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This morning I had a glimpse of this. In my morning meditation practice, I began to land in my pelvis in a way that sitting became completely effortless. Something aligned in my spinal column, and I was simply upright. I felt my pelvis plug in, or I felt myself plugged into my pelvis, in a way that settled my physical presence into a natural uprightness. I know that years of yoga, meditatoin and belly dancing have helped me to develop muscular holding for this alignment to happen. It was as if everything came together and clicked somehow in my body. I “got” something on a physical level. I could feel a deep support of my body to just be. It was like a sandbag in my pelvis supported the rest of my body to just relax and let go. Sort of like one of those blow up, punching clowns that we had when I was a kid.

Sitting still does not come naturally for me. When I go to a movie, I seem to fidget for a while until I settle into a position that seems to work for me. I feel every nook and cranny of my body that does not feel just right, and like Little Red Riding Hood checking each of the Bears’ beds to find the one to sleep on, I move into many positions ‘til I find one that works. It is like this for me in other situations as well, attuning to my body in a way that my physical ailments or discomforts seem to take over my experience. I feel preoccupied and make sure each part feels just right before I settle into what’s in front of me. This is a curse and a blessing at the same time.

It is rare that I sit in one position long enough to then get up and feel my foot asleep or my back screaming out to me. I don’t tend to disengage from the felt sense of my body long enough to tune out the arising discomfort. Instead of being entirely focused in a mental way and forgetting about my physical experience, I tend to feel my physical body and its fidgetiness can keep me from settling into the moment and the task at hand. Today was different. I felt deeply attuned to my body in a way that supported a concentration on my mental and physical levels simultaneously. I was inside my body much the way my dogs seem to be, their physical presence just being. But a dog does not have a neo-cortex to contend with, lucky critters.

Inhabiting our body means that we pay attention to our physicality moment to moment, even when we are engaged in a thought provoking conversation or project. We stay present with out bodies, how they feel, what they are doing, what they seem to be conveying to us, at the same time as we focus on the cognitive task at hand. Unbelievably enough, our mind is so intelligent that it can handle BOTH of these at the same time. This takes mental effort in the beginning. In the Diamond Approach, we have a simple practice to constantly sense our arms and legs. For years it takes methodical work. Then it seems to come more naturally. One way to begin to develop this is to set a timer each hour and then take a few minutes to breathe into 10 or more body parts to feel yourself actually residing in your body. Sounds elementary, but with the deep and mostly unconscious conviction in this culture that our thinking is what matters most, baby steps is where we begin. Other strategies I use are taking a moment to breathe into my belly every time I use the bathroom, and feeling my feet on the floor as I walk from one area of my work space to another. You will be amazed at how much more efficient with your time and energy you are when you regularly bring your awareness into your body parts. This morning when my body started to align, I noticed that my mind at first became caught up in a sea of thoughts, each seemingly important, which is usually how my meditation begins. As I continued to focus on the sand bagging in my pelvis, these thoughts began to lose their sense of urgency and I could feel myself inhabit my body so deeply that my neo-cortex just relaxed and became still.

I reckon that to inhabit my body means that I reside in it, live from it, and experience life through it all the time. It comes to mean that I conduct myself in a way that constantly reminds me that I occupy a physical form as well as a mental one. Then my life begins to be experienced from this dwelling place as much as (or more than) it does from my thinking mind. In this way a more encompassing presence naturally springs forth from the person that I call “me”. Life inherently becomes more alive and wonder-full.

I have a place in the back of my spine, mid back, that, in yoga, screams out when I push it too hard in plough pose.  This morning I could feel an empty space in that part of my back. After sitting 30 minutes in meditation I could feel the way that it felt like there was no support at that part of my back. That it seemed to be lacking somehow.  That it was not up to par or pulling its weight.  So I decided to investigate.  I sat quietly with myself, setting my timer for another 20 minutes, and I brought my meditative stillness to this area of my body.  I let go of all of my suppositions about what it was and how I could “fix it”.  Well, maybe I didn’t let them go, but I at least let this scurry in my mind move to the background and I held it more lightly.  I let my breath fill my belly, carefully noticing the effect of this expansion, and contraction; fill, and empty itself.  My spine began to feel like a zipper of sorts, and I  initially thought that it needed to be zipped up.

