Understanding How You Manifest Your Physical Body
Guest Author Kara-Leah Masina of be Conscious now introduces Shift Your Spirits readers to her series on Mind-Body-Spirit transformation and her unique professional life coaching/ spiritual advisement service called the Physical Manifestation Overhaul.
You mean I made this body up?
- What does your body say about who you are?
- What does it say about the physical way you interact in life?
- The mental way you interact with life?
- Or the emotional way in which you interact with life?
- How does it represents your spiritual self?
For everything that you manifest in this world represents YOU — your relationships, your possession, your job, and your body.
This is not a new way to interpret the world. This is how spirit and body has always been perceived — the unmanifest made manifest.
To quote directly from today’s great source of knowledge, Wikipedia:
“The general principal in the spiritual traditions of India is that the characteristics of each level of manifestation are determined by the characteristics of a more subtle level whose form is determined by an even more subtle level of manifestation ultimately determined at the level of the immortal spirit, Brahman (God). By understanding and mastering the subtlest levels of reality one gains mastery over the physical realm.”
What does this mean to you in your life?
That by understanding your emotional, mental, energetic and spiritual bodies, you can understand — and change — the way your physical body manifests.
This is most apparent when one deals with dis-ease holistically. Both Brandon Bays in The Journey, and Bri. Maya Tiwari in The Path of Practice outline how they healed their incurable cancers by going inside their Selves to understand how and why they had manifested this particular dis-ease.
Many of us will never face a major dis-ease like this. Although some will. Yet all of us live inside a body that we are mostly disconnected from. We feed it chemicals and preservatives, we starve it, we poison it with toxins and intoxicants… and then we act surprised when it rebels with a complaint.
Yet this body is the temple which houses our soul — it is the temple of our God.
Our body is a miracle of movement — that a thought in the brain can cause my fingers to dance across the keyboard and allow the intent of my words to spill out over your computer screen so that you may understand what I mean.
When our bodies suffer, WE are suffering.
To dose and medicate and subdue and placate the suffering of our body is to run from the understandings our soul is trying to communicate to us.
When Bri. Maya Tiwari realised after four years of invasive surgery and chemotherapy that she was going to die of cancer… she was finally motivated enough to face up to the lessons it was trying to tell her. She finally made peace with herself. And the cancer disappeared.
When the body breaks down… we must ask ourselves why?
- Why did I get this cold when my husband didn’t?
- Why did I break my leg?
- Why have I contracted hepatitis C?
Yes, there are the starkly physical reasons —
- I breathed in the germs
- I fell down the stairs
- I used a contaminated needle
But you know what? Other people breathe in the germs, fall down the stairs and use contaminated needles… and they don’t get sick.
Physical ill-health is a symptom of ill-health in the more subtle bodies we posses — the mental, emotional ,energetic or spiritual body. To truly heal, from the inside out, we must dig up the root of the problem. We know what it is, we must acknowledge this to ourselves. Then healing can take place.
Our great obsession with diet and body image is pure folly, because we seek to eternally control that will is internally manifested.
Yes, you can cut calories and exercise more and perhaps you will lose weight. You might even keep it off — provided the weight was not manifested because of an emotional issue, or a spiritual issue. But when you fail, time and time again — Oprah, I wish I could explain this to you! — it is not because you are bad, or a failure, or genetically predisposed to carry weight… it is because you are chopping off the leaves of the tree and failing to yank out the roots.
Get in there and find out WHY you carry weight. Jeff Lilly of Druid Journal has been taking this journey for the past two months. Despite the best healthful efforts of his wife to fill the house cupboards with only unprocessed food… Jeff couldn’t control his cravings and subsequent binges. his wife lost 40 pounds. He remained steadfastly overweight.
Jeff started asking himself why? He started paying attention to when he craved, when he binged, how he felt before and after… And via this method of honest self-inquiry, he was able to ascertain that he binged because he needed to ground himself. His body was naturally balancing excessive mental activity (like writing and thinking) with a grounding action — eating.
