I can’t believe I’m wrapping up In This Body Retreat that started last June!
Thanks to everyone who has been part of this!
We’ve created a space exploring embodiment, nervous system healing, emotional wellbeing and inner connection.
There are conversations, practices, reflections and gentle tools to support you in reconnecting with your body in a safe and compassionate way
And it’s all available to you now, at no cost!
Click the image to receive:
My message to you today:
Look at one thing in your life where you’re trying to “fix”, “improve” or “achieve”. Is it asking for Space or for Effort right now?
There’s a time for ease, letting go, giving things space and letting them be.
And there’s also a time for putting in the effort, showing up, reclaiming and doing the hard work.
We can only know if we get honest with ourselves and discern where we are in the moment.
Practicing discernment is our job. No one else knows better.
And discernment isn’t just a ‘mental evaluation’. It involves a greater, more holistic intelligence that takes us into sensing and feeling, beyond the thinking.
What that means is that it involves us digging deeper than our mind and our knowledge, and connecting to the wisdom of our heart and soul.
And to do that, we cannot bypass the physical body.
Easier said than done…
It was in my teenage years that I started living entirely from my head.
I was born in a country famous for its ongoing wars and political unrest, and I carry huge imprints and generational memories of turmoil.
Growing up, I mastered dissociating from my body to cope with the stress and the emotional pain and all the unresolved trauma inside.
My wake-up call arrived years down the line, when I collapsed in back pain and emotional burn-out.
I realised that my dissociation from my body was in the way of me showing up as the mother I wanted to be for my kids. in the way of me showing up as the mother I wanted to be for my kids.
That was the moment I began to listen to my body in a different way.
But when I started doing my inner work, I faced so much resistance.
It was so challenging for me to tune into my body and listen to what it has to say without judging it and judging my past and needing to blame.
It was painful and disorienting to meet the shame, the hate, the grief and everything else that my body was holding.
Since then, I’ve explored different frameworks to help me make peace and to remember this simple truth:
My body is my only bridge to Source.
Try this right now:
- Take a decision you’re trying to make in life right now. Where are you relying only on your mind?
- What comes up when you tune into your body, really tune in?
- How does that change your decision-making?
For many people, tuning into the body doesn’t come naturally anymore, even though it once did.
We’re born very much connected to our bodies, so why do so many of us end up in disconnection?
It happens gradually.
Childhood circumstances, social conditioning, survival patterns …
Life misunderstandings making us learn to override the signals of the body in order to keep moving.
We eat because it’s “time” not because we’re hungry.
We ignore our tiredness to get things done.
We don’t take time to grieve and we push ourselves to “be okay” before we’re truly ready.
Over time, we drift away from our body’s inner signals. We disconnect.
But, if disconnection happened gradually, reconnection can happen gradually too. It’s never too late.
The body is a miraculous thing.
Being willing to see it that way is the place to start.
And the body is constantly speaking to us through sensations, tensions, expansions …
Embodiment, to me, is remembering how to listen to the body and how to be present with what is actually happening inside us, instead of going to the mind, analysing, and creating narratives.
What happens then, when we go inside and what we first meet is pain?
A big reason many of us disconnect from the body is because we were never shown how to hold space for the emotional and visceral pain in a safe way.
So we learned to move away from it, think over it, distract, go numb …
Meeting pain at the level of the body can feel incredibly vulnerable and disorienting.
This is where embodiment work and somatic practices have been life-changing for me.
Not because they “fixed” things, but because they gave me tools I never learned growing up:
- How to stay present with sensation
- How to create safety in the body
- How to listen without judgment
- How to move emotions instead of storing them
They helped me reconnect to parts of myself I had abandoned a long time ago.
Returning home to my body has been one of the most generous gifts that life has taught me.
I’m paying it forward today by gifting you a free online retreat:
I’ve created a space together with a number of heart-centred leaders and practitioners. We gathered online for a free retreat exploring embodiment, nervous system healing, emotional wellbeing and inner connection.
This is for you if you’re someone who cares deeply about the world but you’ve been feeling overwhelmed, disconnected, emotionally exhausted or simply longing to feel more grounded again.
There are conversations, practices, reflections and gentle tools to support you in reconnecting with your body in a safe and compassionate way, all available to you now at no cost: