Your body speaks what the mind cannot. The deeper question is, are you listening? 

Your true embodiment, which I define as the bodily aspect of WHO and HOW you naturally are. Your whole way of BEING, which can only be expressed freely when your soul can settle itself to the physical world, sink into it fully, and feel completely safe to stay.

However, the unfortunate reality is that it is common to feel disembodied and removed from your true self. The damage from trauma, which at its core disconnects, becomes part of your embodiment, because at one point in your life, your full way of being was not welcomed or safe.

Allow me to ask you a question. Were all parts of you accepted as a little girl, teen, or young woman? Or did you have to hide parts of yourself for safety, belonging, or fear of judgment? Sometimes entire aspects of the psyche are completely repressed after hiding or covering up.

In her book The Heroine’s Journey, Maureen Murdock writes about a heroine she calls “The Great Pretender“. This heroine has learned how to perform. She has no idea what she is missing in her life, and as a result, she fills her life with more. This is the only way to temporarily ease the suffering, yet further entangling her in anguish. “A new degree, a more prestigious position, a move, a sexual liaison, another child”. This obsessive need distracts her from what she lost. The distraction further entangles her, which leads to the deepest suffering. The separation of Self or in Eastern Tradition, your Purusha, your internal and authentic spirit. That which you already are. Not to mention the gapping separation from Divine, from me to you, you from nature, and separation of the sacredness in all of humanity.

I will always remember when I finally felt the pain of truth. My whole external life did not reflect the authenticity or feelings inside my soul. This happened only years after listening to my body, as I had repressed most of my true self. However, after time, I could no longer say no to myself. The strive toward the Superwoman ideal came at too far a price. The price of my own soul.

After I allowed the separation, loss, and despair to be felt and experienced, I could no longer cover it up.  Awareness of what is true in our lives cannot be undone. For me, it meant I would have to make changes to reflect my truth. It is not surprising that we try to forget what we know to be true out of fear. Choosing what is familiar, even if it causes pain. If I was honest, I was scared to death. Sylvia Brinton Perera writes, “we all have archaic depths that are embodied in us, which are capable of taking us over and shaking us to the core”. That is what it felt like for me. wildly unknown, yet a deeper sensation of coming home for the first time.

In the beginning, my whole life was a mystery that I was desperate to uncover. In graduate school, I learned of the world’s first love story, two thousand years older than the Bible. A story shrouded with mystery, eroticism, and compassion. It is a sacred myth of Inanna, the Queen of the great above. Seeking wisdom and wholeness, she turns her back from the heavens and goes down into the underworld. In doing so, she finds herself outside the traps of a masculine world that has “forced the binary level of feminine power into dormancy”. (1) This myth explores a whole new level of connection. With Inanna, she enters the place where all women have permission to explore: the place where not all our energies have order. Like Inanna, I was broken over and over again, before I learned who I was.

This picture resembles how I truly felt deep on the inside. Through experience and exploration, like Inanna, I began to feel again what I, my mother, grandmother, and great-grandmothers lost from colonization. I began to feel through my body, parts that had never been expressed. I started to find and express what was missing and lost due to trauma.

Let me share a deeper glimpse. In her book Descent to the Goddess (1981), Perera writes, “What has been valued in the West in women has too often been defined only in relation to the masculine: the good, nurturant mother and wife; the sweet, docile agreeable daughter; the gentle, supportive and bright achieving partner. We silence ourselves trying to compress our souls into it just as surely as our grandmothers deformed their fully breathing bodies with corsets for the sake of an ideal.”(2)

This collective model was INADEQUATE for my life. I remember feeling like a caged animal breaking free for the first time. As natural as this instinct felt, vast and open, it was unfamiliar and uncertain, and no woman I knew spoke of it. I was often scared. Over the years, a growing list of questions grew. Perhaps you will relate to any of these questions.

• Where am I to find the full mystery and potency of the feminine? 
• How do I reconcile the sacred masculine? 
• How do I be part of the solution to the separation between the sacred feminine and masculine? 
• Who will teach the young girls of our generation? 

To begin to answer these questions, we need to understand the process which women must undergo to claim their power and wisdom. It has been recognized only in the masculine process of self-realization. Women who have become alienated from the feminine are assumed to have the energies, drive, and attitudes of the masculine. This is simply not the case. It is a tragic result of the lack of recognition of a separate and unique feminine process. I lean towards answers with the acknowledgment of the intrinsic need for a balance for all people. Without it, a person will eventually experience deep physical pain, depression, anxiety, and emptiness so deep. The feminine energy in all genders is used to build resilience and intuition. Balanced with the sacred masculine, one can express assertiveness and discernment.  Beginning to put down our swords and take off our armor. Learning to soften our muscles and hearts to come home in our bodies.

First: Stop overdoing, achieving, and distracting yourself from what you do not know is missing. Find out what is missing. Find the lost parts of yourself you cut off. Feel the pain of loss and separation, so you can heal.

Second: Learn to soften inside, make mistakes, be vulnerable, and receive help. Find what is missing.

Third: Stop contaminating your body, mind, and soul with false stories that divide us into hierarchies of right/wrong, good/bad, black/white. When you divide, you miss half of the story – half of your own story.

Fourth: Like Inanna, start telling and acting out your own story. There is no blueprint, that is someone else’s life, not your own. You will have to descend and experience the unknown. After a time of receiving, vulnerability, and choosing you, you will rise.

1). Sylvia Brinton Perera (“Descent to the Goddess”)

2). The Heroine’s Journey Workbook, by Maureen Murdock