Instead of acting on this notion, I placed the back of my left hand on my mid back and continued to breathe gently into this area.  I was lead, by my body, to place my other hand in the front of my torso, and I noticed that my arms created a band of support for this part of my spine, this part that needed extra support.  This simple gesture allowed my breath to expand more fully into my rib cage (with absolutely no effort on my part); and I could feel myself begin to inhabit a deeper part of my belly.  I cannot tell you exactly what deeper means here.  I only know that it felt like a narrow passageway into deeper physical presence.  As I continue to follow this I began to feel a sensation in my inner legs and arms, and their connection to and support of my torso.  As I follow this, right now in this moment, an understanding of the flow and movement of support in my body is arising.  There is some kind of inner channel that runs vertically up my entire body.  I feel it in my inner thighs through my pelvis and torso and also in my inner arms.  It has an intensity and force that terrifies me, on a visceral level.  It feels like a vitality and movement exponentially greater than me.  I know I could read and find out more about what it is, theoretically or from another’s experience; and perhaps eventually I will do this.  But this feels personal to me, a discovery opening and revealing itself through my body.  There is a deep sense of intimacy with my body.

As I breathe into it now, I understand that the zipper of my spine is UNzipping.  I am releasing some body tension that I have needed for many years to give me a sense of support in life.  It seems to be “stuck” in the middle, left side of my spine.  It seems to be related to the way my torso connects (or forgets the connection) with my limbs; and a belief that my back has to “shoulder” all the weight of my living.  That my back is “on its own”, much the way I seem to feel and believe – sometimes in my life.  My body is reflecting to me deep-seated (mistaken?) beliefs about who I am and how I receive support.  This zipper is unwinding itself in its own time and fashion – and this place in my back calls forth an inner attunement to my body that I have a developing capacity to bring.  I feel the support of my hips and strong thighs; and my shoulders and arms join in this somatic crusade to inhabit my body in a purely animal way.  I feel a coming together of my body at the joints that connect my limbs to my torso.  This inquiry leaves me further attuned to the implicit support of my body – as long as I devote the time, attention, and energy to following its subtle lead on its terms, I can understand that the body is showing up to support me. In this instance helping me see a physical disconnection that points to a deeper psychological gap.

This, I get, is what the mind-body conversation is truly about: an interrelationship built on collaboration and trust.  Like the growing relationship between my arms and legs and my torso, it happens by bringing all of my faculties to bear in the present moment.  As I finish this writing, my heart feels touched and opened.  I experience a wonder and beauty that I know is the grace of God, leading my soul home to the truth of my existence.

• Feel your feet on the ground.
• Breathe in and out 10 times.  With each in-breath, focus on a body part, starting towards the top of your head and progressively moving downwards.  Try and breathe into 5 above and 5 below your navel.
• Once you do this, notice your body and see what it is telling you.
• Instead of interpreting what you notice (Oh, so that means….), just let it be there and stay aware of your breathing as much as you can.

If you do this several times a day, you have begun your path to embodiment.  To embody ourselves means that we are consciously aware of our physical form and understand that everything we experience is registered in our flesh.  Embodiment naturally leads towards valuing our body as a resource. This journey begins with the daily regimen of mindful breathing.   As we move into deeper contact with our body, continuing to ask it for guidance and understanding many times a day, our body will start to communicate with us in amazing ways.  For instance, I was with a group of friends last night and was feeling resentful and guarded most of the night.  Instead of following my thinking (I cannot really trust these people, no one here cares about me, etc.), I just kept following my breath and noticing my body.  This morning I awoke free of this resentment, and also discovered some early part of my psyche that was triggered in a familiar way the night before.  In meditation and subsequent inquiry, I simply let the fleshy and accepting tissue of my body hold space for this young and tentative part of myself.  Soon I noticed that how the open receptivity of my flesh provided an intimacy with this unresolved part of myself so it softened and relaxed my consciousness.  My day then progressed with a soft focus where I felt empowered and moved through my work with a grace that made it feel effortless.

Embodiment allows us to create a safe environment for the unresolved experiences from our history to relax and unwind themselves naturally.  This in turn starts a process where we slowly soften the veneer we so often hide behind, the layer of defenses we think we need and habitually (and often unconsciously) mobilize in everyday life when we feel reactive, conflicted, threatened, or simply left out.  The natural holding of our body can provide a container for inquiry into what’s up in the moment, allowing us to recognize how we are feeling and attune to ourselves with an acceptance of what is.  Our mental processing is always trying to problem solve when we feel triggered, so this approach may at first feel counter-intuitive.  Try it for several weeks and this embodied approach will lead you through these back roads and help you come to find your deeper presence.  This is the greatest gift of Belly Intelligence.

