Recently my sister sent me a photo of her and I as kids. I had not seen this photo before and when I looked at it, something about it made me come to an abrupt halt. What struck me so forcibly was seeing how naturally loose and relaxed our bodies were. There is an exquisite lightness and natural ease that seems to flow through both of us.
When I look at that photo now, my body remembers exactly what it was feeling at the time. Firstly, I was upside down and my whole body delighted in being upside down; it also loved to spin, jump, run, tumble and roll.
The climbing frame that we are on was made by my Dad out of branches and my hands and feet knew every single inch of that climbing frame. Just behind the climbing frame was a compost heap; my nose still remembers the rich, mulchy smell of warm, decomposing grass. Next to the compost heap was Dad’s shed, which was an intriguing place that smelt of creosote.
My body still holds the memory of the stiff bolt that had to be worked free in order to get in amongst the wheelbarrow and tools. Next to the shed was an enchanting willow tree, whose bendy branches draped right down to the ground, making a giant skirt of slim tough leaves. Another world existed when we went under the skirt of leaves and into the tent of the tree. My body was as supple and natural as the thin young branches of the willow tree.
Somewhere in the garden, Tommy the tortoise was hiding. I delighted in trying to spot his smooth patterned shell and ancient shrivelled neck. When I watched him eat, my eyes were riveted by the sight of his strange lipless mouth, grinding up lettuce. To this day, my body still recalls a feeling of timelessness when I hear a plane high up in the summer sky or the sound of neighbours mowing their gardens at the weekend.
I lived life from my body; my senses were what connected me to life. Life and I were one and the same. Life was simple, life was joyous, life was harmonious and life was very, very easy. I never thought twice about the fact that I loved life. This is how life was for me up until I was 9 years old.
At the age of 9, my family moved from a small village in North Yorkshire to Watford, a major town not far from London. We swapped the countryside that I played in for major roads and a lot of traffic. That in itself was not enough to change how I felt about life, but it was coupled with a difficult transition into a new school and it is how I chose to react to the challenges that presented themselves that set me on a completely different tack.
The children in my new school were very different to the friends that I had left. Despite the fact that we were all only 9 years old, many of them had already hardened and become aggressive. My sensitive body felt assaulted when it heard the F or C word and it reeled from the animosity that was directed at me and others. This was the first time in my life that I can remember feeling emotional pain in my body. I felt like I was being suffocated from the inside and I was at a loss as to know what to do with the pain.
My reaction was to actively choose to change the way that I was being. My body hardened as I pretended that I was not hurt by what was going on. I tried to fit in and please others, I tried to fly under the radar. The ironic part is that if had I chosen to keep being the real me, then I wouldn’t have needed any protection at all because it’s impossible to hurt an open heart.
But alas, I left the Land of the Real Me and went walkabout in the Land of Who I Was Not. My walkabout lasted nearly forty years. It seems that once I left The Land of the Real Me, I also lost sight of who I was and so chose an array of different images to inhabit. For all intents and purposes, I became as authentic as a hologram.
Weary and exhausted, I arrived on the doorstep of Serge Benhayon and the teachings of The Ageless Wisdom. The profound teachings that Serge Benhayon presents have supported me to re-connect back to my body and I am beginning to feel like the beautiful, willowy child that I once was.
I have come to understand that it is through our connection to our bodies that we re-member who we are. By re-uniting with my body, I have been re-united with myself and by re-uniting with myself, I have been re-united with the connection to God that I knew in my body as a child.
‘Thanks,’ even if ‘heartfelt,’ is not in any way sufficient as an expression of my gratitude to Serge Benhayon for being all that he is and all that he brings.
By Alexis Stewart, partner of an amazing man, mum of a stunning boy, dedicated student of The Way of The Livingness, care worker, yoga teacher
Further Reading:
Listening to Your Body
I Found Observing My Body Is A Great Support
Listening To My Body and Honouring My Feelings
The Truth about Serge Benhayon 
“I felt like I was being suffocated from the inside and I was at a loss as to know what to do with the pain.” Losing the freedom and innocence of being a young child is as if you are no longer breathing your own breath but conforming to a confusing array of expected behaviours.