By understanding WHAT was going on, he was able to choose a course of action that still honoured his soul’s needs, while also looking after the body. Now when he feels the cravings start to hit, he uses breath work, or a short walk, or a meditation, to bring himself back down into his body.
Our bodies will always seek balance — when they are too hot, they crave a cold drink. Too cold and they want a warm fire. We can understand and appreciate this on this physical level.
But our bodies are always moving through the different elements –
- earth (physical body)
- air (mental body)
- fire (energetic body)
- water (emotional body)
By knowing where you are, you know how to balance yourself.
- If you are too much in the energetic body — as can happen if kundalini is active for example — taking a bath draws the excess energy off.
- If you’re too much in the mental body and need to ground, anything that connects with the physical body is useful — eating, walking, sitting on a big rock.
- If you’re overwhelmed with emotions, you often reach for the comfort food because you need to have something solid to ground yourself. But just as effective is to ground via a walk, or to fire up some energy and turn the water into steam by running, cycling, or dancing. Using the mind is also an effective way to get out of the emotions — so many of us pour ourselves into our work rather than face our emotions.
- If you’re feeling lethargic and dull, all earthed out, then you need to fire yourself up and get the energy flowing — you don’t feel like moving, but when you do, the energy moves within you.
The key is balance, each of the elements equally represented and supporting the fifth element — ether, our soul. In this way, a balanced person can be walking with a friend, talking, and sharing emotions. The physical body is engaged, the mind, the heart and the energy… all is present.
So if you want to shift your physical manifestation — perhaps heal dis-ease, or rehabilitate injury, maybe lose or gain weight — start paying attention to why you’ve manifested the way you have.
Seek out balance between the four elements — paying attention to where you habitually reside. Too much air? Fire? Water? or Earth?
Shifting to this understanding of the world empowers you to change your self. It takes awareness, it takes work, but it is so rewarding.
It means you can manifest the healthiest, happiest version of your physical self.
Much joy and love,
Kara-Leah
About the Author
K-L Masina is more than a yoga instructor and writer in Queenstown, New Zealand. K-L’s blog be Conscious now is about experientially exploring the mind, body and spirit via conscious living. In her own words: “It is time for us to evolve consciously, to understand that our minds are merely the programming system that creates the world we experience. By consciously using our minds as the tool they are, we can free ourselves from the tyranny of mind-as-master. This is what I mean when I say, be conscious now.”
Contacting Your Spirit Guides - 101
Free resources for Shift Your Spirits readers:
- Read the ebook by Slade Roberson especially for beginners who want to know who/what spirit guides are and how to communicate with them
- Listen to the mp3 preview of the Spirit Guide Attunement portion of the Talking to Your Spirit Guides class by Slade Roberson
- Try the meditation to Meet a Guide contributed by Jeff Lilly of Druid Journal
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20 Responses to “Understanding How You Manifest Your Physical Body”
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Slade,
Thanks for asking me to guest author - and thank you for the wonderful editorial treatment!
Much joy,
KL
I totally agree and love what you said about the body always seeking to ground itself.I have used food my whole life to cope with emotions and intense life lessons.I have now realized and catch myself before I turn to the food, I ask myself what are you feeling? When I crave my favorite food choclate cake I am usually angry.One thing that happens is when I dont give into the craving I feel sad and I dont know what to do with that.It washes over me and I feel like Im drowning.
Brenda, feeling the sadness is exactly what you must do in order to release it. For me, that is the hardest thing to do, to just sit with the emotion, maybe cry a few tears. Crying for me has the message that I am weak. I know that is not true and it has been a difficult message for me to change, one I am still working with. Being vulnerable is one of the biggest blessings we can give ourselves and others. When we are vulnerable, we are being honest. When we are that deeply honest with ourselves, we are capable of our most valuable growth. Be courageous. You are not alone.
This is a wonderful post K-L!
I once did a tarot reading that suggested I needed to balance the water in my makeup with earth. I never forgot that and so this post and your use of the elements regarding balance really made me smile
K-L,
I don’t know of anyone who is tackling these body-mind-spirit issues in the way that you are — your methodology is truly unique, practical — I hope everyone will explore the wealth of insight on your blog.
