Just the other day I was asked to do an action stunt whilst shooting a movie – they wanted me to jump off a roof. Of course, everything was done to be safe. But what did I do?
I used to push myself and my body really hard all my life, living in the belief that “I am strong, I can do that, and I’ll make it without any help.” Trying to show how independent I was as a woman, somehow trying to prove that “I can do it!”
My body was quite hard, battle-scarred, like a warrior’s body. It had survived a life of numerous car, motorcycle, and sports accidents and injuries. All because I’ve always wanted to be that little step ahead, to be seen as the woman who can do it all… independent, not needing anyone, being respected because I could handle anything.
As I know today, this is a condition many women have been trapped in for their whole lives.
A serious car accident in 2007, in which I nearly died, was a huge turning point for me. It offered me a chance to make changes to my life and attitudes – to start feeling into my body and looking after it with care and love. I opened up to me, which finally brought me to Universal Medicine in 2011. For over four years now I have been studying The Way of The Livingness, which has supported me to increase my awareness a lot.
I learned to stop acting from my mind and I began treating my body with respect, nurturing it with what it needs, instead of what brings the greatest pleasure. I was gently reminded of the fact that my body is the greatest gift I have.
I explored the possibility that my body knows everything (!) – when a rest is needed, which food it needs, which exercise, how often to go for a walk and how to walk more gently. How it senses the world and navigates me through life like a compass, through every mood that others are in and are communicating with.
Every need it has, and all the love I have in me, my body expresses with beauty and grace – far beyond any demands or expectations. In short, it is my pure and solid partner.
I learned to shift my behaviors from choosing what was cool to have, fancy to be, or yummy to eat, into: feel first what to eat, which words are truly needed to say, and what I am really to do, and that being connected with my body is the real deal!
So, after having stopped making obvious destructive choices such as motorcycling, heavy partying and pushing my body hard, which only led to my body being in pain, I started being more caring and self-loving. With this, more hidden choices of self-abuse showed up… like eating food that did not agree with me, or too much food, or not resting when my body was tired etc.
So I started working on this and deepening my awareness of what this sensitive vehicle really needs. But still, when I was asked the other day at work to do the stunt, I found myself crossing that border again. I pushed my body again very hard to get the result that was needed. And so – I jumped.
Everyone was happy that they got good pictures and I had ‘fun’ doing it. But what had truly happened?
I was shocked when I took a rest to feel how my body felt. I was shocked by how I am automatically used to abusing my body instead of treating it with love: how deeply conditioned I am to the “I can do it” attitude. It came in again in seconds!
And the need to get the recognition for having it done ‘right’ – something that brought me back to my childhood years when I started to fulfil what was needed in order to get recognition or acceptance for who I am by what I do! A lifetime of feeling I have to prove that I am good and worth it, that I can do it, that people can rely on me. I would have done anything.
After that roof-jump, I could feel how much my body did hurt and that I needed to rest for days. It took me a week to be able to walk gently again because every part of my body was in pain. I then started to question very deeply: why did I fall back into “I can do it”? Why do I put outside demands in front of respecting me? Why do I think I am not enough being me?
I got to the point that I recognised that whenever I do something that is not truly felt to be right from my body – I am abusing myself. There is no difference whether it is jumping from a roof or talking to someone to ‘be nice’ when I truly do not feel like talking: they are both against the truth of my body, they both need a push to go there. One may seem more dramatic than the other, but there is no difference – they both feel horrible afterwards.
Understanding this is my key to truly ask and feel the body first – and listen to the answer on the inside. To not put other people’s demands, or my own beliefs of how I think that I have to be, ahead of how I truly feel to act. This uncovered the evil held under the umbrella of ‘making it right’ for me. The only truthful ‘making it right’ is to feel first and let love be the fuel that runs my engine. No more, or less.
To me Serge Benhayon made the step of speaking up for true love, an inconvenient way to talk or express sometimes. Not everyone likes to hear words of truth and love because it’s confronting to what is seen as normal.
Even though there is a lot of illusion around what is normal, there is a way of reconfiguring the ‘normal’ to stop the constant abuse we are all in. The abuse happens anytime we are not truly aware of ourselves and others. It happens anytime we are not living the true love we are. Nowhere else outside of Universal Medicine was I ever reflected this truth before, to which my inner heart responds without doubt.
