You Are the Temple
Imagine living your life without your body…
No feet to carry you forward
No mouth to be able to communicate, laugh, or smile
No eyes to be able to see the beauty
No hands to be able to hold or create
No ears to be able to listen to music
No way to feel emotions
No individual being for your soul to express through
Your body is here to enable you to experience this physical realm. Your body is the Temple. The bridge between the worlds. As within, so without. How we experience and treat our inner Temples is reflected in how we experience and treat the Temple we call Earth.
You are an energetic being experiencing a human vessel. When you devote your Self to this experience, we serve our vessel as the temple that it is.
The Physical Body
The physical body is the body most of the world is concerned with - the body that all of us can see in this physical world.
How do you nourish your physical temple? The things you consume and the way you move your body all contribute to the vibrational frequency that you embody. When you pay attention to the way certain things make your body feel, you develop communication with your body and how to make it feel the best. Which foods make your body feel the best? We all have a different experience, and you are the one that knows your body the best. Whether you are a strict vegan, a McDonald’s frequent, or an Intuitive Eater, I invite you to bring awareness and compassion to your choices and your actions.
How do you adorn your temple? What clothes do you wear?
In what ways does your physical body like to move? Does it like to be danced? Or walked? Or maybe going to the gym and lifting weights really amps you up. How does it feel when you do listen to those little voices that are asking you to get up and move?
The Emotional Body
Your body has an intelligence that comes before the mind. Your body communicates with you through emotions - telling you when something expands your energy (“good” emotions) or contracts your energy (“bad” emotions). All of these emotions are the energy moving through your field (emotion = energy in motion) and integrating with your base energy. The emotions are there to support you, help you, and give you information about what you are experiencing. These emotions are not you, they are just passing through you to be felt. All emotions have a short life span if we allow ourselves to feel it and let it go. Sometimes we can get caught in the emotions and they take the driver’s seat of our consciousness. It can be helpful to name the emotion for what it is, rather than continue the thoughts of the emotion itself.
Instead of saying “I am angry”, you can say “I feel anger.”
Can you feel the difference of those two statements in your body?
Stay compassionate and honest with what your feeling is key to be able to have a clear and coherent flow of energy in your body and in your life.
What other ways can you nourish your emotional body?
The Mental Body
When we are working with the mental body, we are dancing with the mind. One of the most prominent factors in this is your belief system. Your belief system is a set of thoughts that are engrained into your programming which shape how you show up in the world and how you perceive the world around you. There is so much more happening in the world around you than what you are able to process at a time, so the mental body filters through the input to make it digestible for your experience.
Your mental body works closely with your emotional body. Depending on past experiences, a certain emotion can bring forth thoughts which are the output of what your consciousness is perceiving. When we have strong emotions and strong thought patterns that arise with them, it can be easy to get lost in that story. As you bring your conscious awareness, you can ask yourself, “What is present for me right now?” “What am I thinking?” “Are these thought true?” “What am I feeling?”
The way you talk to yourself and the lens which you view the world is your mental body landscape - what nourishes your mental body?
The Spiritual Body
The spiritual body lives beyond this realm. When we are connected to the Oneness of everything, we connect through our spiritual body. You can think of this body as your quantum body that can transcend time, space, and any other limitation of this world. When you deepen your relationship with your spiritual body, you are more able to shift your experience of your other bodies. However, when people only focus on their spiritual body, they will find it harder to ground their work into the physical world. This is why it’s important to work in harmony with all bodies to create the most coherent, optimal flow of energy for your experience of life to unfold.
What ways do you connect to Spirit and nourish your spiritual body?
The Energetic Body
Your energetic body extends and perceives beyond the physical, mental, and emotional body. The energetic body includes your essence, your soul, and your experience of life beyond the physical view of it. Sometimes referred to the bliss body, it is the body beyond the limitations we place on ourselves with physical form, stories, and limiting beliefs. By becoming aware of this body, you are able to bring deeper presence and awareness into each moment, and begin to see the world beyond the perception of the individual self or “ego”.
How do you currently nourish your energetic body? What ways could you bring more awareness to this energetic body?
As with everything in life, your bodies are deeply interconnected to one another. They each exist because of the others. Without the spiritual body, there is no life. Without the physical body, there is no vessel to be experienced through. Without the mental body, there is no conscious awareness of an experience. Without the emotional body, there is no depth to the experience. Without the energetic body, we are disconnected from the essence that I AM.
Stay tuned for deeper dives into embodiment practices to use for each body.