TOUCH

Take a moment to just breathe.  Gently close your eyes, breathe easy and notice how your breath interacts with your body.  Pay attention to its coming and going without forcing it to be any certain way.  Just notice how it IS.  Notice that you have a body.  After settling into your breath for a few minutes, slowly place one hand on any part of your body that seems to want to be touched – perhaps there is a small ache or dull pain or itch or roughness.  Do this before reading on! 

When we touch our body, we are giving it a message that we hear what it is trying to tell us.  Our brains certainly give us a lot of information and we are used to listening to what we THINK.  But our bodies have a different sort of wisdom… a wisdom that is a bit more subtle than the stories our brains tell us.  Can you explore a bit about what kind of wisdom your body has to share with you when you slow down and pay attention to it right now. 

If there is a place in your body that is stressed or tired or achy or painful, place your hand there.  Breathe softly and just notice what you notice.  Now imagine that you are comforting a child who has a fear or an ache of some sort.  What might you do with your hand for that child?  Maybe you gently pat the place that hurts.  Maybe you softly rub it.  Maybe you rock just a bit.  Maybe you soothe it by humming to it softly.

Just experiment with this idea of asking your body for its wisdom and then listening to what it is telling you.  Place a hand there, soothe yourself.  Tune into the messages that our bodies are sending us all the time. 

HOW IT IS NOW

~Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

In every moment, doors appear—

not literal, of course, with knobs and locks,

but metaphoric, yes, with thresholds and casings

and simple invitations I feel

in my body, an architecture of possibility.

I didn’t used to notice them.

Was it because they weren’t there,

or because I simply had not yet learned

to see them? Now I marvel

at how omnipresent they are,

and all they ask of me is that I choose

to step through them or not

.I recognize them more in my body

than with my mind. As if the body

has spent decades learning, 

oh, this is whatit feels like when a door appears.

As if the mind is at last learning to say

yes, body, I believe you. Now I trust

that I can change everything with

just one step across that invisible

threshold. Or not. Now I know

once I take that step, I can’t return

to the place I had been.

And there will always be

another door.

Another door.

Another door.