are mirrored and felt in our bodies. The opposite is true: when we allow our light and love to flow and be expressed freely, we feel relaxed and open; we soften and expand our hearts and feel joy.

Your body lets you know whether you are letting your Self flow or not. Your soul is always communicating with you and calling you Home. Do not ignore its calling by ignoring your body and attempting to escape your experience of the now.

Notice how you are constantly reacting with thoughts and emotions to each moment. Your reactions may cause you to judge, reject, or become attached to what is occurring. These reactions have as their root your inner state; what you are experiencing within yourself. That is why different people may react in many ways to the same situation.

Become aware of your thoughts and of the way your thoughts color your experience and the way you perceive every situation and others. Become aware of your thoughts by listening to the messages your body is sending you through the sensations or symptoms you experience. Turn your attention away from what should or shouldn’t be, what you should or shouldn’t have done, have or don’t have, and all other distractions of the mind, and move that attention toward the present moment:

Notice what you’re experiencing through your senses, move your attention to the heart, and quiet the mind.

Be willing to look at your wounds and stories from a more loving perspective.

The Wounds and Stories that Live in Our Body

The words, situations, experiences, or events that left an impression within us—positive or negative—leave that impression within our psyche and body. It can be as simple as a comment from a classmate or teacher, and as complex as traumatic situations, but that moment or collection of moments gets stored within us as a survival mechanism. If it was a positive experience for us, we store it so we can recreate it in the future; if it was negative, we store it so we can avoid it. That is how we have survived for millennia, by learning from our experiences.

Our bodies carry more than our personal stories. Through research on inherited family trauma, we have learned that we carry within us some of the experiences our ancestors went through for the same reason: to prepare us to face the same or a similar situation in the future.

The problem is that often, that situation never comes, and our adaptation and survival tools begin to rust in the attic of our minds and are uselessly stored within our bodies. We accumulate experience upon experience upon experience “just in case,” and the case never happens. We are hoarding beliefs, thoughts, wounds, stories, and programs that no longer serve us and carrying them around wherever we go. No wonder life feels heavy!

Our inner chaos clouds our present experience.

We see life through the lens of our five-year-old self who was rejected in class, our grandfather who went to war, or the twenty-year-old version of us who was ridiculed at work, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. With all this baggage, we can’t truly experience and appreciate what is present now. We are, in various ways, unconsciously recreating the past. It is what we know, what we deemed safe at the time. We live in a constant state of vigilance.

​As we make peace with our bodies and appreciate them as our companions, and begin to heal the patterns we are carrying, a true sense of safety begins to emerge from within our Being.

​There is a deeper reason why we recreate the past. Our lives are our journey Home, and they’ll keep bringing us various opportunities to look at what we are unnecessarily carrying. That is why patterns will keep repeating themselves until they are healed. We may change partners, jobs, cities, friendships, or try to run away from our families, but as long as the stories, the trauma, and the patterns govern our mind and live in our body, the story will repeat itself again and again until we decide to finally face it.

​We are faced with the ghosts of the past so that we can take a closer look at them and realize they are not ghosts, but younger parts of us that need us and are waiting for us. In some cases, the ghosts are our ancestors, those within our lineage that suffered some ill fate and are waiting for their stories to be told and their patterns to be transformed and released.

​The point is, what scares us needs us. As we turn lovingly, compassionately, and courageously toward these scary aspects of us—without judgment—they begin to transform; we can give them a face, a name, a story. We can honor what we, or they, went through, and little by little, as we do this, their pain and suffering leave our body.

​We may cherish their memory if we so choose to; we may invite these parts of us to live within our hearts where they can heal and return to their true essence; we may gently let go of what we no longer want to experience, or we may forgive ourselves or others who have hurt us. No matter what the inner work or process looks like, this is how we heal: by facing our shadows.

Clearing Our Channel of Light

As we begin to heal, the light that is our soul begins to shine through the cracks in the walls we have built around us. It is appropriate to think of our bodies as channels of light. The wounds, stories, and patterns we carry can constrict and obstruct this channel. I recently came across the idea that a channel is only as wide as its narrowest part. If there is an area within our body that has become constricted, or where the channel is no longer clear, the light and life force that would otherwise move freely through and from us cannot flow without obstruction.

It is also helpful to think of your body as a musical instrument. Many musical instruments have a resonating space that allows vibrations to move through them and create sound. In the same way, our ears are designed to receive these vibrations and translate them into something we can hear. When an instrument is able to resonate freely, its sound can be fully expressed, and when our ears are unobstructed, that sound can be received.

In a similar way, when we allow our bodies to become more open and spacious energetically—less constricted by the blocks we carry—our soul’s song can move through us and be heard, and consequently received by those who are also cultivating a clear channel and vessel.

​I would like to invite you to think of the journey Home toward wholeness as the descent of your soul onto Earth—through your body—rather than a journey of ascension, far from this earthly realm.

​We are here for a reason. Our souls decided to come to this plane of lower and denser frequencies with a purpose, a mission, which can take many forms at different times. However, I believe that our soul’s deepest purpose is to shine its light on Earth.

Our light is our gift to the world.

​Each soul has its own unique way of sharing this light. As the light of our soul connects with the uniqueness of our human personality, we become whole once more, and we are free to experience the beauty of being humans on this life-giving, precious planet of ours. We can play the game of life—and have fun!

​Each healing moment returns to us our inherent power as infinite Beings who are also here to co-create and thus expand creation. With each burden we unload, we become free to connect with our deepest desires, planted in our hearts by our soul, and to manifest them as part of our creations and gifts for this world.

​Let your body be the guide, vehicle, and messenger on this journey toward wholeness called Life that is meant to be traveled light, with joy and awe, effortlessly, rhythmically, freely, and deeply connected to your human nature and the essence of your soul.

​Your soul is calling you Home; listen to your body, and you’ll know the way once more.

If you enjoyed this reflection, you might be interested in some of the books that inspired it:

• The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel van der Kolk

• No Bad Parts by Richard C. Schwartz 

• It Didn’t Start with You by Mark Wolynn

• Soul’s Love by Sanaya Roman