Visceral

Greetings all,

I have had a busy but very productive and joyful week.  My laughter has returned.   I missed being silly.  I am only serious when I absolutely have to be.  That said I do try and conduct myself professionally.

One of my favorite words is visceral.  According to the dictionary it means: of or relating to the viscera;   relating to deep inward feelings rather than the intellect.  When something is visceral you feel it in your body, an emotion can visceral too.  I clearly remember after having to defend my work for my graduation thesis feeling like I had been sucker punched in the gut.  (I do believe I gave as much as I got in that instance though if not more so).  The body with all its systems is a miraculous accomplishment.  Integrating motion, senses, and thought in a seamless whole it is our vehicle, our home, and in great part our identity in this life.

We tend to isolate thinking into the space right above our neck.  Having taught people tai chi for years I can clearly attest that people seem to try and move from there.  They are like head balloons with strings tying them back to their necks.  In tai chi we practice moving from tan tien which is about an inch or two below your naval in the sacral region.  Here is the center of gravity for our body, where it moves so do we.  However a lot of times I've noticed that people are completely unaware of their body.  They feed it when it gets hungry, take it to the bathroom, and sleep (well they try) but they do it from a detached giant head space.  They only become aware of their body when it hurts.

The body has its own intelligence apart from cognitive thinking.  You see this mostly with athletes.  Their muscle memory is superb.  They put a lot of effort into training their movements off the courts and fields so that they don't' have to "think" about their movements when they play they just do it.  This is also how martial artists train, spending hours practicing and refining a move so that when danger strikes their moves bypass conscious thought and become reflexes.

 I have a little story to tell you about muscle memory.  When I was in my senior year of high school I had come back from winter break and forgotten the combination to my locker.  The more I stressed about trying to remember the combination the farther it got from my conscious mind.  I tried something in desperation to avoid being late to first period.  I let my hand just spin the dial around pretending to open it.  Miraculously it worked  the locker opened I got my books, put up my coat, and headed to class.  There was just one problem I still didn't remember the combination.  Whenever I tried to think about it my hand would lock up and I couldn't get my locker open.  After a few days I gave up trying to remember and just let my hand do its thing.  As long as my hand remembered it wasn't a problem.  They say you never forget how to swim or ride a bike and apparently your hand can remember a combination better than you can.

Locker combinations aside there is a reason I am telling you about body memory.  Emotions and trauma can get stored in the body's memory, right down to the cellular level.  Genetic memory or rather  epi-genetics has become a focus of study recently showing that if our grandparents had very stressful lives it turned on some genes while switching off others.  About a year and a half ago I offered a group shifting download.  The aim was to remove religious programming from our deep minds.  Within a half hour of doing the download I felt nauseous and very ill.  That continued for about three days, someone turned me onto activated charcoal and I improved rapidly.  I'd had emotional reactions from energetic downloads before but never anything so physical.  My cells had been holding onto old programs that were literally toxic, the download released the pattern,  and my system was flooded with all the toxins.  (This was the download that prompted me to put warning labels on all my downloads).  As I work on the next download I am trying to find a way to gentle the process so the release is smoother.

So how about you? What are you holding onto in your body?  Are you working with your body keeping it moving so it can work through old patterns?  Are you using your body as a storehouse for stuff you don't want to deal with?  Are you ignoring your body's intelligence?  Maybe it is time to dust off your dancing shoes, get out that yoga mat, or dive in to the waters.  Try being in your body rather than your head for an evening see how it feels.  Let me know what your visceral reaction is.

Peace and Blessings,
Thomas Mooneagle