‘I lived life from my body’. This is the quote I am embracing today, realising how profound and exquisitely simple life is when I am connected to my body. And this is something that I know can deepen and become richer each day.
“I lived life from my body; my senses were what connected me to life. Life and I were one and the same. Life was simple, life was joyous, life was harmonious and life was very, very easy. I never thought twice about the fact that I loved life.” – Most of us get to experience this beauty and simplicity in life at a young age, so long as we have not been tampered with in any way. And then as we grow up from there, we begin to get affected by life and the conditioning of society and the expectations and demands to function rather than be. And to fit in most of us take this on, burying our essence and natural qualities under layer upon layer of ideals and beliefs and conditioning. To undo this is one of our greatest blessings so that we can access our essence again and br free to live life in its true sense and remind others of the same.
Connecting with our bodies is vital, ‘it is through our connection to our bodies that we re-member who we are. By re-uniting with my body, I have been re-united with myself and by re-uniting with myself, I have been re-united with the connection to God that I knew in my body as a child.’
The abuse of children directed towards other children isn’t really a topic we take seriously, “They are just kids being kids” or “boys being boys” but this story got me reflecting on how many adults in the world are disconnected from their true selves because of the abuse they experienced from other kids in school. And honestly, how have we allowed such precious youngsters to become abusers? What tensions and distresses do kids carry that aren’t being discussed that leads to them to abuse other kids and become bullying? And how are family life and the education system, amongst other things, leading to this behaviour? It’s so very unnatural for kids to be abusive yet it’s become so normal – it’s disturbing really if you think about it. We are not born abusers.
Well said Melinda, we are not born abusers, but something happens that then leads to the very child that was born super tender, to choose to disconnect from this and allow abuse through them.
Our understanding of God and our reconnection to God is what we are all looking for and should be sought at every opportunity.
It is my experience also that words are indeed forceful and can hurt us in the same way perhaps more than physical blows. I too remember my first days of high school and feeling the aggressive and abusive language and bullying behaviour that was thrown around and the impact this had on my body at the time.
“There is an exquisite lightness and natural ease that seems to flow through both of us.” The beauty is that we can always return to this natural state of being, that it is never lost, that we know the truth deep down.
Some parents, disconnected from the wonders of childhood years, begin to slowly encroach this blessed space and pollute it by entering children into talent competitions, wanting them to become models, singers. dancers and sport achievers. All designed to gain recognition, rather than simply relate to children for who they are and let them be themselves. This constant pull on children to be somewhere other than their true and natural selves is a dark force that destroys the magic of childhood.
The magic of childhood is something we remember fondly, ‘Life was simple, life was joyous, life was harmonious and life was very, very easy. I never thought twice about the fact that I loved life.’
We are amazing as young children, just being our true self, ‘once I left The Land of the Real Me, I also lost sight of who I was and so chose an array of different images to inhabit.’
Our bodies are forever guiding us through life with amazing wisdom and truth, it seems crazy that we ever chose to disconnect from this quality.
We naturally live life from our bodies when young, ‘I lived life from my body; my senses were what connected me to life.’
It’s so common to hear people say about children “I wish they would stay like that forever.” Well, why can’t we? It’s a good question to ask, to ponder and reflect on, and have conversations about because we seem to have accepted the loss of the beauty of childhood as a normal part of adulthood, even though it makes more sense to continue living as who we naturally were born as. I know a young lady in her 20’s that is still living how I remember her as a child, she is a beautiful and very bright light in this world openly expressing all that she is – imagine the world if we were all supported to be our natural selves no matter our age? This is so worth investigating and exploring. Surely it’s a basic human right to be nurtured to remain who we innately are as we grow.
We think and learn that we have to adjust to our environment but in truth we need not change for anyone or anything but bless the world when we simply live what we know is to be true and loving.
