The Sacred Mirror

A Reflective Practice for Deeper Connection

True connection is a three-way mirror, reflecting our relationship with ourselves, our body, and the world around us. When one of these relationships is out of alignment, our physical body absorbs the impact.

A single step out of alignment can be simple enough to correct. Many steps increase the potential for dis-ease, leaving us feeling un-easy, dis-oriented, or simply not quite right.

We often live our lives entirely from the neck up, treating our thoughts as the sole authors of our reality. Yet, it is our body that reflects exactly how we treat ourselves, how we hold our boundaries, and how we relate to the world around us.

Our body is not silent. It acts as a somatic guidance system - speaking a language most of us have long forgotten. We call them symptoms. I call them whispers... that pain in our knee or the fatigue we cannot seem to shake. Physical dis-ease shows up when the body is finally convinced we are not listening.

If we cannot hear the whisper, we will inevitably hear the roar.

This is not about blaming ourselves for our physical condition. It is about empowerment - a calling to create a deeper connection and understanding of the complexities of being human.

It is how we are walking out the story of our life.

If you are ready to stop bypassing these physical signals and feel called to understand their deeper spiritual and psychosomatic roots, you are in the right place.

Grab a journal (or another way to record your journey) and let's dive into a reflective somatic practice that invites you to look into the sacred mirror - to discover a path of healing from the inside out.

Shifting Your Awareness Inward

Scanning the Body

• Pause for a moment and find a comfortable position in a place where you will not be interrupted. If it helps to have meditative music or drumming in the background to help facilitate your journey, do what works best for you.

• Close your eyes and breath deeply - as you scan your body, ask yourself, "Where in my body am I holding tension or heaviness right now. Where do I feel numb?"

• Begin by bringing your awareness to your toes and your feet. Feel any tension you have there. Take a deep breath and release on the exhale.

• Next, bring your awareness to your calves and your shins. Feel any tension there. Take a deep breath and release.

• Continue to scan your physical body in detail, from your toes to the top of your head, allowing your body to fall into deep relaxation.

• Allow any thoughts to come and go without needing to grab on or do anything with them.

Giving the Sensation a Voice

Bypassing the MInd

Most of us know the voice in our head all too well. We might also agree that 'the heart wants what it wants'.

Some of us are familiar with our 'gut feeling', while others have experienced the deep wisdom of their womb-knowing.

We sometimes call this inner awareness intuition - the tuition we pay for the wisdom of experience... but when was the last time you asked your feet to weigh in on the miles or years they have carried you? When have we deeply listened to our kidneys when we thought we were the only ones feeling 'pissed off', and where does the energy go when we decide to escape the feeling?

When you become aware of physical tension or discomfort, I invite you to ask yourself - "if this specific physical sensation could speak, what would it want me to know?"

Identifying Hidden Emotions & Patterns

Looking into the Sacred Mirror

What if that heaviness we sometimes feel - like we have lead in our pockets or we are walking through muck - is actually the unprocessed emotional experiences we have pushed down since we were old enough to internalize our conditioning?

What if it is also a reflection of the subconscious agreement to carry on the epigentic patterns of our ancestors, because that is how it has always been done?

Learning to identify the issues in our tissues helps us to put our experiential pieces together and unfold the impactful story our body has been trying to tell us.

Consider this... when we truly get to know someone, we begin by observing how they do things... and perhaps how they speak. We might even ask ourselves "why do they do or say that?"

What we are really doing is trying to understand what makes them tick. What motivates their actions and informs their choice of words? It is irrelevant if we are doing this to feel safe, or out of genuine curiosity.

Similarly, when we truly choose to get to know ourselves - not only in our mind's eye, but the somatic self - there is a need for genuine curiosity, even if it is only because we no longer feel comfortable in our own skin.

We begin by asking ourselves - Who are these different parts of me? Why do they do what they do, and what are they trying to tell me when I feel that dull ache, that stiffness in my joints, or the body's stubborn refusal to provide me with the physical comfort and sense of overall wellness I had become accustomed to?

We might sometimes wonder, as I do, about the functions of the body and the psychosomatic mechanics of dis-ease. I get curious about why my shoulders tense up when I feel like I am carrying the weight of the world, and why they fall without hesitation when I consciously let go of the drive to carry what isn't mine. I'm listening.

As you reflect on your body scan and take note of any tension, pain, or discomfort - pay attention to the particular body part experiencing the discomfort and what its supportive role is in your everyday walk of life. Then, ask yourself, "What emotion have I been avoiding, and how is it showing up - not only in my body, but also in relationship with myself and the world around me?

Creating a Path for Gentle Release

Shifting the Energy & Changing the Story

While it is important to create a deeper awareness of the roots of our somatic experience, a meaningful release of what our body has been holding allows us to edit the very real story of what has been holding us down - or holding us back in contract-ion.

It is time to shift the energy and change the story.

Moving through stuck energy is a bit like learning to walk. You will have starts and stops, and the first steps may feel awkward and mechanical simply because you have to think about the movement... until you don't.

The good news is - the specific movements needed for meaningful release are readily available to us in the words and expressions we use and in the natural, organic responses of the body to every one of our emotional experiences.

This is what every body already knows.

If we consider the word depress-ion, for example, and plug it into the emotional experience - many people describe feeling as if a giant thumb is holding them down. Every movement feels heavy and difficult, no matter how small. Breathing is laboured and they feel like they don't have control over free autonomous movement.

To depress is to literally hold something, or someone down.

So, what is our psychosomatic response to depression? If we surrender to the perceived loss of control, we contract. We might convince ourselves that we are in need of 'deep-rest', only to wake in the same emotional rut we fell into the day before.

Physically, our body contracts into fetal postion or cocoons under the covers in surrender. We don't have to think about it - the body simply reacts to that version of our story. That becomes the 'contract' we signed up for.

Breaking the Contract

It is important to know the difference between a psychosomatic contract and what we might never be willing to do if it were someone other than ourselves holding us down.

Building somatic awareness as a regular practice makes clear to us what and how the body needs to release when our psychology becomes that giant thumb we feel power-less to shake.

What does the body want to do with depress-ion when the mind gets out of the way?

If someone was literally on top of you, holding you down and making it difficult to breath, how might your body instantly react?

You might want to push them off, and yell or scream for them to get the $*@#% off of you!

When our body pushes in that way, our arms go forward and our shoulders go back. Our chest pushes out and forward and, once it we have freed ourselves, our arms do not just naturally fall back to our sides - they fall outward, like wings.

This reaction opens up our chest area (the location of our heart chakra), and the scream is actually the physical release of energy we need to empower ourselves back into movement.

Once we are open - to that new perspective - it becomes more possible to edit what felt like a very real story.

When you feel called to shift the energy and change the story, ask yourself, "What is my body ready to let go of today? What does it need to welcome in its place, and how would it naturally react if it were someone other than myself creating this sensation?"

A Grounded Place to Practice...

Pause and take a moment to reflect on what came up for you as you were reading this. The insights that surface during journaling and reflection often need a grounded space to settle.

If you are taking your first steps or feel called to a deeper dive and need a bit of extra support to ground yourself in this practice, I invite you to connect for an Initial Consultation. This opening conversation offers an optional safe space to connect and map out the first steps toward a deeply connected and embodied life.

Welcome to the next steps of your journey...