By Christina Hecke, Actress, Berlin, Germany
Further Reading:
Your Body The Truth
Abuse – My Understanding So Far
Listening To My Body And Honouring My feelings
The Truth about Serge Benhayon 
Trying to ‘prove’ ourselves to others or ourselves is to disconnect to the beauty and preciousness that we already are.
This statement made me ponder to how far I had come in my life, “I learned to stop acting from my mind and I began treating my body with respect, nurturing it with what it needs instead of what brings the greatest pleasure”. It is far from perfect but boy is it so much better to how I used to treat my body. And as we develop that relationship with the body, that love becomes stronger, that we sense more and more what serves and what doesn’t it.
The beauty about this is that we discover more and more about you and this partnership is forever developing, and in that we are filled with true joy, something I hadn’t experienced in the past, when pleasure ruled. Living our lives from this is so much fuller, than searching outside ourselves.
How amazing it would be if each and everyone of us knew this, and lived this, ‘I explored the possibility that my body knows everything (!) – when a rest is needed, which food it needs, which exercise, how often to go for a walk and how to walk more gently.’
Then we wouldn’t project or blame others about our disregards to everyone else, we would take full responsibility of how and the way we lived.
‘I’ve always wanted to be that little step ahead, to be seen as the woman who can do it all… independent, not needing anyone, being respected because I could handle anything’. What is that respect laced with when it is so hard won in personal injury and what is it confirming in the world? We have so normalised hardness and a fierce independence that we no longer consciously clock how damaging it is to the individual and their health. I too used to be fiercely independent, wanting to show the world that I could cope, that I wasn’t fragile and vulnerable (weaknesses I thought) but in the process was just incredibly miserable underneath as I was constantly making compromises and negating the truth of how I was really feeling.
Are we not judging our-selves for recognition or acceptance as we must be thinking lesser of our-selves?
There is a simple learning that I take from this article which is that any time I dismiss, override and/or ignore communication from my body I am being self-abusive. My body is my greatest barometer and guide, learning to heed its messages is wise.
The Way of The Livingness, does support people to become more aware of their surroundings and in that awareness as it grows it’s like a veil gets lifted from our eyes and we see the world as it really is warts and all rather than what we just want to see and shove the bits we don’t want to see under the carpet and pretend they’re not there.
There are so many ways that we can override what the body is saying and end up being abusive towards ourselves…be this by jumping off a roof, pushing ourselves to exercise when the body is not up for it, keeping ourselves up when we are tired and need to sleep, eating more than our body needs to, not wearing warm enough clothes and the list goes on…when we really start exploring this it gets interesting as we begin to realise all the obvious but then also the not so obvious ways we disregard and disrespect ourselves.
Going against what the body feels at the time is such a revealing thing – it really does show us what does not work. And applying the opposite ie listening to the body and heeding its messages, is actually very difficult to do when you allow the mind and thoughts to take over. And yet, who is more intelligent – the mind or the body? To me the real intelligence comes from the body as it never compromises anything.
Going against my body is a habit that is ill-considered and irresponsible. And our bodies are showing the signs. We are getting less and less well as our bodies have to show more and more clearly our deviance from basic standards of care, respect and community for ourselves and others.
The more we choose to honour and respect our bodies, the more we are reflecting this way of living to other people, ‘I started being more caring and self-loving. With this, more hidden choices of self-abuse showed up… like eating food that did not agree with me, or too much food, or not resting when my body was tired etc.’
The wisdom does come from our bodies, which is why it is key to be connected with them, ‘ feel first what to eat, which words are truly needed to say, and what I am really to do, and that being connected with my body is the real deal!’
Christina – what a gorgeous and honest blog to write and share. And you are correct in saying that many of us as women can relate to what you have wirtten in terms of the pushing ourselves and proving independence etc. Not that I have jumped off a roof, but there are many other ways I have unnecessarily challenged my body and pushed myself and yet when I let myself feel what it feels litke, it makes me want to not feel the pain and the damage done.