I know for a fact that you’ve inspired a few light bulbs to go off. I look forward to seeing how your Physical Manifestation Overhaul evolves.
Brenda,
Addiction recovery techniques always seem to leave me hanging — once you’ve identified a behavior pattern, and then chosen to remove it or change it, the big question is “What do I do instead?”
Addictions are about filling a hole, plugging up… something. So when you pull that “plug” out, the big emergency becomes “Now what do I put here?!”
Stopping is only part of the process. Maybe find something to be the alternate action? Because without one, the brain is looking to the obvious behavior to try — that’s what you’re programmed to do when faced with a particular emotion…
How do we Re-program, K-L? What kinds of things do we do instead? What’s the alternate for Brenda’s chocolate cake?!
I’d love to see some ideas on your blog about specific replacement techniques.
Example number one could be what Brenda has identified:
Emotion: anger
Action: eat chocolate cake
New Action:…?
Any ideas about how to break these kinds of triggers down? There’s about a million articles for you to write, huh?
: )
Patricia,
I’m a big crier!
: )
Interestingly though, I am more likely to cry from intensely pleasurable emotions — joy.
Sadness and depression leaves me feeling emotionally dry or dammed up.
I have found though that allowing yourself to feel sad when you’re sad is the only obvious course. You must acknowledge and embrace your emotions, even the ones that are undesirable — there’s no way to just “skip” the emotions you don’t like, or change them.
In order to work with emotions you must embrace them, feel them… One thing I do when I feel sadness is instead of judging the emotion, or telling myself not to feel that way, or to feel something different… I totally embody it. The first step is to feel it totally and completely in its raw form.
I started watching the television series Lost – my brother gave me the DVD’s. In the very first episode there is a great discussion between two of the main characters about how to process fear. I’m paraphrasing, but the doctor says that when he is confronted with fear, he allows the fear to come in and wash totally over him for 10 seconds.
Rather than suppress or hold it off, let it out of its cage and give it to the count of 10 to Do Its Worst. Invite Fear to come at you with all that it can, and then it must stop.
What I suppose you find is that you can simply live through 10 seconds of Anything, if you confront it with clarity and awareness. It’s the quickest way to move into and through…
It reminds me of the Frank Herbert’s Bene Gesseritt Litany Against Fear. I swear to you, even though its origin is science fiction, five years ago, when faced with a terminal diagnosis, it was the Litany Against Fear that I prayed constantly. And it works.
Brenda, I would suggest you start with something that will get you out of your head and into feeling your body. A good way to do this is conscious breathing. If you can feel your body you will on some level recognize that it is not your body that is hungry for the cake, it is your mind. Once you get to that point, the energy that was feeding the cake thought form in the mind will have weakened and transfered to the body. You can then choose another activity that will place even more attention into your body such as taking a short walk. By the time you are finished with the walk the cake thought form will have weakened entirely.
The Litany Against Fear:
The Bene Gesserit Sisterhood of Frank Herbert’s Dune
Oh, good one, Paula!
The breath, the breath. If you can just focus on the breath, you can alter your consciousness in so many circumstances.
Thanks Slade!
Breathing works so well because what our bodies really crave is energy. Our minds can become so active that they absorb us completely. The good news is that as soon as the body gets some energy in the form of our attention…our perspective shifts and we move toward balance
On the note of perspective shifts I would also like to encourage Brenda to view her cake impulses in a friendly manner. Think of them as a fuel gage warning you that your body is approaching empty and needs your attention. To fuel up you can meditate, walk, run, do jumping jacks and laugh with joy and gratitude that you have developed such an excellent method of communicating with yourself! Congratulate yourself…this is such a good thing! There are no problems once we understand what the messages are trying to teach us!
Brenda, I would reiterate what Paula and Patricia have said. When the tears come up - just be with it. Focus on your breathing, and witness your sadness and pain. Moving to a place of witnessing the pain allows it to come through, without overwhelming us.
Slade,
With regards to addiction recovery - the “plug” is there for a reason, and when we remove the “plug” of addiction, replacing it with something else does nothing to address WHY we need the plug in the first place.
