The Ultimate Self-Care Method: Tuning into your Body Wisdom

When I first came to Sistership Circle, I was excited about what it looked like to connect with other Women. To share about myself, to open myself and to be fully supported. Honestly, I really had no idea what I was in for, but spending the next 9 months in Circle with these amazing women was one of the biggest catalysts to transform my relationship with myself.

This was the first time I was given permission to be emotional, to be messy. The first time I had permission to feel certain emotions, and that permission from the group created permission from myself. The shame of having feelings and emotions began to dissolve as I saw that I was not alone. This was a “shame-free zone” and the first time I felt like I was not alone. We all cried and felt deeply. We felt things that had been trapped inside ourselves for years, maybe decades, maybe lifetimes. We finally let them out in this sacred space, and what we received in response was pure love.

Within this spaciousness I felt a completely new freedom, and I felt the power of my emotions. I felt their rightness for the first time and I began to release the wrongness I had been made to believe they were. I began to see my feelings and my emotion as Wisdom, guiding me to my own answers and transformation.

This was the beginning of the transformation and healing that has happened within my body and my heart, and this is what I’m here to share with you now: the power and blessing within your body. This is the key, the sacred resource you’ve been missing all along: Your Body.

What does it really mean to be a Woman and honor my feminine essence?

Circle is where I began to explore these questions and allow myself to play in this space. I’d spent most of my adult life operating from my thoughts and my brain – that’s what I was taught! And in this sacred feminine haven called “Circle,” I learned to honor myself, all parts (mind AND body).

A shift is happening, and our planet is moving more into a space of honoring the feminine. Honoring the feminine means honoring Mama Earth, our hearts, our sisters and the power of the grace and ease of Life. It’s my belief that this shift will heal our hearts and it will heal our planet, by moving humanity into a more balanced state.

As women begin to trust their own inherent feminine nature, we slowly set the example in our world that these qualities are, too, worth honor and respect. We honor and respect them in ourselves first. We give ourselves permission to be wild, emotional, sensitive; to allow things to come to us with ease, instead of always pushing and burning ourselves out. We get more in tune with our hearts, our bodies and our emotions.

As a child, I was very sensitive and emotional. I felt A LOT. Sometimes I was feeling my own energy and emotions, sometimes I was energy or emotions outside of me (in other people or in my environment). I was shamed for crying, for feeling too much, and so I shut this part of myself off (or as much as I could). I stuffed my tears, my sadness, my pain and even my extreme joy deep inside, because it was not safe to let it out.

But, aren’t we all entitled to feel our emotions? This is just one way our bodies and hearts process and release energy. Same as laughing; that is just another way of releasing energy. Once we embrace this energy within ourselves, we gives others permission to do the same. When we are out of balance (just like with ANYTHING in our lives) it can burn us out and disconnect us with our bodies and our hearts.

When we stuff our truth, our pain, our emotions down inside and lock them into a little box, they stay there — inside of us — waiting to be acknowledged. We carry them around with us everywhere, and that can feel heavy and exhausting, like a weight on our shoulders or a volcano waiting for the right moment to explode and release.

A New Paradigm

I want to introduce you to a new possibility. To a way of living where you’re deeply connected with your emotions, your intuition, and your Wild/chaotic nature. I want you to give yourself permission to feel. DEEPLY. The ups and the downs. The light AND the heavy. The happy and the sad. Because when we allow ourselves to feel the depths of our pain, we open up space for ourselves to reach new peaks of joy. We allow ourselves to process pain so we can release it. That way we’re not carrying the weight of it around in our bodies and our hearts. We’re not denying any of our experience or our truth. This is about honoring all of it and honoring ourselves. And from that place we create space and choice. We create freedom.

And so, How do we do this? How do we reconnect with our wild femininity? How do we reconnect with the miracle of the feminine spirit and body? By connecting back with our body.

When we’re only operating from the mind, we’re out of touch with the wisdom that our body has to offer us, and therefore cut off from our intuition, our emotions, and our truth. We’re cut off from the subtle messages that our body is sending us in every moment.

When we start connecting with our bodies we notice different things. Our bodies slow us down every month in preparation for introspection during our bleeding time. Our bodies call out in pain after eating certain foods, telling us that those foods are not a contribution to the nourishment of our physical vessel. Our gut guides us to call someone or to make a certain decision. Our heart lights up, telling us we’ve connected with a powerful key to accessing our joy.

Our body is communicating with us always, and it is our job to tune in and listen and to receive the messages and honor them. We work together, rather than trying to control. Most women learn this at a young age when we start looking in the mirror and rating ourselves against the models in the magazines or against whatever standard of beauty we learn is “right”. We start dieting in an attempt to control our bodies. We shush our bodies when hunger arises, we silence our bodies with medicine when we feel pain, we use substances to numb and escape painful emotions. These are all attempts to control our bodies rather than working WITH them.

Now, I see so clearly, we can work TOGETHER to create what we want in our lives. We use our bodies as a tool to feel how we want to feel in our lives. We can ASK our bodies for guidance. We can listen, we can honor and we can love ourselves in a deeper way than we’ve ever imagined. We can look in the mirror and honor what an incredible miracle the feminine body is. We create life within our wombs! When we honor the miracle that we are, we cultivate a deep respect for ourselves and our vessel. And that forever changes our lives and how we feel about ourselves.

This is the new paradigm.

Body, what would you like to eat today to feel more energized?
Body, how do you want to move today?
Body, what do you need in this moment?

Try this on for a moment – What if EVERY question you had about your life could be answered by you simply tuning into your body? What if all the help you wanted, all the questions you had, weren’t answerable by doctors, and diets, and other people out there in the World trying to tell you what’s best for you?

What if I told you that ALL those answers lie inside your body? Inside YOU.
What if I told you that the mysteries of feeling centered, feeling grounded, feeling clear, lie inside your feminine wild body, in your beautiful heart, your womb and your menstruation?

What Does This mean?

This means, allowing your true nature as a woman to blossom. This means embracing your feelings, just as much as your thoughts. This means creating your life, your business, your money, your relationships from a place of ease. Disconnection with our true feminine nature is denying ourselves a beautiful gift. This gift opens countless doors in our lives. It opens the door to creating a life we love from a space of EASE. It opens us to honoring our bodies (whatever the size, shape and age we are). It opens us to eating and exercising in a more connected, and nourishing way. And it opens us to honoring the miracle and the grace of the female body and spirit.

For the first time in my Life, I look at my body, my emotions and my intuition as my GREATEST gifts and wisdom. Because now I know that feeling is our birthright … and our magic as women, bleeders, and wild creatrixes.

Now, pause. How does that feel for you?

I want you to tune in. What has this brought up for you? What is present for you right now? What is your body telling you? Pause, breathe, and take a couple minutes to journal or just sit in silent inquiry with yourself. Begin now.

What did this bring up for you? Maybe some new desires around how you want to live your life. Maybe it brought up some new possibilities that you didn’t know even existed. Maybe it brought up some ways in which you’ve been living in your mind space and denying your feminine. Maybe you need to mourn that, I know I did. Maybe you’re seeing some ways in which you’ve made yourself wrong in the past for being wild, messy, emotional, sensitive and chaotic. Until now.

Give yourself full permission to FEEL. Because this is the KEY to being more connected with yourself than ever before. Slow down, get quiet, and listen. Your body is beckoning you.

Embrace it, Goddess. Because THIS is your magic.

~ Featured Sister Spotlight Story in the Second Edition of Open Your Heart: How to be a New Generation Feminine Leader

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erinnmcmurtrie

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