Yes, many of us can relate with, that is how I used to live my life, ‘I’ve always wanted to be that little step ahead, to be seen as the woman who can do it all… independent, not needing anyone, being respected because I could handle anything.’
But really living in the above way, is a form of self abuse. We are ignoring the body’s wisdom and many loving messages it constantly impulses us with, to present a false, and protected front.
‘There is no difference whether it is jumping from a roof or talking to someone to ‘be nice’ when I truly do not feel like talking: they are both against the truth of my body, they both need a push to go there.’ This is so true and great to clock all the areas I do push myself and then wonder why I am tired, grumpy, resentful etc.
When we negate the truth of what we feel we are deeply compromising ourselves – that compromise is the same whether we are jumping off a roof or saying yes to a cup of tea when we really mean no. The effect is the same as both are eroding at our sense of empowerment and self worth.
Reading this article I can feel how in the past I would rather please someone and do something ‘right’ than honour myself and my body. That is changing now and the more I listen to my body the more there are things that I simply would not do because they hurt and I do not want to put my body through that.
Learning to treat the body with the love and respect it deserves is life changing, ‘I was gently reminded of the fact that my body is the greatest gift I have.’
Many people are living in abuse under a disguise of ‘doing it right’ in fact I would say many in society fall into this category.
Superbly said LE – and this form of abuse is very ‘difficult’ to see when we are caught in the paradigm of doing things the ‘right’ way.
Many people are living in a way to prove their worth, ‘A lifetime of feeling I have to prove that I am good and worth it, that I can do it, that people can rely on me. ‘
What I now understand from knowing Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine is how evil ‘nice’ is.
Being ‘nice’ is so ingrained in our society it masks or puts a layer over the truth. And if we stop we can feel when someone is being ‘nice’ and it does feel horrible because it is so false and far away from what can truly be felt.
The moment we try to do something ‘right’, we have forsaken what is true. There is no ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ in our innerheart; there is only love and its expression or there is the withholding of it.
This was important for me to read ‘I got to the point that I recognised that whenever I do something that is not truly felt to be right from my body – I am abusing myself. There is no difference whether it is jumping from a roof or talking to someone to ‘be nice’ when I truly do not feel like talking: they are both against the truth of my body’ as over the last few days I have been reflecting on how much I push my body or override what I am feeling in order to get things done.
Christina I could identify with a lot of what you write here, and I am sure thousands of others have similar experiences, I was particularly involved with sport at a high level and would happily compromise my body to defend or get a goal, the only thing on anyone’s mind was the winning, and the body heals after, only each time it takes longer to heal, and in the end I gave up most of my sports because my body could no longer handle the constant abuse I was putting it under.
My body is one of my best friends and a consistent trustworthy and faithful companion and guide.
I love what you have shared here Andrew – I am better at saying this too now, however, I used to think the body was a nuisance and something that just did not want to cooperate with what my mind wanted it to do. Thankfully with self care and self love which I have developped over time, this has changed and I am far more appreciative of the body.
There are so many things we “can” do – ultimately we can push our human bodies to extremism – but is it loving for us to do them? Now that is another question altogether.
I know I have abused my body in many ways in the past so I could fit myself into a ‘picture’, so crazy how I would override my body’s natural way of being so I could be recognised and accepted.
Someone once shared with me that they nearly died when they were trying to do something to get attention/recognition and your blog reminded of this person’s experience. This makes me realise, when we move disconnected to our body it could potentially be very dangerous.
“And so – I jumped.” So often we jump through the hoop to seek recognition of ‘I can do it’ and then feel the consequences of hardening and self-abuse in our body.
The more we refine our movements the bigger the effect is on our body when we do not take care of our body well.
It feels extraordinary to say that not everyone wants to hear the truth or to feel the love that brings, and yet that is our normal. There is a sense that we would like to be able to float through life, comfortable and unchallenged but that is not the way the world works.. and its the truth that stops us gliding into a possible or even inevitable car crash (be that in our relationships or with our health etc) and better now than hitting the proverbial wall.
A great reminder of how whenever we compromise our body we are in fact abusing ourselves, and how aware we need to be in order to clock these patterns of behaviour that we have and how simple it is to make a more loving choice, rather than constantly get caught by old patterns of behaviour which in turn wrecks our body.
