Some of this article that I wrote was published last month in the Fresh Ink section of the Gazette here in town. I am off to Nova Scotia in the morning, sitting by the ocean and listening to the waves, teaching and allowing myself to be led. When I return expect stories of scrumptious food, the experience of honey harvesting, and recovering parts of myself through encounters with perfect strangers. Blessings to you this fall and always.

Oscar Wilde said, “Where there is sorrow, there is holy ground.” Many of us do not stick around in our bodies long enough to learn this. We bail out when we feel pain. We drink, we eat, we busy ourselves to oblivion and we intellectualize our feelings, rather than feel them. We numb out what is inside of us by going straight up into our heads, and right out of our bodies. When we lose connection to our bodies, we lose connection to our hearts. We forget that we are standing on, and in, holy ground. And we forget, as the late infamous dancer Martha Graham has said, that “the body is a sacred garment.”

When we open to our bodies as sacred, we experience our hearts awakening. We begin to know and integrate the incredible gift of life that we have been given. Building relationship with what is beyond the intellect, allows us to bring imagination to our life stories; and become re-enchanted with who we are and with the world around us.  We are present in the moment, when we are in relationship with our senses (which is what our bodies do), and it is then that we reengage with creativity. Because we have neglected our bodies for some time, this journey back to our flesh and bone, takes courage and great patience.  It is on this path of embodiment, that we recover our humanity, and we live more fully. We absolutely can learn again, how to embrace the body, as a spiritual resource.

When we bring awareness to our bodies in intentional, and profoundly simple ways, we come into relationship with our souls; with the creative life force within us. Soma, Ltd- where body meets soul, offers opportunities to heal through creative expression and embodied practice. Jenny Finn, licensed social worker, embodiment educator and founder of Soma, works out of a small studio in her downtown backyard, right in the middle of her family’s urban farm. A small sign that says, Follow Your Bliss, directs you to the studio door, where at your feet you will encounter a large piece of flagstone with the word Spirit written on it. When you walk through the turquoise studio door, an invitation is extended to you to create space and time for your inner life; and this may include that pain that you have avoided for some time. Soma offers workshops and classes, both in her studio and in our schools, hospitals and churches, to experience your wholeness; to reclaim those parts of yourself that you have left behind. Through movement, meditation, art process, ritual, story telling, writing and poetry, you are given the space to experience this love and creativity within, from head to toe, and not just talk about it. You might find yourself crying and not know why; or holding hands with a stranger and feeling like you have known them forever; or dancing with joy when you never in a million years thought you would dance again. We open to acts of grace when we open, with our bodies, to the experience of something larger than ourselves. It is with this grace that we can learn to reengage with what has been deeply wounded within us, and even begin to heal. 

Follow your bliss, the sign says. How many of us are willing, and ready to follow our bliss, even if it might mean encountering darkness as we do? The body is here to help us. It is a spiritual resource for us to become enchanted once again with the grace that lives within us. Join us, as we recreate our lives through creative expression and embodied practice. To learn more about Jenny Finn and Soma, please visit www.somamovement.org.