Hang on to Your Body!

As anyone who sticks with Network Spinal Analysis (NSA)knows, transformation or Real Change can and does happen. And no matter what, when the time comes for you to choose a new behavior, or when the structures in your spine that have sustained your previous consciousness state shift, there is a moment of plain and simple fear. Of what? Why, the unknown of course! That moment is when change butts up against one of our primary needs as human creatures: certainty. Even if what has been has been painful and awful, it is familiar and thus soothing on some level.

Letting go always requires a connection with something else, something “more certain,” if you will. Just like the rock climber ensures she has at least a toe or finger hold secured before reaching for the next ledge, we need to cultivate some degree of confidence in our own capacity to survive and thrive in a changing environment, even if that environment is purely internal, and especially if it is external.

One of the primary tenets of NSA holds that the body is an inherently safe place, but why? Unlike the mind, our bodies are rooted in the present moment. And the present moment is all that really exists. The past and the future, our hopes and fears, these are all creations of our mind, and untethered to our bodies, our minds are capable of traveling thousands of miles and hundreds of weeks forward or back in the blink of an eye. Connecting with our bodies requires a slowing down of our minds, and brings us inexorably into what is, right now, in the present moment.

Focusing on the now, and on the aliveness in our bodies, provides the opportunity to let go of all the stories of possible outcome (and therefore all the fears). And learning to hang on to your body is both a conscious choice as well as an unconscious habit. In order to feel truly safe, our bodies must have the experience, the reassurance, and the habituation of connecting to the present moment and finding ease there. What’s perhaps ironic and certainly miraculous is that in connecting with our bodies, with finite reality, we are also able to connect with the infinite, with the Beingness that we truly are.