Doing it right is not doing it true and all too often is ‘doing it the way it suits another person’.
“To not put other people’s demands, or my own beliefs of how I think that I have to be, ahead of how I truly feel to act. ” so very true and in my experience the only reason I do that, or did that, is to be liked in that situation. It actually all came back to me so by setting the foundation of truth we build that strength inside to make the quality we feel more important than anything else.
I notice that there are many levels of abuse. Refining the way I live and calling out abuse I was allowing brings up other , what looks smaller levels of abuse, so I feel it is just unfolding to live more and more close to the love I am. And until we do not claim in full to live our soul through our body we have abuse going on.
As we are that love so everything we choose that is different is abuse for the body.
This can come in all of our jobs, for example staying at work until 10/11 pm to finish a deadline that is not that important and completely ignoring the need for rest and rejuvenation of the body; eating while doing work or not even showing in the morning because we want to be on time or early. Or the opposite, leaving work too early and creating for ourselves a pile to get back to in the morning and feeling overwhelmed, taking too many breaks and then stressing over the fact that we don’t have enough time in the day to complete all of our work. When we act in a lack of consideration to what is needed, we are in affect abusing ourselves because we are the ones who will suffer the consequences after.
The most loving thing we can do is say no to a way where we dismiss and abuse our bodies and being. I have loved working on this and with a few years under my belt I can sense that there is a depth to this that is beyond what I had thought was possible. Appreciation has been one the biggest learnings and not taking my body for granted, honouring and listening to what it is communicating.
The choice is always mine. Doing what the world wants or what my body wants. My body is the marker of Truth. Every bit of choice I have said yes to affects me and I can choose to be loving to my body or not. No one is going to take this responsibility for me but me.
This is not easy for most of us to claim because of an investment that if we do not act like everyone we will not be accepted. Our work will drop us and we won’t be used. We won’t earn enough etc and all these worries enter to expose that we invest in the temporal world, our 3rd dimensional existence.
Having no investment to be liked, or the need to be nice, and claiming our full right of multidimensionality, there is no question that life is not about fitting in but it is about Truth. Reflect truth in all that we do, everywhere that Truth has been hidden and bastardized and to shine and brighten up what we all equally know but has been hidden under cobwebs for most. And this choice takes care of everything in life.
I wonder if it was less “I can do it” and more “I have to do it”?
And as you say, the self-abuse Can come in so many ways when we are disconnected from who we truly are.
It is great to find more and more aspects of our hardness and control and letting them go, giving us more and more energy of a type that doesn’t leave us exhausted, unlike the energy derived from tension, stress and stimulants.
Yes we cannot underestimate the effects of us saying no to what we feel. It ‘teaches’ us that what we feel does not matter and it also allows another energy to take over and basically do what it wants with our body once we said yes to it. Which we then feel afterwards and regret.
Whenever there is right or wrong there is abuse – it is as simple as that.
Black and white, right or wrong… such a setup always with winners and losers – no equality, no truth, no evolution.
The image of I can handle everything we construct when doing whatever we are requested to do, independent of the fact that it may have deleterious consequences for us, is a false one, since that abused and hardened body cannot really handle love.
“I got to the point that I recognised that whenever I do something that is not truly felt to be right from my body – I am abusing myself.” A great re-marker even if you know it. We live in a world that is setup to live from the mind hence it is so easily to be caught up in there time and time again… if it does not feel right its worth taking a moment and feeling what needs to change.
Respect for the body is not a chore, but a pathway of living a life of meaning and purpose. Without a body ready to work, we cannot really give it our all.
And it is quite a joyful feeling to being able to give and receive more and more.
An absolute killer question: “Why do I think I am not enough being me?” We can go through life with a pretence confidence, have our chest puffed up, our head up high but our heart shut down and our shoulders curved forward in protection because we always feel like regardless of what we do, where we are at, we are not enough.
There is so much push and pull when we focus on getting things right or wrong. When we come with the purpose of understanding, the steadiness reveals itself.
Beautiful words of wisdom Nattalija, thank you for sharing, I am getting a lot out of this.
