My adult brain understands this. But my body tells a different story. Every time I try to go beyond the walls of protection I have built inside, no matter how much I know what I want and who I am, my body sounding the alarm: this is not safe?

 

As very young children, our light moved through our bodies uninterrupted. We existed as one reality, with a beautiful coherence between our soul, our feelings, our thoughts, our words, and our actions. One us. We had a reverence for this life-force as it guided us creatively through each moment, we were whole. As we grew up, it became more important to manage our light and control how it came out to keep the love and attention of the people we needed to feel safe with and feel like we belonged. For the child, those primary people were the givers of life, and without a secure connection with them, we felt we might die. Bit by bit, layer by layer, we constructed our definition of love based on the kind of attention we received. We also built our concept of "self" based on how we adapted to our environment. And our voice, the instrument we use to express our divine light, was shaped by both. It is why our body sounds the alarm every time we try to move past the walls we have built. Our body is trying to protect us from a threat while we are trying to actualize our soul.

 

We know now with epigenetics that we can rewire the nervous system to know it is safe and loved. We can restore an uninterrupted full-body flow of our life-force by practicing radical reverence for the light that animates us. We can do this by giving it the quality of attention and love we always wanted from others, the authentic and compassionate connection our younger self has craved and needs to heal.

 

Today, see if you can remember how you used to speak, dance, play, paint, scream, breathe, and sing your divine light before fear and shame set in. This is your life's work, your soul's highest calling, to restore this one reality of YOU within your body. Whether the influences are coming from the people in your life right now or coming from the “people” in your body from the past, you can listen in with a different lens. So, what can you do today to sound out your innermost light, independent of the opinions of others?