My perspective is that consciously addressing addiction looks at why someone needs the addiction, and healing that core issue. Then NOTHING is needed to plug it… It’s an internal bottom-up way to address it, rather than an external, top-down way.
As for fear… that’s the light that tells us where we need to go. Fear is the ego’s response to a path that will inherently weaken it’s grip over us…
Much joy,
KL
Paula,
Wonderfully insightful comments from you today, thank you!
K-L,
I see what you mean about bottom-up as opposed to top-down — but how does this address behavior modification? Ingrained patterns of behavior take on a life of their own…
KL - This is incredible - thanks. I can’t wait to go back and savor each word. And helpful comments from the rest of you as well.
Concerning emotional eating - you’re not alone Brenda and I think it’s something that’s intensely personal for each person but mindfulness is definitely a biggie.
I can essentially map my lifetime emotional history with weight records. (Happy, satisfied, calm, focused = fit, trim, eating healthy, exercising. Sad, depressed, hopeless, angry, hurt = fat, out of shape, eating to anesthetize).
My epiphany came a few years ago, about the same time I unburied enough inner strength to begin extricating myself from an abusive marriage. I realized that by medicating myself with food and not exercising consistently, I was mistreating MYSELF. The sort of mistreatment and lack of consideration I would no longer tolerate from another person. This led me to make a conscious decision to begin feeding and caring for my body as if it were something/someone I love and cherish. And in the beginning it was really like that. (If I LOVED this body, what would I have for lunch? If I LOVED this body, would I work out today? If I LOVED this body, would I mindlessly scarf down a pint of Blue Bell in one sitting?)
I have by no means completely conquered this issue. But at least I no longer have to think about it so hard. And now when I have chocolate cake, it’s because I really want chocolate cake.
Not when I want nurturing.
K-L is dead-on. Addiction is self created and of course the deep question to ask is why did I create this? What am I running from? What do I not want to see, face, etc? Because addiction is an unconscious response to life…it acts as a mirror that will reflect the areas you need to work on if you follow it down the rabbit hole
Nice response K-L!
I remember reading something recently (forgive me if it came from any of you and I’m failing to properly attribute) where the writer was discussing the idea of the body as a temple. He/She asked the question, “Would I put junk food on an altar to my goddess?” and answered with, “Of course not!”
From that perspective, which also follows the Wiccan philosophy of divine being found in everything, including ourselves, we need to remember that our bodies are deserving of as much respect as we would give any other divine space. It’s certainly easier for me to be mindful of what I’m eating when I think of my body this way - I want to be healthy both to feel good and also to honor my own divinity.
Brenda - sometimes the Goddess wants some chocolate cake! I think it’s great that you’ve identified a trigger for overeating, but sometimes letting yourself have the chocolate cake simply because you like it does as much to honor the self as choosing to go for a walk instead might.
Kara-Leah, I love your idea of the body finding a way to balance that which is unbalanced in mind or spirit. There definitely were some lightbulb moments going on for me as I read your post! A lot of things make sense to me when I think of them in that context. I’m already thinking of some shamanic journeying I’d like to do!
Slade,
Those ingrained patterns of behaviour might be called ‘Habits’. First they serve a need… and then when the need is gone… they just continue. So, how to rid oneself of a habit?
See it for what it is - something you only do because you’ve always done it.
Be conscious of when you are doing it.
Catch yourself before you do it.
Don’t do it.
Yep, that’s oversimplifying enormously, but it presumes you’ve already dealt with the subconscious reason WHY you were doing whatever it was you were doing… then by withdrawing attention and energy from the behaviour/habit… it will wither and die. If you want it to.
You still have to do the hard work - you have to WANT to stop the behaviour.
Lola,
Great technique and so EXACTLY it. How would you treat your body if it was the love of your life? What would you feed it? Where would you take it?
Love the body, for it is the temple of your God.
Angela-Eloise,
Let us know how the shamanic journeying goes - I’d be interested to hear. That idea of finding elemental balance is something I’ve intuitively worked out, but reading an Ayurvedic book this week, it’s specifcally mentioned.