It feels very important to call out the abuse that we have normalised and deeply adopted in our ‘normal’ for us to be able to make different choices that are not abusive – which would have to come from and with love. Those ‘I can do it’ and being right and recognised and validated and all that we use as our justification and motivation, they are pretty insidious.
I am struck by your phrase “i was acting from my mind”. Indeed if we only use our recalled knowledge and experience we are just like an actor playing another role, without coming from our innate wisdom and knowing of a whole body intelligence.
You couldn’t ask for a more reliable and honest partner, who is actually great in communication and there literally 24/7 and never leaves you (although you can abandon it) than your body.
We have a long way to go to make what is ‘normal’, or should I say natural for us and our bodies again the normal for everyone so that we can let go of all these abusive behaviors. It starts with one, then a couple and soon there are more and more who reflect this to others and set a new standard of what is normal in treating our bodies respectfully.
‘You’ve made your bed you’d better lie in it’ – this attitude is misplaced and a trick. We can’t help but face natural consequence but there’s no need to whip ourselves. This doesn’t fix anything.
These words are powerful: “to truly ask and feel the body first – and listen to the answer on the inside. To not put other people’s demands, or my own beliefs of how I think that I have to be, ahead of how I truly feel to act.” Absolutely agree Christina. This is life-changing.
It reminds me the roller coster I was in some years ago. It felt like each cell of my body was turned around in the wrong direction. It was the most terrible thing for my body to do.
This blog reminds me how often I compromised myself by reluctantly agreeing to do things just so I can appear reliable. For example, putting my hand up for unexpected overtime so that I appear to be a team player when my body is tired and much younger staff could it. Is it not a stunt but I give my body just as much disregard.
I love this point about the body knowing how to move us. We can either surrender to that, and enjoy the grace and space that comes with it, or override it with how we think we need to move, usually to get somewhere or something. When we move in line with our body’s natural rhythm it feels like everything else in and around us is more aligned to that harmonious state too.
And interestingly, our movements after an initial adjustment become much more effective and our needs are more than fulfilled.
This blog is very apt this morning and just what I needed to read. Doing things to please others has been a long-lived ingrained pattern, and this very morning a situation has come up where I know that if I say yes to what I have been asked to do, I will be compromising myself. I already know what to do and say, so this was a great confirmation.
Don’t you just love that? This is awesome Julie, and we often receive lots of confirmations like these throughout our day but sometimes we miss seeing them because we get too caught up in doing this or that.
This is a great example of how we can so easily discount our body because we want to create a certain image, want to be seen in a certain light, no matter the cost to our physicality.
To be honest about what our body feels is so healing. If we put on a face or pretend, we are just saying to others that it is OK to compromise when we know in our bodies this is not OK. Pretending to be nice is a classic one of us not actually looking at why we feel a bit more shut down – if we do the fake thing then we never have to look at what is behind the fakeness.
We encase ourselves in goodness and what is expected of us and then end up being resentful and feeling very lost as to who runs the show here – the expectations of others or the love within?
Its amazing how far we will push our bodies to not feel the impact of what we are doing to them. But it is equally, in fact even more amazing that when we do start to take care of how we treat ourselves, the level to which we can and do feel, and consequently what we then are prepared to say ‘no’ to because we get to feel the level of abuse that we have previously accepted as being ok.
I am learning to love and care for myself and I am beginning to get the feeling of what being in ‘love with oneself’ actually feels like. Like you Christina, it has taken me many years to begin on honour my body and although I still have a way to go I am appreciating the fact that I am on my way. Thank you for your sharing, and thank you Serge Benhayon for bring truth to this world.
Great to appreciate that we are sensitive that that a new level of care and support for our body can be delved and lived, regardless of how we have treated our bodies in the past. This example is stark in showing how different it felt to go back into a drive of pushing through to get something done or to achieve something. I know this feeling, I used to put on the extra boosters and zoom around to get jobs down, to lift something to keep going when I was tired, over riding how we feel is very unsupportive and the level of exhaustion and the hardness in my body I used to feel from it was debilitating. I see this as I reflect on how my life has changed, since beginning to honour and listen to what this beautiful delicate body requires in way of support and care.
