SourcePoint Perspective on Embodiment
Embodiment. The word is everywhere these days in worlds of healing trauma, movement practices, meditation practice, energy work; it appears in book titles, conference titles and advertisements. What does it mean, especially in relation to SourcePoint Therapy®?
In SourcePoint we say that when we are talking about the physical body, we are also referring to the energy field of the individual, and when we are talking about the energy field of the individual we are including the physical body as energy in that field. We are not making a distinction between the “energy body” and the “physical body.” The body is energy. The body is consciousness. Consciousness manifests as body. Body is energy. You are energy. That was the original title of my book The Vibrant Life.
You Are Energy. I still prefer that title. The publishers changed it. So what cuts us off from this body of energy and consciousness and the infinite complex systems of bone and blood and muscle and nerves and neurons and cells that arises from that energy and consciousness? Our concepts. “I want to be more in my body.” What that takes is primarily body awareness, bringing our attention to the body. Spending time with our breath, while feeling that breath in every part of the body. The meditation from Chapter 6 of the SourcePoint book –The Inner Scan– can be very helpful with that.
One night recently I awoke in the deep night with the midline pulsing in me. That’s the energetic structure at the heart of the body, the line that goes from the Transformation Point above the head to the Grounding Point below the body.
I often meditate with this line, visualizing it as a golden line extending through the body, on the coronal plane, in front of the spine. I bring my attention to it when I am feeling scattered, or disoriented, or “wavy.” It’s very grounding. It’s a way of “returning to my center.” People talk a lot about grounding yourself, but what are you grounding in? Here, with the midline, you are grounding in the information of your fundamental nature, the BluePrint of health for the human being, Order, Balance, Harmony and Flow. Those energies that we are. That this body is. The exquisite structure of light, energy, consciousness that we are, that all the systems of the body are manifestations of.
That night it was different, however. More than ever before I wasn’t visualizing that line, I was feeling it. My awareness was deep in my body, pulsing with the line, being the line, not separate from the line. From the midline emerged the lines connecting to the Diamond Points. Then the Stick Figure. The awareness of being that structure, not outside of it observing it continued. For some time. And the word arose in my consciousness: Embodiment.
In that process I discovered this also: you can go “out” to encounter the vast spaciousness of this universe we dwell in, or, you can go “in” and discover that vast universe. Embodiment perhaps ultimately has to do with that distinction between in the body and out of the body dissolving.
That said, I also find that movement of the body, and awareness of the body while moving is essential to work with. Zen masters have said forever, when walking just walk. What does it mean to “just” walk? To feel your foot on the ground, and not be aware of it as “your” foot on “the ground?” Just the walking, the motion, the swing of the arms, the breath, the sky, the earth, the feel of it all, without naming any of it?
Energy work works because mind and body are not two, because energy and body are not two. Because you and your body are not two. Because you as your body are no other than the vast energy of Source.
