What Brings You To Life?

There is much talk about spirituality today. I emphasis about as there is not as much sharing of the lived spiritual experience or sharing of “how” to deepen a spiritual connection with yourself and your spiritual guidance and with what brings you alive. Talking about things and experiencing them are two different things.

How many events have you attended? How many books have you read? Everyone is telling you to do something! Rather than telling you what to do – I offer a suggestion of something you can do daily, learn from and adapt and turn it into something that is your own practice. And maybe you can share what works for you.

Start to tune in to your body to what makes you feel alive. You are likely to notice a spiritual connection that has been there all the time, but you may not have noticed it!!!

What I suggest here is a guide, a kick start. Once you start tuning in and listening to your body you can work out more ways to feel a sense of being alive and connected to something that is bigger than who we know ourselves our to be.

To begin I suggest to the people I coach to notice what tickles you from the inside out. What brings a smile to your face? What “touches” you? What do you feel drawn to that gives you a glow?

Do you know?

Sounds easy but this can be difficult as many people have forgotten how to notice what they are feeling. We have often dulled our ability to feel as everyone wants us to “think”. Thinking is being “smart”. Thinking has been rewarded. For many of us we were brought up in an era where you did not talk or express your feelings, so we just shut down how we felt. How can we know what makes us feel good when we have cut ourselves off from our feelings?

We often do not want to feel pain or tension either and we cut ourselves off from these feelings. The only problem with that, is if you cut yourself off from feeling pain you also cut yourself off from happiness. They are at two ends of the spectrum. You can not have one without the other.  Not only that, when we feel pain or upset or tense these are messages from the wisdom in our body that we are doing something that is not healthy for us. If we ignore these messages there are often detrimental effects to our physical body and at times to our mental health.

The media promotes addictions to things that line other people’s pockets with money but leave us feeling empty. Addictions to sugar for short term “feel good” hits, that lead to being overweight and problems with health. Addictions to shopping for short term happiness that then leads to tension with having to pay for the shopping! Addictions to TV and then we complain that there is no time to do anything that brings us peace and happiness. 

So if you do not know how you feel when someone asks what makes you feel happy from the inside out, or what are you feeling right now, start with a regular practice of tuning into your body.

To tune in do a body scan at any time during the day. In fact it helps if you do this many times during the day while you are re-awakening your sense of feeling what brings you alive.

Start by noticing all the physical sensations in your body, the grumbling in your stomach, the twitches in your toes, the ache in your knees, the flow of your breathe. Or maybe it is not flowing, maybe it is tight and restricted. It doesn’t matter what it is, just start noticing your sensations, your feelings and the triggers. Initially do not try to change anything, just notice what it is.

To do a body scan you can start in many different ways. You can start at the top of your head and scan all over your body or you can start with whatever place in your body your attention has first noticed.

So let’s start with that – think about tuning into your body – which part of your body came to mind first?

Now without trying to change anything notice and feel what is happening there,  Feel the body sensations, tightness, temperature, sounds - what image do you have of that part of your body? Is it spongy? Stretchy? Like rock?

Now take your awareness to another part of your body. You might feel like you are paying attention to the feeling in your back and then you realize you are noticing your tummy rumble, or your feet feel sore. Just keep noticing where your attention is being drawn as you scan your body for sensations.

Go back to the part of your body that you first noticed. What is happening now? Explore the sensations. Has it changed without you doing anything. You are probably starting to give those bodily sensations a name of a feeling. What is it you are feeling? Tired, tense, alive, happy, relaxed, dull?

Whatever feeling it is, notice what is it that you were doing when you first started to pay attention to your body. Is there anything that triggered that feeling? Is it in the space you are in now? Or were you thinking about something or someone? Or an event? If so, explore that.

If you are feeling great, peaceful and happy, you may want to do more and think more about whatever it was that created that feeling. If you are feeling tense or negative, notice that and explore what you need to give yourself to release the tension and continue with the rest of the steps of Inner Bonding.

Have fun exploring what tickles you on the inside out and brings you alive!!!