It’s very true, nowhere else outside of Universal Medicine have I ever been reflected true love and honesty. This is what melts my heart, the genuine appreciation I experience, the gorgeous care of practitioners and the ever deepening love of Serge Benhayon. People do not have to be Universal Medicine practitioners, or be associated with the organisation in any way. Of course we all can live with integrity, truth and honesty – but how many of us experience unconditional integrity in their work place, in the supermarket or anywhere in the world? Perhaps it may be time that we start to look around our society and clock what is really going on.
The more we seek the right the far from truth we choose to see and feel.
“To be seen as the woman who can do it all… independent, not needing anyone, being respected because I could handle anything.” So many of us women have fallen for this same thing thinking that we need to be more. The fact is we are already everything that we are ever going to be and it is more about cherishing that, embracing it and living true to ourselves.
These images how to be are very damaging as they are not true. They are influential though as many of us subscribe to those images.
Ah, the woman who can do it all, who can keep up with the boys, that is way too familiar and often only stops when we have a momentum-stopping event. Our body is a gift that can so easily be taken away, it is time we put it up on a pedestal and nurture and honour it as such.
Christina, thank you for sharing your experience of abuse and questioning how far we’re prepared to go to be accepted at work or in the home. It’s important to be aware of abuse from others, but more powerful to be aware of our own patterns of self abuse. The more we deepen the love we have for ourselves, the easier it is to spot our own abusive patterns and staying connected to our true essence makes it difficult to self abuse.
There is no respect from anywhere if we do not first respect ourselves.
There are so many layers to reveal in which we find abuse in what looks more detailed small form but as all is energy it is either abuse or not. So it is very important we stay willing to become more and more aware to set ourselves free from a lot of evil energies we kept ourselves hidden in for so long.
Our return to love and Soul is possible through deepening our awareness to sense what is really going on in our body and respond to this with new food choices and and to express from the connection with that which is Divine within (and available to all equally-so).
“I learned to shift my behaviors from choosing what was cool to have, fancy to be, or yummy to eat, into: feel first what to eat, which words are truly needed to say, and what I am really to do, and that being connected with my body is the real deal!”
“The abuse happens anytime we are not truly aware of ourselves and others. It happens anytime we are not living the true love we are.” – To me, this is the definition of true responsibility, and is so simple, yet we all seem to resist it in order to stay in the comfort of being able to do whatever we want, when we want to. However, I have noticed just how easy it is for things to spin out of control into disregarding behaviours when I do not stay with my body and honour what it is needing at any given time.
We have normalised abuse in the world, it’s a movement away from love that is causing so much misery, separation and pain for countless people.
By getting it ‘right’ we get it all so very ‘wrong’ as we are lured by the false sense of achievement that comes from forsaking what is true.
Yes, it is like redecorating a home when actually you are in the wrong home to start with – not only the wrong home but someone else’s home that you have moved into because you weren’t paying attention!
Women are pushing themselves more and more wanting to prove that they can do what men do or even out do them. But what are we doing to our bodies, we are delicate fragile and tender and loving, so we are going against our natural way of being. I think it was great you were able to feel your body Christina and feel the harm you were doing to yourself and be aware of how long it actually took to recover from the roof jump.
Beautiful Christina, if we don’t honour ourselves then our relationships and life is nothing more than a bad act – and that’s a crazy stunt to pull indeed.
As women when we go through life taking it on as a battle and in warrior mode we will always be effectively fighting and resisting our innate nature to nurture and love ourselves and others equally.
Agreed 100%, the key being do we go through life fitting into the mould – even if that is battling our way in warrior mode – or do we stop and consider what is true for us and then live that to the maximum.
I love how you describe the body being a compass by which we can navigate through life. Our body is made up of particles of the universe so will always be obedient to the universe’s flow. When I consider what I allow myself to be directed by – hopes, fears, other people’s wishes, dreams etc. – if not coming from love then it is all creating more harm to then feel the consequences of on an individual and global level.
“I recognised that whenever I do something that is not truly felt to be right from my body – I am abusing myself.”
This is a very simple and practical truth and easy to live by and recognise when one is abusing the opportunity that living in a body gives a person.