Beautifully Esther. We “bless the world when we simply live what we know is to be true and loving”
We give up on our real self, in order to try and fit in, but does it really work, ‘I tried to fit in and please others, I tried to fly under the radar.’
Yes it is from the body that we know ourselves. But I noticed it is only when I am in stillness and surrender I get this feeling of knowing myself from my body, like I felt as a child when I could feel life all around me. When I am stressed or tensed this is also felt in my body but then I don’t feel like myself. Yet for many I think this tension has become their marker of themselves instead of truly being in our body.
Our bodies are naturally a part of the Universe and so when they are simply left alone to be themselves, we feel that connection to the all that is. But stress, tension, anxiety, elation and even happiness all bring the body out of it’s natural state and therefore prevent us from feeling the connection that we can feel to a deeper aspect of ourselves.
Serge Benhayon is unique in my experience in that he reminds us of who we are by showing us how to connect with that being within. He doesn’t do it for us, for no one can do that, but through his wisdom and the therapies and tools he has offered the world, we can now do that for ourselves.
Yes. It is in relationship with my body that I realise the being within. And supported by all that Serge has shared know that it is through my body that the truth about life and the universe is revealed.
When I was young I spent most of my time with the rest of my sisters and brother outdoors, we built camps made fires and ran wild in the summer holidays. Oh! to be free of the restrictions, rules and regulations of school. There was a sense of never ending magic to the holidays. But slowly ever so slowly all the magic gets eroded away as the expectations of school, family and life take over and we accept the straight jacket that society expects everyone to wear. In effect we become robot of life. Is it any wonder we use drugs, alcohol, really anything to check out of a life we are all expected to participate in but actually hate at the same time.
Life doesn’t have to be the way that we’ve made it. We can choose a completely different life by changing the choices that we make as individuals, which then collectively make up the life that we all experience.
We can make different choices, ‘had I chosen to keep being the real me, then I wouldn’t have needed any protection at all because it’s impossible to hurt an open heart.’
You describe the wonders of childhood so well Alexis, or could we say the wonders of life – that don’t ever disappear we just temporarily stop seeing the wonder–fullness around us.
I feel more playful than I have in many years, simply by letting go of the hurts that I had allowed to keep me away from myself.
When we invite our inner child to be felt we move with a spring in our step and a smile in our heart.
A dear friend of mine song last year: ‘true love doesn’t hurt and opens up your heart’. And you can’t hurt an open heart. It is the most powerful protection of all, whereas we think we have to protect ourselves by closing our hearts.
I love that picture of you and your sister, Alexis. Almost palpable how at ease and surrendered you are in your bodies and also with each other. Confirming that a strong body connecting supports the connection with another and how telling it is whether people, friends, family or a couple are at ease in their own body when in connection with the other.
‘I have come to understand that it is through our connection to our bodies that we re-member who we are.’ Spot on Alexis, it is interesting then that coffee and sugar intake is on the increase as I know whenever I have sugar immediately I can feel the disconnection to my body and a foggy feeling in my head.
There is great innocence and calm in the sweet memories of a joy filled and playful childhood, and this is of course what every child deserves. But I can’t help feeling that, although this is nice and sweet and beautiful, we as people also need in equal measure to be aware of the most harshest realities of life, so that we do not get attached to this place, so that we do not try to create Eden here on earth, and instead choose to see this life for what it is and have no illusions as to the depths of its misery. What that difficult life lesson has taught you is more precious and valuable than any classroom could every pass on because you learnt about hurt, the most beautiful gift of all.
There’s no truth in hurt, it’s simply part of the set up to keep us away from the truth.
How beautiful to be reminded of how we felt as a child – connected and living from the body first. This is a great point of reflection to know that we can feel everything and it is simply our choice to say yes to this. The body always tells the truth, and so honouring and living from it is saying yes to truth.
Our bodies always know… We just need to listen.
Our mind can concoct any story it likes to tell and believe, but our body is the maker of truth and it registers everything – including all the lies it got exposed to, and sometimes it brings up things we would rather forget, but the deeper we connect, the truer and the grander and more magnificent the feeling of ‘I’ gets until it becomes ‘us’ .
