A sunny otter playfully spins in a gold-lacquered sea.
This is how my nervous system shows itself to me.
The image reveals the remedy on creating balance and maintaining equilibrium within my body, my intelligent and brilliant nervous system.
Play.
Play cultivates enjoyment, ease, encouragement to flow with life, to let life flow through me.
A magical mansion reigns serene and secure on top of a hill. A black iron-wrought fence with an elegantly designed gate politely and firmly circles the home. On the other side of the fence, royal red roses thrive majestically. Within the mansion, there are children who are enthralled with the enchantment of the estate.
This is what the nervous system shows me when I drop into a pause and inquire about the state of my personal boundaries.
Boundaries can be exquisite creations. Boundaries keep the magic within nourished, self-contained, to dwell, determine and rest in a sanctuary for contemplation, curiosity, creativity.
Like the otter, the showing of the magical mansion as my boundaries teaches me what the body already knows to be true – boundaries can be powerful and beautiful.
This is a truth spoken from a regulated, well-attuned nervous system.
“You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves,” wisely writes Mary Oliver, and my sudden ignited love affair for the nervous system transforms this poetic line into breathing wisdom.
It is a truth I finally feel full permission to live by, to make a home in, to wildly and reverently trust.
“The body speaks in images and sensations,” guides the healer, Tele Darden. And her words are beyond words. It’s an exhilarating exhalation that could empty me into tears. It’s a confirmation I’ve been longing to hear. That the way my body shares her watery intelligence is through images, scenes, stories told without words.
I strived throughout my twenties, throughout my yoga trainings and even my beginning years of yoga teaching to memorize anatomy and academically and analytically study the functioning of the body.
All of this intellectual analysis furthered a disconnect from me and my body. It made me feel less than, it made me feel like my intuitive and instinctual understanding and relating to the body was less than, more woo-woo, and the mainstream culture mocks the woo-woo, which is really the essence of the untamed, organic feminine. This is what I am here to heal, to embody, to claim.
This is my healing, and I share to initiate the reflective space: what’s your medicine?
I know that there are people who get utterly giddy and exude enthusiasm when it comes to anatomy, it’s how they find home in their tissues and cells.
And I honor them.
This is the path of self-liberation, and we are so purposefully and distinctively unique, that to choose our radiance, to choose what really replenishes our innate radiance deserves celebration and a honeyed witnessing.
What’s radiant in aliveness for you?
So I write this, I share this for the others who receive visions of otters instead of the anatomical spine.
Both are aligned and correct.
We can hold opposite truths and both those truths can be true. Welcome to the complexity of living as a human being. Both hold the medicine and the intelligence you are meant to hear.
The body speaks in images and sensations.
Befriending the body means becoming fluent in the language of ease, connection, stability.
Befriending the body is the sacred act of returning to our inner world, to strengthen the muscle to move inward, to fortify the capacity to tune in, to be with what we find with an acceptance that softens and soothes and frees us back into free-will, back into the realm of possibilities and choice.
We can choose to be with intensity while in our internal container of safety.
Befriending the body translates to becoming fluent in the natural language of images and sensations. And be in clear-water witnessing to perceive all that arises as information.
The body speaks in images and sensations.
Gold otters and enchanted Victorian homes emerge from a nervous system that knows me well. That knows I’ll get the message, and it’s a message that joyously invites brighter and brighter embodiment.
Healing the nervous system, moving from dysregulation to regulation, from surviving to thriving by being in the dynamic dance of invigoration (sympathetic) and relaxation (parasympathetic). It’s not one over the other. It’s the two fluidly cooperating, clearly and appropriately responding to the present moment, and inviting us to show up in presence and sovereignty.
Affectionately attending to the nervous system is the essential embodiment piece, it’s how we create an internal safety so we can heal, grow, thrive in new ways that express our soul. It’s the body befriended so the soul can truly make a home in our luminous universe of skin, cells, and bones.
I’m exuberant in my excitement.
My heart is a hummingbird.
The nervous system is my nectar, my medicine, an answer that is within.
The nervous system is the gateway for the divine, for the subtle and energetic bodies made manifest and real in our physical form. The two are one.
And so if you are to pause, to drop in, to rest in what is stable for you, right here and right now – the breath, the ground, the palm pressed to heart or belly – and just let sensations river and images flow, how would the nervous system present itself to you? And could you let yourself soften back into trusting what came through?