I am going to start this by reminding you of a great truth…
You… the real YOU is wild.
You were born wild.
Your body born to shake, wiggle, and move freely.
Your mouth to tell your truths and yell in delight.
Your skin to help you feel you in this world and sense the world in you.
You were meant to feel it all – the good, the bad, and the ugly.
And, you were meant to use it for your growth and well-being.
Your soul chose this life to be wild and free.
But in your innocence, you forgot. You began to believe the lies you were told. Be this… don’t do that… good girls do… good girls don’t…be a man…man up… on and on and on. You believed it because when we are young we need to belong, we need to feel safe, and so we give up our wild, untamed self in order to survive.
Consistently I hear from men and women talk about their desire to be happy, comfortable in their own skin, and vulnerable in their relationships. Yet over and over what keeps them feeling sad, angry, shutdown, turned-off, and distanced is their adherence to old hurts, should, and regrets.
What I keep learning from these courageous souls is that talking about it, becoming aware about it is a great first step, but it is simply not enough. One has to feel – feel the contours of the energy rising inside. Allowing the body to express it through its natural wisdom.
Wildness resides in the body where the greatest of wisdoms also lives.
This is hard to do in a world where the mental is given more power. So rather than feel our way through an emotion, we begin to think about the emotion. We try to find a “cure” for it by assigning blame (spouses, partners, parents, and siblings are popular targets), remembering bad stories (reminding yourself how many times he/she/it made you feel this way before), or using a coping skills that get us further away from healing (drinking, eating, screaming, or giving the cold shoulder).
Thus we blame, shut down, and try all other coping skills in hopes one will help us feel better. It does not work. It has never worked. It will never work. Even talk therapy is not enough. So what can help?
Feeling the contours of the emotion and allowing the body’s natural, wild intelligence to express it and moving it out.
Nature is a wonderful teacher for us. When something bad happens, you see animal do exactly what their body intelligence knows to do: A possum freezes, a gazelle runs, and a lion fights. When the event it is over and it has survived, they reset their body by shaking. No blaming, no second-guessing, no wondering what it could have done something different.
Therefore, the next time you feel an upset of any kind, try this….
- Notice where you feel the energy (energy in motion = emotion) in your body. It may be helpful to place a hand over the spot and breathe in to it.
- Resist giving it a name. Yes, this is counterintuitive, but the minute you assign it a name – sad, mad, glad, anger – you stop feeling and you begin thinking.
- Move your body. You can stand up, sit down, lie down, or even get on all fours. This is not dancing. Shake, twirl, hop, karate chop… whatever your body wants to do.
- No matter what you do, keep on moving until the “energy” subsides.
- Breathe until your body settles. Not any kind of specific breathing, just breath.
So what does all of this have to do with liberating your wild soul? EVERYTHING!
Because to heal using your body’s intelligence is exactly what we were meant to do – to liberate ourselves from the heaviness, the tension, the unforgiveable, and the upsets and find the part of ourselves that lives life freely, enthusiastically, uncontrolled by the should’s or blaming.
No longer surviving the tension and the negative beliefs. Instead, living and loving your wild and delicious life feeling everything in the present.
If you are interested in diving deeper on how to let yourself feel everything, join us for FEMME – Workshops for Women. Theme for June is “Feminine Emotionality: The Art of Emptying & Feeling it All.” To register or for more information, click here .
Loving you and your wild soul,
Jacqueline