I absolutely love this Fumiyo “the deeper we connect, the truer and the grander and more magnificent the feeling of ‘I’ gets until it becomes ‘us’ “. Because the absolute truth of the matter is that there is no I and one day even the ‘collective us’ will dissolve and there will be only one God standing resplendent.
What a beautiful comment Fumiyo, thank you.
There is a well of beauty to (re-) connect to. Going there opens the door to go anywhere.
It is like the door of the wardrobe into Narnia – literally everything opens up the moment we reconnect to the love and divinity that we are.
Loving the phrase ‘The Land of the Real Me’ and how you have shared we cannot get hurt with an open heart .. now that is a discussion that is deeply needed. Also what struck me with this is the absolute importance in being able to express how we feel and not feel we have to toughen or harden up to get through life. I wonder if you talked with your parents in how you were feeling and if you did if you talked with them enough! Perhaps this photo being sent to you was a confirmation of how after 40 years of being tough and hard you have returned to the Land of the Real You. It just goes to show it is never to late to return to our truth and how the world is currently set up to take us away from the truth of who we are.
Vicky, in answer to your question did I speak with my parents enough about how much I was struggling with the move, I was very aware that my Mum and my sister were also struggling and so held back in how much I shared with them, to avoid making things harder for them.
Alexis, I have read a few of your blogs now and I am such a fan. I love the way you write. You are a natural storyteller who tells powerful, relatable, engaging and wise stories. This line was a standout – “Life and I were one and the same”. Well done to return to the Land of the Real You, where life and you are one of the same. No hardening to protect ourselves from life, when we are life.
Sarah your words are deeply appreciated, thank you.
Ditto Sarah I feel exactly the same as you in loving how Alexis expresses and is a natural storyteller.
Awesome reminder that we are life – to be it, in it, around it, at one with it, is our natural way of being. It’s only our deviation from this, separating from who we are by a multitude of distractions and decisions to stuff down what we can feel, that causes any issues. When we’re honest about who we are and living who we know ourselves to be, life and we feel full to the brim, and then some.
How poignant this is Alexis. Very few people remain true to walking with connected to the truth of themselves and can be deeply lost in roles and images for aeons. Serge Benhayon’s presentations have been key and my inspiration to place my feet firmly back onto the Path of Return, away from the Land of Who I am not.
‘”But alas, I left the Land of the Real Me and went walkabout in the Land of Who I Was Not. My walkabout lasted nearly forty years. It seems that once I left The Land of the Real Me, I also lost sight of who I was and so chose an array of different images to inhabit”.
This transition seems to happen to all of us – acquiring the means, which can be hardness, to manage to live in the world. It may also have happened in the first place but perhaps a little more slowly.
It feels as if a lot of illness and disease would not exist if we chose to stay connected to our bodies, our bodies hold so much truth and wisdom it seems crazy that we ever want to disconnect from this.
Very true Anna. It would be almost impossible for so many illnesses and diseases to get past their initial stages if we were living in connection with our bodies because we would feel the start of them and therefore have the choice and the ability to do something about it. But because we are almost totally preoccupied with distorting the messages that our body is sending us, then we either scramble or completely drown out what it’s saying in a bid to continue with our charade of life. We’re paying a heavy price to keep the illusion going and there will come a time when we question whether or not it’s worth it.
And what I appreciate most is that regardless of how long we have been away in the land of who we are not, the land of the real us is always only just a step away.
I love this, for how can we claim to know God if we do not know God from within first? And how can we ignore and pretend that God doesn’t exist when we knew of his absolute existence when we were children? It goes to show, no doubt there is a game at play and while the game is being played we are living disconnected from our body and hence from who we truly are.
Our bodies experience life, and in their openness we are open on life … when we harden we loose our ability to truly interact with life and become a shell of how we are, until we’re reminded to let go and come back, as shown here and then once again we open up to life.
