The human experience can’t happen outside a human body. That’s the whole beauty of it, that is how we connect and become part of this amazing world. So, are you welcoming what your body is trying to tell you?

     - So, ma'am, what do you do?

     - I am a Systemic Change Consultant.

     - Oh, nice…

     - You have no idea what that is, do you?

     - No (shrugging and laughing).

That’s how a normal day in my life used to sound like whenever I met a new person. Now, I would like to be able to tell you that my next line was concise and brilliant and that the dialogue continued in my favor but that would just not be the case. My own anxiety and the person’s confusion would continue to grow exponentially as the conversation progressed, until that moment in time when my brain would go blank and I’d remember to say what one of my teachers told me to say: “You need to experience it and you’ll get it in a second”. Now, I don’t know how you experience the world around you and what your communication needs are, but for me that was one frustrating conversation that kept happening over and over again.

At that point, my fate was sealed. Having been a communication strategist for a decade I refused to believe that I had been able to explain to my audiences benefits of products that I hadn’t even tried but I couldn’t talk to them about something so simple and real that anybody could relate to if given the chance.

So, I started wondering, why is it that it’s so difficult for me and my colleagues to explain such a natural phenomenon – what happens in a systemic constellation? And I realized that any valuable mechanism needs to be anchored in something solid, in something real. That’s where I believe our problem lies. As good as we are at explaining mechanisms, we need to anchor them in things like “the knowing in your body”, “the images of the soul” or “generational trauma”, things that make no more sense in the Western World than Peter Pan or men walking on water.

There seems to be a powerful disconnect here between mind and body, to the point where what we feel in our bodies is many times discredited, if even acknowledged. How many times did you have a gut feeling about something and chased it off like “Argh…I can’t make decisions just based on a feeling”. And now think how many times you ended up saying “Damn it, I should have known”. But that’s the thing, you did know! When you got in that car although something inside you was resisting it and you got into an accident, you knew! When you decided to leave home one day without taking your wallet when your body was pushing you not to and you didn’t have money for that great opportunity, you knew! When you heard the phone and the first image in your head was of your husband calling, only to hear his voice on the voice machine a few seconds later, you knew!

The human experience can’t happen outside a human body. That’s the whole beauty of it, that is how we connect and become part of this amazing world – through our bodies. Yesterday I was walking on a street in my neighborhood and was invited in by this gorgeous white rose. To me, it was spectacular. The petals were like white velvet, it smelled like spring and softness and beauty. I touched it so gently and it felt like a warm delicate breeze in my hand. I left there filled with joy and gratitude for being able to feel all of that. I carried that feeling with me throughout the day and allowed it to create even more beautiful experiences before nightfall.

But let’s leave the body behind and just try to use our minds to construct a mental flower and please, give it your best shot, make it beautiful. There is only one rule, don’t use any experiences you’ve gathered through your senses, no images, no smells, no sensations, nothing. And let’s see what happens. Let’s see how far you can go, if you can even take a step in that direction. And while you are at it, please imagine joy, suffering and love too.

You see, after years and years of using it as my one and only ally, I started seeing that the mind is a very powerful processor, not a God. What it seems to be doing is that it takes information from all sorts of sources, it compiles it, analyzes it and then comes up with an answer for our questions. But it doesn’t seem to actually produce any source information. So where does that come from if not from our bodies, from the earth we walk on and the air we breathe? This world seems to be packed with essential information needed for our minds to process in order to help us grow and achieve our goals. But that only becomes available if we value it, if we welcome it out in the open and look at it with honesty and without judgement. This is at the core of systemic work, the bridging of the knowing in the body with the understanding abilities of the mind in a way that allows each person to fall in alignment with their own essence or ideal life path.

So, are you welcoming what your body is trying to tell you or are you just trapped in a mental experience of life, without truly living it?

And if that’s the case, then how on Earth do you plan to reach your full potential?  

Photo by Saksham Gangwar on Unsplash