Aliveness: Finding Presence through our Bodies, Finding Love through our Presence

"Spirit lives in you; it lives within your body, in every cell. You can touch the great Spirit by touching your aliveness." – Brooke Medicine Eagle.

 How do we touch on our aliveness? I ask myself this question often. Embodied presence is aliveness. It means to be in our bodies, to feel our cells and tissue, to directly experience our senses, to be in the present moment, and to be one with our breath and our heartbeat. 

This morning the sun finally showed up in Basel, Switzerland. I moved through a sequence of chakra breathing, shaking, and dancing and honored the body with a dip into the icy cold water of the Rhine. Aside from the sun, I felt a deep connection to the Earth, the water's flowing coldness on my skin, and the tingling sensations beating with my heart. I felt Spirit alive within my being. I felt my Soul connect with Ochun, the goddess of the water. I felt alive.

Being in my body does not always prove to be blissful. The body is also the home of pain, trauma, heartbreak, illness, and dis-ease. It can be rather uncomfortable to be embodied at times. But it is never dead. It is always alive, growing, changing, transforming, and regenerating. The body has endless information; it is the gateway to awareness and the bridge to consciousness. It is not a question of pleasure or ecstasy alone, nor of how we want to move through our lives. Do we want to exist, or do we want to LIVE? Do we want to be in our bodies – know, trust, listen, and allow – or do we want to live fearful of what might be revealed if we awaken to our embodied experience? It takes courage to LIVE in our BODIES and presence to make contact with our world and be alive for our adventures.