Do you leave your body? What does that even mean? It’s
not being aware of our body’s feelings and sensations.
I’d read this phrase over the years when referring to one of the
ways humans cope with life, and I’d dismiss it, “Yah, I don’t do that.”
I thought they were referring to astral projection, an intentional
out-of-body experience where the soul travels to another place.
I remember several years ago when I heard a coach say, notice
your feet. I thought, “Why would I do THAT?” She explained the
point was to feel our body and ground ourselves. I felt dumb because
it makes so much sense and seems obvious, but it went over my
head. I guess you could say this was a blind spot for me.
Now I’m realizing that leaving my body is MY MAIN coping
mechanism for when things get tough. In fact, you could say
I don’t like living in my body. I’d rather float around up in that
heady space of intellect, which oh by the way, is another way to
escape our feelings.
These two things (leaving the body and walking around as a
moving head—being in our intellect) work very well together to
keep us living in a numbed out existence.
I’m just curious if you do something similar?
Why would we ignore or not be aware of the body’s sensations
and feelings to begin with? Because of the pain, which could be
emotional, mental, physical or spiritual.
Maybe we feel separate from our Creator (aka God, Nature, the
Universe, etc.) and intrinsically don’t trust what the Creator
has in store for us. We don’t trust the process of life or the after life.
Maybe we have physical pain in our bodies and hope that if
we ignore it, it will go away.
Maybe we have torturous beliefs and thoughts that we want to
push down and make go away…forever. And/Or maybe we fear
our emotions will kill us if we try to access them.
Maybe it’s all of the above.
I just finished reading this book suggested by my
daughter, Chelsea, called Women, Food & God.
The author, Geneen Roth, believes that our relationship to
food is an exact microcosm of our relationship to life,
“If we are interested in finding out what we actually believe—
not what we think, not what we say, but what our souls are
convinced is the bottom- line truth about life and afterlife—
we need go no further than the food on our plates.”
I thought this felt like a profound truth. As a highly sensitive
empath, I’ve noticed that my compulsion to eat more sweets
and processed nachos and chips, has heightened with the pandemic.
Awareness can be a bitter pill sometimes, because it’s painful,
especially if we’ve had a blind spot. But as Geneen says, “Awareness
and compulsion cannot coexist, since the latter depends on
the obliteration of the former.”
I choose awareness every single time. So I am making a conscious
effort to keep opening myself to a new reality. I don’t want to
leave my body. I want to stay with me.
We don’t control if others leave us or when. That’s God’s job.
Our job is to stay with ourselves, even when we feel everyone
around us is abandoning us. How do we do that?
Grounding Technique
We ground ourselves. Here’s my simple little method, which
is a combination self-hypnosis, breathing and visualizing which
can take you 1 to 5 minutes or longer if you like:
1) Get in a comfortable position, put your hands over your heart,
and focus on a spot on the ceiling or wall above eye level.
2) Take 4 deep breaths and close your eyes.
3) Notice your body, your butt on the chair, your feet, etc.
4) Imagine a safe place in nature where it feels good for
you (perfect temp, no bugs, breeze, clouds, etc.).
5) Take 4 more deep breaths and go about your day.
So that’s it. Modify it as you like. For more tips on how to be
there for YOU, join our Shifter’s private Facebook group, a
women’s empowerment group.
Love,
Angie
