The First Lesson - Breathe

Friedrich Nietzche is credited with saying, "There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophies".  In the past few years of studying Healing Touch www.healingtouchinternational.org and continuing in my work as a pastor and Spiritual Director, I have come to understand a little better the deep profoundness of this statement.

So as this journey continues I continue to find new ways of exploring this mindfulness.  And I continue to find how much more I can learn (isn't that just the way it goes). 

I have been teaching a class recently on listening to our bodies and how that can shape the way we live into who we are created to be.  Each of us with different visions of our future, different gifts and passions and yet so intimately connected to each other and the world around us.  It has been fascinating to learn how each different person grows and changes as they learn to listen to their own intuition and physical responses.

I am still learning to listen and interpret my own responses - it is sometimes harder to see what it right in front of you.  For over a decade, I have been preaching and leading worship services in Christian communities. I love Public Speaking.  I do not love preparing.  Every week that I work on a "sermon" I literally make myself sick.  My body starts to shut down, I get really tired stressed out, for many years I would get migraines.  And yet I totally feel called to the work.

What I have found is that I have not been called to the box/framework of the traditional preaching system.  Let me teach a class and I get really excited.  Why is that that I just can't get my mind in the framework when I prepare a sermon?  Because I am so connected to expectations.  There are some weeks that I can let it go and just be me - those weeks ROCK.  However, and this is not an excuse but a realization, I am human and until I can learn how to be present in who I am created to be (in the image of God) all the time listening to my inner spirit, connected to where God leads me, then my body will step in and cramp up and make me feel like I am physically sitting in a tiny box with very little oxygen.

So my lesson on listening to my body today is breathe - which really is the first lesson in so many body practices isn't it.  Just breathe.

P.S. - a few extra reminders
"I am fearfully and wonderfully made" - Psalm 139:14
"In the image of God"  - Genesis 1:27