I have noticed behavioral impacts of getting in touch with this impression on my psyche – the way I try to control my environment when this visceral feeling surfaces after I am somehow pushed past my psycho-emotional capacity in the moment.  Growing up in a chaotic setting with a distracted mother (I was the seventh of 8 children), I sense that this re-activity was originally an infantile attempt to feel safe or contained by “circling the wagons” of her physical form around the terror provoked by my early holding environment.   In the end, it is not my cognitive understanding of this precognitive imprint that holds the space for this work.  It is the sacred container of my body, my physical presence and its patient stillness that wraps this infantile terror in the warmth of human contact.  I am just beginning to metabolize this impression from my history.  As the Ridhwan approach (www.ridhwan.org) has taught me, I work with it in a way that helps it slowly relax so it can be lovingly absorbed into my consciousness. In time, the way that it “hooks” me softens and gradually leave a nutritional understanding my psyche needs.  This will require the dedicated, steadfast support of my physical form, ever widening its inward gaze to welcome every ounce of this terror as it seeps forth from my tissue, meeting it with the open arms of essential holding.  A deep presence in my belly center breathes in and out as I continue to tread forth with this work.

Leap of Faith

By Sheila Kelly, September 9, 2010

My eyes are being opened
By a force older than time
Deeper, broader, more penetrating
It awakens my drowsy mind.

My lips are being parted
My slumber nears its end
The shutters pulled open,
As I sit in meditation again.

My breath is penetrating deeper,
I am dizzy with disarray
All the “contents” of this container
Splayed open in the fray.

My heart is at the center
Awakened with a hush
The windows blown open
I’m here, and there’s no rush.

This flame deep in my pelvis
Ignited by release
Security and holding
Let loose like wild geese.

Home bound, no longer bounded
By the constructs of my mind
Three centers swirling dervishly
Yet I can take my time.

This moment at a crossroads
A choiceless choice again
The quaking ground below me
Cracks open this old pen.

The game is ever widening
Beyond my ordinary mind
I hope and pray, yet realize
It’s time to get off my hind.

My legs are strong and sturdy
My heart is true and kind
This leap of faith is calling
And I’m not far behind.

In the western world view, which is steeped in the Newtonian perspective of mind over matter, the intellect is seen as FAR superior to the body in terms of perceiving, understanding, and knowing about the world.  For most people, the body is not even on the radar when it comes to reflecting on one’s experience.  Most of us simply see and treat the body like a tool. A means to take us from point A to point B, a device to use and abuse as we wish, an apparatus that, when it does not meet our expectations, we berate and assume it “let us down”.  Think about it, what happens when your body does not perform up to your expectations?  Let’s say you get sick.  Do you think to yourself, “Wow, did I pushed myself beyond my limits?” or “Huh, I wonder what my body needs right now?” or “Sometimes I just get sick, time to take care of myself.”  Or do you think, “Why is my body so weak?” or “I don’t have time to be sick now!” or “I am not going to give in to this sickness and can push through this.”

Another way this attitude manifests is in the way our head tries to tell our body its business.  I have been teaching Oriental Belly Dance for a decade (www.ShimmyWithSheikha.com).  All kinds of women have entered my studio, a diversity of backgrounds, body shapes and sizes, ages, attractiveness, personalities, intelligence levels, extenuating circumstances, ways of learning, levels of natural rhythm, and ability to learn the dance.  Consistently, when women first stare into the mirror so they can see what their body is doing, they tend to see with a critical eye towards their physical appearance. This is across the board, for we are taught to look in the mirror to see how our body measures up.  Furthermore, no matter how easy or how difficult learning to belly dance is for women, I see a consistent way that the mind tries to control and judge the body by berating it for not doing a better job.  Generally speaking, in the beginning, if the dance is particularly difficult for a woman, then she tends to judge her body for not keeping up.  If a particular move is hard, she will usually get frustrated and somehow berate her body for not learning faster.  If all has been going well and then she has an off night at class, she will somehow feel that she is letting herself down.  It’s so unfortunate how the mind judges the body when learning dance, especially one like belly dance that brings up so much societal conditioning about one’s sexuality and body image.  Most of us tend to have negative judgment about our bodies, how they look, how they perform, and how well they meet these internal standards we have assumed are realistic.

