Struggling with embodiment

I joke that embodiment was a mistake at the same time as I crave it in a spiritual context; there are many emotions and ideas that I would want to embody. In between is where I live, and it is difficult to be pulled in such opposite ways.

I’m supposed to be exercising, a little bit every day. Yet I have so many hangups related to my body, the act of exercising, and eating food that it is almost impossible to break through that thick curtain to reach the ability to do it. In times of high anxiety, I am in a more severe, blocked position, knowing I need the activity but incapable of going to do it. Some of it is executive dysfunction. But most of it is that mental block. And I’ll have you know that I hate being in this kind of position. I wish I had been raised with a healthy and loving relationship with my body.

Because I don’t know how to build one from scratch, especially when I am still receiving negative garbage down the line from literally every source in my life. I want to love me, as I am! I deserve it! I am worth it! But it seems that is quite a lot to ask.

So, embodiment. We want to feel deeply into our physical bodies, to know every breath that reaches our toes and fingertips, to fulfill all the needs of our blood and organs. I never breathe deeply enough because I trained myself to inhale shallowly, to make as little noise and movement as possible. (These are the things you do when you grow up with abuse, you never want to be noticed.)

How can we retrain ourselves after outer fuckery has disrupted the systems we deserve to take part in? Aphrodite says we have to take it slowly, and treat ourselves as we would treat our dearest lover, that is to say, with gentleness, grace, light humor, and lots of exploratory new love.

Elevate yourself to the status of lover. We don’t ever want to do anything to hurt the ones we love, so when our target is the self we must be extra careful, simply because we are the only ones who know our own weaknesses. We know where we lack defenses and we know what will hurt us the most. So our touch must be ever so much more delicate and respectful, when we turn to fixing our relationships with embodiment.

This is what I do: I breathe in for four, I hold for four, I exhale for four, I hold for four more. This is square breathing, a simple form of breathwork that has helped me travel down the road to a relaxed brand of embodiment. I close my eyes and with my spiritual hands I feel into my body. I run those hands over my hips and legs, I caress my arms and elbows, all the while breathing, breathing, breathing. I use sumptuous moisturizers and sacred oils and highly recommend these if you can work them into your routine. Tell yourself that you love this part for this reason, that you’re grateful for that area when your attention comes to it. When the warm tingle comes, I know I have made connection and I am fully aware of my flesh. But this is different for every person and every body.

You can expand this to a full body scan and touch in with every system, touch in with love. We may struggle with our circulatory systems, or our mental health, or our network of nerves, and our relationships can be extremely complicated with these more difficult parts of ourselves. I struggle mightily with this. But even with complications, there can and must be love for our hard parts.

Remember that our sick, Calvinist culture demeans everyone who doesn’t fit a certain strict mold of appearance and health and know that just existing as yourself is revolutionary, and a finger in the eye of every fascist. Be proud of that. We live against a torrent of messaging telling us we’re bad, not good enough, flawed, that it’s all our fault - when that is not the case at all! Aphrodite abhors that which would make us all the same; She wants for us to be as varied in color and size and style as all the flowers of the world!

We all struggle to some degree with embodiment, I am sure. As a disabled person, as a queer person, as someone who has been body shamed all my life, it’s complicated to work out all the angles of the situation. On days when I feel especially sensitive to the political violence against and shrinking acceptance of queer people, I am closed right up. On days when my pain is bad, it is also harder to connect with embodiment, and that is when I am most encouraged to use a gentle hand and a light psychic touch when linking up with my body.

And some days, I am not able to achieve that! And that has to be okay. On those days, I rely most on Aphrodite’s grace and love because I have trouble gathering some from my own fields. She is the tenderest keeper of issues with the body, for She knows the importance of full sensuality awareness and ignition. She wants us to feel our bodies so that we are aware of the pleasures in the mortal realm.

I will return to exercise when it is time, when I have torn through the steel cobwebs that obscure my will and weigh me down. It’s important, but it’s also important that we give ourselves infinite grace, when those relationships with embodiment are an endlessly stretching, problematic minefield. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.

The Wheel that ever turns comes around again to say that we are in a time of extreme flux, and that includes the space between the worlds. I’m sure everyone is feeling the strain of the times, the strain of the strangeness, and perhaps even the interference of the forces that swirl around us. Things are unsettled and we long for stability in a world that feels like violently vibrating jell-o.

The figures, they come out of myth out of legend out of time to grant us the stability of knowing that things will always be changing. Things will always be changing, it has to be accepted even if we hate it, and I do. Oh yes, I do. But humanity was made for change, we bring change, we are change, and that’s all there is to it. The Wheel will turn and we will love and we will fuck and we will fight and we will be remembered, we will remind everyone that we are here and we are alive and there are so many ways of human expression that we still do not know the half of what we can do, can be.

Step forward with the roll of time, keep up with it, not easy, but worth it, fortune favors every bold stride into the future, with infinite rewards. Work now to reap later. The future is set except for minutiae that can reshape those settings. Make your life a tool for the hand of a god. Accept the truth of your body and prepare it for the new day. Love the flesh you were given and find peace with it through action and movement.

Leo reads the future, Taurus the past, but both are fluent in the now. Now is what matters, now, now, now. All we have is the now, informed by the past, ready to mold the future, we can have a say.

We can have a say.

Always,

J