The fear of getting it wrong was something that dogged my footsteps since early childhood and became an insidious pattern of numbing out from my body and holding back and closing down my expression. From attending presentations by Serge Benhayon, the harm and abuse this has caused throughout my life was finally (and thankfully) exposed. Re-connection with my body continues to bring greater awareness of what is not true for my body and to be able to say NO.
“I got to the point that I recognised that whenever I do something that is not truly felt to be right from my body – I am abusing myself”.
“To not put other people’s demands, or my own beliefs of how I think that I have to be, ahead of how I truly feel to act.” now this is one of the things that I have nearly mastered yet still from time to time put what I think someone will think ahead of the truth.
Such a great blog to read again, I can feel your dedication to truth and really making sustained changes, very inspiring.
What I have noticed is that we change our ways when things force you too and as soon as the pressure is off or the spot light shifts I often will just revert back to old ways that brought up the issue in the first place!!! So arrogant!
We take on many roles in life and run with them without questioning if they truly serve us or humanity. These ideals and beliefs can be ingrained in how we move to the point where we will not question where they are taking us. This is how many different levels of abuse can exist in our lives without us even knowing it, and only when we start to look at our choices do we see that there are many different layers of abuse.
Beautifully said Julie abuse happens under our noses just because this is what we all do etc rather then truly consciously choosing a way of living.
“Understanding this is my key to truly ask and feel the body first – and listen to the answer on the inside. To not put other people’s demands, or my own beliefs of how I think that I have to be, ahead of how I truly feel to act.” I have had a pattern of giving myself away to what others want which I am learning to break with more love and respect for how my body is feeling, just the other day I was tempted to give in to others instead of feeling my body, I had the space to really feel and honour my body by not going there.
Great expose of how we abuse our bodies which can be overriding them in a physical way or being ‘nice’ to someone when we don’t feel like talking and just want to be. This is a continuing lesson for me but I can appreciate how I no longer abuse my body by drinking alcohol, smoking or saying yes when I truly want to say no. This to was with the support and teachings of Universal Medicine.
It’s a big leap for most to see physical abuse of poisoning yourself with drugs like coffee, alcohol etc as the same as being nice but it makes perfect sense when you take it back to energy and the body as it causes us pain to move in a way that is contra to the flow of life and being nice is definitely not in the flow of what is true.
The ‘I can do it’ syndrome is incredibly pernicious, and pervasive in our society… Especially in men… Possibly? There is so much that we have taken on that makes this habit or pattern sometimes seem so much a part of us. It is essential that it is written about and understood so that the release of this destructive old paradigm can start.
Yes, I can do it. Is it worth the damage, though?
“there is a way of reconfiguring the ‘normal’” The more that we and the more all of us live and move in a way that is honouring of our body the more the ‘normal’ will be a loving way to be.
It amazes me how easily I will jump into an old pattern that I thought was done and dusted! It’s humbling really as it shows we are continually learning and often running with an ill energy.
It is often when we wonder why we did something extreme and abusive to ourselves and then we notice that it is the every day little simple things where we do the same that allow for that build up to a more extreme showcase of the abusive behaviour. And it is in working on the little everyday ones that will support to say no in the ‘big’ ones.
Yeah very good point Lieke it is the small seemingly not so ‘bad’ abuses – an unkind thought, a controlling thought, that we just let slide that end with much greater and more obvious abuses shouting, yelling etc. It is attending to the little micro that takes care of the macro.
Such a great point; ‘the abuse happens anytime we are not truly aware of ourselves and others. It happens anytime we are not living the true love we are.’ So it is our responsibility to be all that we are and not hold it back so we are not abusing ourselves and others.
‘I used to push myself and my body really hard all my life, living in the belief that “I am strong, I can do that, and I’ll make it without any help.” Trying to show how independent I was as a woman, somehow trying to prove that “I can do it!”’ It’s funny really for one of the most healing and gracefully humbling moments of one’s life is when we put our hand out and ask for support from our fellow man.
Absolutely when we are willing to say I haven’t got this all together and can just let the guards down is when we are vulnerable and incredibly beautiful and strong.
We have been trained to push and abuse our body first, and ask questions later. We need not wait for distaster to strike to reconfigure our life to nurture ourselves first. Thank you Christina.