Let’s look at another perspective, dancers who learn the dance easily.  For the most part, for me the dance was natural and easy. Aside from spinning, which stopped my learning dead in its tracks, I could stand behind my teacher and my body could mimic the movement just by looking at and following her.  In the beginning, I rarely had to think hard about what I was doing, I just did it.  Looking back, I can see how I began to pride myself on this ease.  I was one of those dancers who didn’t really need to practice.  I believed I was one of the best dancers in the class.  Then came my first show.  I was SO self-conscious I couldn’t relax on stage.  I could hardly bear to look up at the audience watching me.  I felt small and immature and less than the other dancers, who seemed comfortable and at ease.  In reality, I’m sure that most of us were terrified.  I couldn’t see that even if it was true.  What’s amazing to me, looking back, is the way I just scolded myself for not dancing with the ease and confidence I felt in class.  I believed that I failed somehow, and felt the deep self judgment of not having performed up to the ability of my body.  But, instead of looking at the psychological thinking behind my self consciousness, I instead began to drive my body harder so that it would not happen again.  I assumed that somehow my body should have had more self control and that dancing on stage should have feel effortless.  My thinking was negatively affecting my physical performance; and, worse yet, my mind scolded and shamed my body for not doing a better job.  My head was telling my body its business!  From this perspective, my body was just an object to my head, which used and abused my body to meet the ends it had in mind.  Thankfully, those days are gone, and belly dancing has taught me to appreciate my body as a seat of deep wisdom.

The body is, after all, the physical dwelling place of conscious awareness (you know, the awareness we humans have because we have a neo-cortex).  Whether or not you believe that there is more to life than the material realm – the point remains the same: “who” I am is housed in this physical form.  For those of us who believe in something more than this plane of existence, the body houses my spirit, as my sister says. Or, as we understand in the Ridhwan School: the body is the vessel of the soul.  The point I am making is that most of us don’t really get that a LARGE part of who we are is our body.  Our body is the residence, the street address, the abode of our “self”.  Why don’t we treat it as well as we treat our other material possessions?  Why do we abuse it in so many ways and then wonder why we feel like crap.  It’s interesting how much research there is on how our thinking affects our life and our body …wonder what would happen if we started studying the other direction?

I am very curious about this in my life. I have been deeply investigating my relationship with my body and what my body is teaching me in any given moment.  I ask myself all sorts of questions. Do I think I’m separate from my body?  What are my expectations of my body?  How do I treat my body and why? What historical/environmental imprints in my body are still vital to me?  Which are simply outdated constructs?  How am I ashamed of my body?  Where do I feel prideful of my body?  There is a great book by a guy called Steve Sisgold: What’s Your Body Telling You? In it, he shows the way that our thinking gets locked into spin traps, meaning we just ruminate in circles and rarely have a creative thought when facing upset and emotional challenge.  He also teaches how to have a conversation with your body, on its terms, in order to “solve” an issue that you are facing in your life.  I like the book.  It has practical tools to problem solve with issues we humans face. It understands that the body is a resource.  It is a great start to the process of somatic inquiry.

But I want to take it a step further.  What if we simply knock on the door to our somatic abode (our body) and ask if we can just sit down and hang out.  You know, like when you hang out with your partner or go over to your best friend’s house and you just chill.  Talk about life.  Relax.  Unwind together.  Hameed Ali (my spiritual teacher, pen name A. H. Almaas, www.ridhwan.org) calls this hanging our with ourselves, abiding with ourselves.  Abode, abiding…both from the same word roots.  I looked them up and found:

• AlphaDicionary.com: “It came to us from the Old English verb abidan, comprising a-, an intensifier prefix + bidan “to remain”. The same root that came through the Germanic languages to English as bidan emerged in Latin as fidere “to trust, confide” and fidus “faithful” (remain unchanged)”
• Angelfire: “When we abide in something, we are loyal to it even unto death. When we abide, we remain in a certain place even when the rest of the world has left us behind. To abide means to continue doing whatever is being done even when it is hard and the urge to quit is almost too much. The word abide means to cling to something and have faith in it, even when it seems to have failed.”

My understanding is that in order to participate in open-ended, deep, truthful and whole-hearted somatic/body investigation, we start by changing the way we relate with ourselves, we begin abiding in our bodies.  We sit and listen, move and listen, breathe and listen, sense our bodies and listen.  And then we listen some more.  We bring the body into the foreground of our awareness and treat it like we want to be treated in relationship.  “Love is patient, love is kind.” (1 Corinthians 13:4, Bible).  Once we begin treating our body with loving kindness and moving with it as a treasured resource, we can begin to build trust in this relationship and start asking our body questions about challenges or feelings or confusion we are having.  But, as any good relationship, we have to be open-minded about what our body is telling us, respecting the body’s perspective and intelligence, and listening on our body’s terms.  We also need to spend time with our body, relaxing and enjoying our physical presence, just for the pleasure of being with an old friend, with no particular outcome in mind, simply because our body is an intimate resource which deserves “me time”.