Well said Monica. Our bodies are indeed part of the fabric of life, it’s just that most of the time we’re not able to feel the innate oneness that we have with life because we are behaving in such a way that makes our bodies stand out in relief from the living backdrop that they are a natural part of.
I have experienced that playful freedom that I had as a child now as an adult and it’s so beautiful. Thank God for Serge Benhayon showing how we can live in that joy as an adult and not be lost in hurts.
Me too Leigh, the playfullness is awesome the more we allow it. It is like my whole body lets go of all the stress and strain I have put it under and simply is allowed to be. Just like a child does not care what other people think why should I as an adult put what others think of me as a focus – it makes no sense yet is something most of us do and put our image and the way others perceive us above everything else.
The playful, joyful inner child never goes away but can get buried in the compost heap of all we dump onto it.
The sound and smells are different for me but this one sentence highlights the power of the senses to evoke memories. Some wonderful, some not. So are we at the mercy of these memory invoking things? I suggest that we are not and that by developing a steady, conscious and consistent relationship of connection with our body in the present, we will be less likely to be thrown into the past and the emotions we felt at the time, but are able to observe the memories without getting sucked in.
Yes, to just know what happened. It can still be joyful though.
‘I lived life from my body; my senses were what connected me to life. Life and I were one and the same. Life was simple, life was joyous, life was harmonious and life was very, very easy. I never thought twice about the fact that I loved life. This is how life was for me up until I was 9 years old’. Wow, this just stops me in my tracks, as a reminder of just how easy life can be when we are connected with our bodies – life is not meant to be a struggle – which it was for me and in which I realise I created with my choice to close down my innocence and feeling ability. My life has turned around since I have allowed myself to feel and express what it is I am feeling!
You are so spot on Alexis about the bodies of children: ‘Recently my sister sent me a photo of her and I as kids. I had not seen this photo before and when I looked at it, something about it made me come to an abrupt halt. What struck me so forcibly was seeing how naturally loose and relaxed our bodies were. There is an exquisite lightness and natural ease that seems to flow through both of us.’ It is amazing to look back at photos and feel the bubbling joy, the beauty of the bodies we were given and then observe what we have done to them
What flowed through our bodies so effortlessly as kids was the consciousness of God and that consciousness is available to us equally as adults, it’s just that we have configured our bodies in such a way, so as to bar it’s entry and instead invite a far inferior energetic consciousness to step right in and have it’s marauding way.
So simple and beautiful that when we reconnect to our bodies, we reconnect to ourselves, our Souls, and God, or the universe.
“it is through our bodies that we re-member who we truly are” this is beautiful in several ways but what sticks out for me right now is the feeling of remembering. We are never not who we truly are we simply have expressed something differently for so long that we have forgotten what has been and still is there all along.
Well said.
Thank you Alexis for this beautiful walk through your childhood. I can feel somewhere in me those memories are awakened by your story, showing how we all hold an imprint of who we are, no matter at what age we started from it and we can find and reconnect to it through our bodies, even more so when a lived connection is offered as a reflection.
It’s not possible for any of us to not have the truth of who we are deep within our bodies.
When I look back Alexis there are so many differences to where I am now and what I naturally felt as a child. I was so engaged with life and delighting in and exploring nature fully, I simply enjoyed myself. As an adult I am much more closed and less able to come out of my inner world to engage and enjoy life with that same freedom. It’s s good marker to have from childhood to remind me of my true and natural way, but it also says a lot about the various difficulties we can face in life that can lead to us leaving our essence and eventually living in a completely unnatural way.
Melinda your use of the word ‘unnatural’ is spot on for how life has become for most adults. The unfortunate thing is, that this unnatural way of being has become so normal for most of us that we don’t even consider questioning it.
Life is so much simpler when we stay connected to the body as everything can be seen and felt for what it is, rather than the mind second guessing life and taking us further into uncertainty and complication.
The mind reminds me of the child catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, it lures us in with false promises only to slam the door shut behind us. The body provides the key to freedom.
