Reclaiming the Body:  Integrating Body, Mind, and Spirit

 Many of us today are aligned with our intellects, living almost exclusively in our heads while our bodies are encased in layers of armor or tension.  The body seems merely to transport the intellect from place to place.

According to Gary Zukav, author of The Seat of the Soul, the body is actually a reflection of the soul and has much to tell us about our psyche.  He tells us that the soul’s essence is connectedness, and it thrives on relationship.  Ancient people knew this instinctively.  Their survival depended upon their relationship to their environment, to each other, and to their bodies.

Today, the value of the body is making its way into people’s ideas for healing, especially other than just physically—that is, psychologically and spiritually. 

Emotional traumas that the mind forgets are stored in the body in what is called cellular memory.  Many practitioners and their clients are learning that the body is a natural container of experiences.   

As early as childhood, we learn to dismiss or cut off signals from the body that remind us of painful experiences.  Much later as adults we can reawaken the ability to receive the messages from our bodies so that we can come to full awareness and thus heal our past.

Our bodies contain a great deal of essential, natural wisdom about when to rest and when to act. By listening to the body’s signals and rhythms we can achieve true healing and peace. 

Unfortunately, too often we ignore our bodies because the messages interfere with our daily routines.   Reclaiming our body calls on us to engage the body fully and to listen to it in an effort to integrate body, mind, and spirit.  

Mona Lisa Schulz, M.D., Ph.D., author of the book Awakening Intuition, tells us that if we begin to recognize and heed the messages our intuition is sending us, we will be much more likely to achieve wellness. 

Intuition is the capacity to make the correct decision with insufficient information, says Schulz.  Intuitive “hits,” she tell us, for the most part possess similar characteristics:

·         they come to us often without warning;

·         they are most often emotional, empathic, and non-rational;

·         they often contain a certainty of knowledge and a sense of immediacy.

According to Schulz, intuition is available to each one of us, if we allow ourselves to tap into it.   Schulz is a practicing neuroscientist and neuropsychiatrist and has worked as a medical intuitive for the past 10 years.  Through case studies, research, and her own rich experiences, Schulz weaves a story in her book of how intuition speaks to us through the language of health and disease.    

Her book describes ways that we can tune into the messages that our bodies are sending us all the time, and by using this information, to improve the quality of our lives.  Even though we may block our intuition much of the time, it is Schulz’ idea that during times of illness, disease, and other crises, a hole is created in which we receive our intuitive information. 

In her book, Schulz provides a number of scientific studies that demonstrate that certain emotions are related to certain illnesses.  These illnesses are in turn related to specific emotional centers in the body.

I thank Ann Pettingill for recommending this book to me, and I also highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in intuition and the body/mind connection.