Your body is a treasure trove of support, information and wisdom.  Once you establish a trusting relationship with your body, it will share itself with you.  When it’s ready, your body will reveal what needs to be revealed.  Your body is not an object.  It is a precious resource.  The most valuable “asset” you have.  This work of cultivating a deep relationship with our body through somatic inquiry is not complicated. As one of my participants said of my facilitation at the end of a workshop, “she has a way of asking the questions that almost makes this simple, yet not always easy”.  Truly, it is simple, but it takes a deep commitment and openness and a willingness to suspend what you think you know. Once you drop into the somatic well of your body’s knowledge, you will find that the universe is waiting to reveal itself through your tissue.  My next Belly Intelligence workshop is in my studio in Evergreen, CO on Sunday, April 3, 2011.  Come and let your body blow open your mind!

That’s my quote.  One day it literally grew out of my tissue and into my conceptual mind.  Simple and profound, easy to intellectualize and hard to live.  Every day I wonder why it’s so damn easy to forget it.  Why I seem to let the chatter of my thinking mind be the foreground of my experience.  Why I runaway into the past or future, but have a hard time staying in the NOW.

Last week, I was working with grief and letting go.  I found myself at the edge of what I believed I could bear in terms of this painful heartache.  It brought up old wounding of not having what I want, and the experience also made me remember how little support I had to learn how to let go of something I was not ready to release.  Along with the present moment pain (which was difficult enough!), I could also feel the pain of my childhood, and the lack of understanding how to process my experience so I could let it go.  This little girl’s overwhelm began moving towards the foreground of my awareness.  Just when I thought I could no longer bear this pain, I thought, “What if I just sense my body?”  And so I did.

This amazing thing happened.  I could feel the rising up of my belly center, the presence in my body coming up to meet my head space.  Like a dear friend reaching out to support someone she loves, my body’s presence rose up from my belly, and my thinking mind began to relax and settle.  It felt supported and became more open and less grasping.  At that moment, I knew that my Head center and Belly Center were coming together, in the collaborative service of my heart.  Slowly, I fell into the (seemingly) unbearable pain and tension in my heart.  As I stayed with this, breathing gently into my chest, I began to notice a softening of this taught organ, until I realized that I was relaxing into a deeper part of my heart-space.  As I continued to delicately allow this experience, a doorway opened; and I entered another place.  Moments later I realized I was coming into the sacred chamber of my consciousness.  A place Hameed Ali (my spiritual teacher, pen name A. H. Almaas, www.ahalmaas.com, www.ridhwan.org) calls the inner chamber of my soul.  A place so quiet and intimate and holy, that only I can enter this temple, the most sacred ground of my soul.

Sitting here, alone with my sorrowful loss, my heart swelled open; and I realized I had ALL the support I needed to stay with this and any difficulty.  That, if I allow my belly center to rise up and become the foreground of my experience as needed, my head center will relax and allow the truth of the moment to unfold.  I also realized, from this place in my embodied heart, I am completely at peace.  Even if a part of me did not want to let go of something very precious, I could harmonize with the truth of my life and liberate what seemed impossible to release.  Liberate myself really, by allowing my heart to grieve this layer of loss, riddled with early wounding that was still in the tissue of my present experience.  Liberate my mind from its gerbil wheel thinking, unshackle this tension around my heart, by freeing my body to “do its thing”.

Our bodies are remarkable.  Just the miracle of our physical form, with all of its systems and organs working harmoniously to keep us upright, is mind blowing.  When we add in the resource of our tissue’s support, information, and wisdom to help us understand and move intelligently through life, we open up the possibility of truly being PRESENT for all life has to offer.  When I say, “Presence of Mind grows out of Presence in the BODY,” this is what I’m talking about.  When life throws a curve ball, when things don’t go as planned, when what we assumed would be a certain way ISN’T, our minds start racing on an endless track littered with speculation, fantasy, bitterness and overwhelm.  That’s when, if we consciously bring it into the foreground, our BELLY center’s perception, insight, and innate INTELLIGENCE can become a pillar of support for the most difficult times of our lives.  And the cool thing is, we always have access to it!  It’s available in every moment.  Imagine if you start tuning into your body, moment to moment.  Wonder how it could guide you to be in the NOW of your life?  Wonder how much more pleasure you would experience in everyday circumstances.

Take a breath right now into your body…what do you notice?  When you see and feel that, how does that affect you?  Your body is an untapped reservoir.  Come and experience a Belly Intelligence Workshop and find out how to tune into this endless somatic intelligence in your everyday life.