I can relate to moving schools as my father was in the army. Every time we moved going to a new school got harder and harder, or so I thought, but these days I am more than capable of being sent to new venues for work at a drop of a hat.
Julie what a gorgeous reflection of the solidness that you now have with your connection to yourself.
‘I have come to understand that it is through our connection to our bodies that we re-member who we are.’ This awareness and understanding is revelatory Alexis.
so it is Jenny and it is because of the understanding that, ‘we remember who we are through our connection to our bodies’ that leads to yet another understanding and that is that the world is purposefully and maliciously set up to interfere with our connection to our bodies. Life is a constant onslaught of distractions, designed specifically to make it nigh on impossible to connect and then stay connected to our bodies, the purpose being to delay our return to soul. Such an evil and futile exercise, because delay is all that can be achieved (not that the word ‘achievement’ is truly correct in this context), because we can never be permanently prevented from re-uniting with our souls, it’s simply a matter of when.
We all have questions we need to ask, for most of us will see the freedom of our light supple bodies in photos of ourselves as children. So why is it that most adults have tight, tense, broken bodies? It is not just age, but very much about how we choose to live in and move our bodies. Each moment we brace ourselves and essentially twist up our bodies to prevent feeling the hurts in our world, we are changing and reconfiguring the beauty of our free young bodies. And so begins a life of protection and bracing, along with many emotional issues that seem unresolved. Whilst this maybe the reality of adult life, it is not true and because of this fact, we can reclaim the beauty of our essence as Alexis has.
The belief that childhood and adulthood are somehow separate and mutually exclusive plays a significant role in how resigned we are to be in adult bodies that don’t feel very good. This erroneous belief is also responsible for our acceptance of illness and injury as simply being an expected part of ‘getting older’. If we lived the truth of ageing Leigh, as you have so rightly disclosed, which is that we have bodies that reflect the way that we choose live and move, then we would suddenly all sit up and take much more notice and responsibility of our choices.
The way early childhood is described here is timeless. It denotes to me a sense of holding so that what was felt could, and has been reconnected with. A point of truth in our ever increasingly intense world that brings perspective to our lives. That supports one to again choose the sense of timeless to be a part of our foundation of how we live as adults.
Two things the body never does 1) Lies and 2) Forgets.
Our bodies really do remember all of our choices and reflect those back to us in so many ways. Illness and disease are at the extreme end of it, but on the same spectrum, way before we get to illness and disease, is how we move in our every day: are we moving in past patterns of contraction, constriction, witholding and unsure of ourselves, or is there a freedom and lightness to our movements – an open dialogue where we register what we feel, and aren’t afraid to let it out and be all of ourselves?
What it basically boils down to is whether we are moving with God or without God.
My mum gave me some old photo albums just recently of when i was a young girl not only did it bring me great joy to see and feel my ease and love for nature in the photo’s but it also allowed me to appreciate just how much more I have re-connected to my joy, playfulness and ease within my body once more. Our bodies hold all the wisdom we could ever require and once we listen to it we can choose to move, from it’s truth and respect the responsibility held within.
Your description of your childhood is so so familiar to me Alexis in its energetic experience, and even in some of the detail (like the drumming of a plane in the sky, the smell of people mowing their lawns in midsummer, as well as the willow tree forming its graceful tent where you could play. I too remember that magical state. It is very understandable that it was a shock for you to be faced with your new rough school and busy town full of traffic. My first real shock was at 13 – as a girl guide, we had to go once a week to hospital and feed elderly ladies who were dying, as part of our community service. The smell of the mashed pumpkin and hospital made me feel sick, and even worse for me, was the sight of all these tubes going in and out of bodies. Many years later in a brilliant session with Curtis Benhayon, I realised that I had an image of the way the world should be and had reacted to this scenario at the hospital which wasn’t part of the ‘image’ of a nice world that I had created to protect myself. Though apparently tiny, this realisation was a huge step in my road to Acceptance and the ability to be able to observe without judging.
