Physical Rigors of Spiritual Awakening

Because we live in such a mind-centric society, people seem to think that awakening or enlightenment is some kind of dramatic shift in thinking…which it is. When you “get it,” you don’t think the same way about life ever again. But awakening doesn’t stop there. It will go as far as you’re willing to embrace it, and it’ll go as far as your soul’s plan intends it to go. The purpose of this blog is to help those come to terms with the full embodied awakening. Yogis have long understood the value of the body (hence the physical practices of yoga). Because awakening comes to all parts of us. Just as you learn that we are all interconnected, all of you–heart, body, mind, and soul, is interconnected. Subsequently, all parts have to wake up, but they often need different things to assist in the process.

The Body Transforms, Holding on Brings Intense Pain

Your awakened body is shifting up to the vibration of your light body. It is the highest frequency that you can hold while still being in a body on this planet. Others will shift in different ways, but if your body is awakening, you are suddenly beset with a whole new array of demands.

• Food. Even if you’ve been a healthy eater, your food demands are likely to shift. Some shifts will be temporary as you move through awakening and come to whatever energetic vibration you need to come to. Others will be permanent. I’ve talked a little bit about awakening and food before, but the long and short of it is you’re going to have to listen very closely to what your body wants to eat and be willing to make changes.
• Exercise and movement. Your body also wants to be exercised in different ways. Achieving an image isn’t interesting to your body. Finding movements that allow the energy to flow freely during your shift are really helpful.
• Phantom pains. Phantom pains are often where your energetic and physical bodies are merging and aren’t in alignment. You’ll have to learn how to move those areas with mindfulness. Healing touch and massage can be helpful to clearing the blockages to allow your spirit and body to continue to integrate.

Not Quite Living in Your Body

During the transition to an awakened body, you may feel divorced from your body. Depending on how badly it has been treated, you could feel absolutely terrible. I am speaking somewhat from experience. While I haven’t treated my body badly, I got into some places where I didn’t have the energetic support that I needed. It was arduous just to get myself up and off the floor. Part of this is normal. A lot of your energy is diverted from the outer world to the inner world during this process. You’re being re-made inside. You’re rediscovering yourself and burning down all the false images and ideas about yourself. The other part for me was that I was not yet fully able to understand just how different my body’s needs were.

Going to Sleep at the Wheel

Sleep is an interesting topic because you’ll find yourself going through periods of intense energy and periods of time when you have no energy at all. There’s a lot of ways to cut this one up. In some instances, you’re moving through such darkness or shift in vibration that all your energetic focus has to be on clearing the issues out of you. So you may end up sleeping a lot. You may also consider where you can bring community or a teacher in to support you. You don’t have to do this alone.

Sleep can also be a way of shutting down from the change that is going through you. Most likely, the awakening energy will bring up issues to be dealt with and healed. A lot of times sleep can be a form avoidance of that work. This is really unhealthy, and it can stop your awakening. Getting stuck in awakening is a horribly painful process because you feel caught between two worlds, stagnant, and stuck. Depending on what’s going on, you can find yourself getting despondent, scared, and hopeless. Everything stops working in your life. By avoiding the issue, you can get disconnected from the divine energy that’s pumping through you. That disconnection, you’ll now know, is one of the worst things that can happen to us. In many ways, that’s what’s gone on in the world for millenia and that’s why there has been so much death and misery.

You’ll have to continue to find your courage to face the uncomfortableness of awakening. It is temporary, and it is worth it.

High Energy Time Periods

On the flip side, some of you will have so much energy coursing through you that you can’t sleep to save your life. But you probably won’t want to do much while being awake. You may end up sitting on your couch just being wide awake and present to the moment. It’s not a bad thing, but the ego still in you may be saying, “Why can’t I go to sleep?” or “Shouldn’t I be doing something?” It’s okay. It’ll pass. But you need to allow the energy to move without bottling it up in activities that you “think” you should be doing. Allow what your body needs to arise in your conscious mind, and then do it.

Since the embodied awakening involves everything, learning how to move energy through your whole system can help through these periods of time. There are psychic schools that can teach you some simple techniques (which I teach as well) about grounding, clearing, and connecting to the divine light. Ultimately, that energy is waking everything up and clearing out all the blockages. It’s telling your body an old story–it’s telling your body the story of who it really is. It’s helping you to remember what got forgotten as you grew up into a world full of fear and hate. So it’s okay if you feel like a city power station for awhile. It’ll subside as you engage with it and allow it.

You’ll Be Okay

Above all else, please remember that you’ll be okay. Don’t hide from this process or avoid it. Make time to explore it. Yoga, conscious dance, and mindful sexuality are some ways to engage with your body so that it “understands” on its own terms. Always remember that the body learns very differently than the mind. Learning a concept like “I’m in awakening” doesn’t mean anything to the body. It has to experience it to know it. So where you allow the experiences to take hold, the intelligence of your body is learning. As it comes to understand how to move with this awakened awareness, you’ll find yourself making very different intellectual choices about what to eat, how to exercise, who to have sex with, and other body-related issues. It will be rather “enlightening” to say the least. So in all this, please, please remember to listen to your body.