Come Home to your Body – overcoming resistance to being embodied

As a spiritual coach, the body is important to me. Coming home to your body means breathing into your root, staying present to feeling whatever sensations are alive in the moment. It means permission to feel what is present for you.

When I invite my clients to come home their bodies, some say, “I don’t want to be in my body,” or “I don’t want to feel my feelings.

Being embodied is a gift. Even so, occupying our bodies can be challenging. We are trained from an early age to live in our heads–and if we are lucky–our hearts. But what about living fully in our bodies?

We want a more full-bodied experience of life. We want full belly laughs and deep pleasure.

When we resist feeling our bodies’ signals because we’re too busy or we’re afraid, we also miss the belly laughs.

Thinking about this made me curious about resistance across several domains of life.

Resistance in electricity – our bodies are electrical, especially our nervous systems and hearts

In the field of electricity, resistance is opposition to the flow of electrons in an electrical current through a circuit. Wherever there is resistance in the circuit, the flow is blocked.

Movement of an electron is not straightforward. It moves in a zigzag path. Just as our lives unfold in surprising ways, electrons have countless collisions with fixed atoms within the conduit.

In electricity, resistance hinders the flow of change.

In our lives, resistance may arise in the face of an obstacle such as lack of money or lack of support. We may quit–or give up on what truly nourishes our Being when it is criticized or marginalized by family, peers or mainstream culture.

Beliefs may function like fixed atoms

When we cling to fixed beliefs, we can’t easily adapt to change. This is so, whether our beliefs are conscious or flying below the radar. Our identity–who we think we are–can be wrapped up in beliefs.

But we are not our beliefs. Beliefs are simply thoughts that we have thought again and again.

Many of our beliefs are inherited. It can be helpful to ask yourself: where did this belief come from? Is it really true? Is it really mine?

When we find ourselves unable to change our lives, we say we feel “stuck.” Feeling stuck–or being in a transition is the primary reason people seek out coaching.

Resistance affects our relationships

Some relationships feel easy and light. There is a free flow of give and take, call and response. Other relationships are burdened by stagnant energies–suppressed emotions. Lack of safety or permission to be honest about your needs and feelings creates an unsteady ground of  unspoken background conversations.

As a spiritual mentor, I work with resistance often. Resistance shows up in good-bad, right-wrong or win-lose conversations. “I’m right; you’re wrong.” There is no relationship bridge being built–no care given to the quality of the connection between people.

A right-wrong conversation is one way we leave ourselves. We defend our beliefs instead of staying present to what is being stirred in us when someone disagrees with us. Our energy  goes up and out–making the other person wrong, not down and in–where we will have to feel our feelings. Our emotional intelligence is low when we get stuck here.

In win-lose conversations, two people or two groups focus only on their own concerns–and not on the concerns of the other parties. When relationships are based on winning, resistance–whether overt or passive–grows stronger.

Resistance also shows up in not asking for what we need. We don’t let others see us when we are vulnerable–so we aren’t being authentic.

Suppressed conversations function like fixed atoms. They block the flow of emotional connection–and instead create stagnation.

Resistance in our bodies

The fact that you have a body is what makes you alive. In contemporary times, we tend to ignore and suppress the signals transmitted by our bodies. We live in a rush of colliding thoughts.

It can be challenging to attend to our authentic needs–to take time to feel our feelings, especially when we carry a backlog of baggage.

Suppressed emotions accumulate in our bodies as numbness–and drive us to addictive behaviors. These are also obstacles to flow–like fixed atoms in an electrical wire.

What does it mean to be embodied?

Your body is a conduit for Source energy, which circulates through the nadis–subtle energy pathways in and around your body, creating a web of Light—your aura. Think of your aura as a light bulb, lit by the unimpeded flows of current or energy from Source.

Source energy flows two ways:

1. From the stars and infinite cosmos down into your crown, into your pranic tube–an energetic channel which runs through the center of your body in front of the spinal cord–through your root chakra into the Earth.
2. From the center of the Earth–up into your root, bringing vital nourishment to your body, your sense of safety, pleasure and security.

Both Eastern and Western religions have taught us that going up and out of our bodies is more spiritual than going down and in. This reflects a cultural preference that has dominated for thousands of years–that privileges what is mental, masculine and linear.

Most of us are more practiced at going up and out. We are missing a vital source of nourishment—located down and in. With industrialization, we have been desensitized to the aliveness of nature and the Earth as a sentient being. We treat our Earth and our bodies as if they are things, rather than the exquisitely sensitive receivers and transmitters of Source energy they are.

Most of us know that consciousness cannot be confined in the physical. What is often overlooked is knowing that consciousness exists in the electromagnetic resonance of our bodies.

Emotions have a physical quality to them. With wisdom comes knowing that the way out of emotional pain is through. We feel the feelings and cradle our emotions in kindness and allowingness until clarity comes and we are centered and grounded again. We bring space to our feelings to help us stay present.

Akasha is Sanskrit for space

Space lives within the density of Earth, the vastness of Cosmos and in every cell in your body, as demonstrated in physics, astronomy and quantum biology.

This is why, when I read the Akashic Records for people, I begin with helping you get grounded and centered. I help you come down and in – to your body and the Earth.

Leaving your body

There is a lot going on when you leave your body. In traumatic situations, when the nervous system is overwhelmed, we may develop tendencies to leave our bodies. Life events teach us this skill. Disassociation may feel temporarily soothing and spiritual.

If we repeat this experience many times, we may come to believe that our bodies are a hindrance to our connection with Spirit. We may believe that our bodies separate us from the Source that created us.

We may believe this, even though Source created our bodies for a purpose—to embody our souls.

Being outside your body can be attractive. Detaching from your nervous system temporarily frees you from emotional and physical pain.

Anything that suppresses emotional pain can become addictive. Once you discover that you can “leave,” you may overlook the fact that you are in a dissociated state. When you come to prefer disembodied states, when you develop a habit of disassociating, you cannot incarnate as fully.

Religious beliefs that devalue the spirituality of the body can function as fixed atoms of resistance to embodiment.

Coming home

As a soul, your purpose is to incarnate as Divine love in human form – to BE the love you are. As the embodiment of Love Incarnate, you are called to honor your body, listen and care for it as you would a beloved—as a devotion to Source.

The Latin roots of the word ‘incarnation’ refer to the Divine being made flesh. No one may have ever told you that your body is holy—an expression of Spirit.

Your body makes it possible for your soul to incarnate and experience life.

The Light you may experience while “out” of your body can be experienced through your body. It can only be experienced with your body.

Light can illuminate every cell of your body when you are anchored down and in – in your root, in the Earth.

You can access higher states of consciousness while staying “in” your body. Just as your body is holy, the Earth is holy.

In the case of electrons, the longer the wire they are traveling through, the greater the likelihood that the electrons will encounter resistance. When movement is hindered, they electrical current is blocked. It doesn’t flow.

As souls, we travel a long path through multiple incarnations, encountering countless obstacles along the way. Resistance to feeling our feelings and acknowledging our higher senses may become a habit of the soul.

Part of your soul’s purpose is to embody your exquisitely sensitive animal body. At some stage of your development, you will find that you don’t have to leave your body to find home. Home is here. In your body.