Ah, the ‘ability to be able to observe without judging’, such an easy thing to say and even to understand but my word it’s a hard one to put into practice. So many of us seem to peer out from behind our two eyes and rate each other and the world according to ‘us’ and this most of us do so constantly, that it has become an unnoticed narrative. I am aware however of the correlation between how individual I feel and therefore how easily I am able to see others as separate from me and as a result, judge them; as opposed to when I feel part of The One Life that sustains us all and as a result, feel that everyone else is also an equal part of the same One life and hence naturally not going into judgement, because what I am seeing the most is our similarities and not our differences.
As soon as I feel myself veering into the dangerous terrain of judgment I immediately come back to my body and feel my heart and raise the awareness on that! The move then flows and only appreciation of the other can occur.
Lyndy I’m gonna give it a go, thanks for sharing.
What comes to me as I read this comment is that there is no hard ship in being light, bright and powerful if we fully appreciate and accept our own selves, but most importantly connect with how important it is for our troubled world to see a woman who is thriving, tender, graceful and full of joy. This takes away any struggle with judgement either that which we may let in or that which is coming from another, as both are completely transformed by our essence and our choice to let this be seen in our world.
What a beautiful photo , so full of life .
Imbued by the body of God.
The photo of you and your sister hanging upside down speaks volumes of a way of life that seems to be to be consigned to the history books. Observing the children today it feels to me that, the body’s way of being loose limbed has gone to be replaced with an underlying wariness and hardness. To me Children seem to be deprived of a natural innocent childhood instead technology has taken over, I feel we have lost our way when we deprive our children of their childhood.
By corrupting our bodies, we corrupt the people. By resurrecting our bodies, we ultimately resurrect God.
Although the body holds the exact feeling of how it felt, it also has an enormous capacity to over-run it and to cement a pattern of movement that we have chosen to perpetuate the impact of the hurts we got in the way.
Our bodies are obedient to the energy that comes through them.
‘I have come to understand that it is through our connection to our bodies that we re-member who we are. By re-uniting with my body, I have been re-united with myself and by re-uniting with myself, I have been re-united with the connection to God that I knew in my body as a child.’ Beautiful Alexis.
It’s almost like it’s an accepted reality that we loose our sweetness, our natural joy and vivacity for life as we progress from childhood to adulthood – but what if this wasn’t necessary and what if it could never really truly be lost?
I agree Meg, I believed for such a long time that the feelings that we had as kids were assigned to childhood alone. I thought that it was a biological thing that as adults we felt denser and more congested. It is only since returning to the lightness of my childhood that I have dissolved this myth.
I love that no matter what happens to us, our bodies are there ready and waiting for us to connect to them when we choose, and that when we embrace life lived through our bodies we become at one with life and stop fighting it, we live in the rhythm and flow of life, (something we all did as children) and it’s awesome to re-find as an adult.
I love this blog Alexis, as it reminds me, every time I read it, to come back to the body and feel what it is communicating to me in the moment.
Which Kathleen, is the key to life.
Beautiful to have this awareness, ‘I have come to understand that it is through our connection to our bodies that we re-member who we are. By re-uniting with my body, I have been re-united with myself and by re-uniting with myself, I have been re-united with the connection to God that I knew in my body as a child.’ Wonderful that you are now claiming this.
What you share in this blog would be great to share with children, they could then be aware and talk to people about this instead of frequently feeling alone and isolated, ‘ if I had chosen to keep being the real me, then I wouldn’t have needed any protection at all because it’s impossible to hurt an open heart.’
Hurts are things we’ve fabricated in order to not feel the truth.
‘I lived life from my body; my senses were what connected me to life. Life and I were one and the same. Life was simple, life was joyous, life was harmonious and life was very, very easy. I never thought twice about the fact that I loved life.’ How gorgeous Alexis,and this is the place that we return to, to regain our natural clairsentience.
“By re-uniting with my body, I have been re-united with myself and by re-uniting with myself, I have been re-united with the connection to God that I knew in my body as a child.” What a joy it is to re-unite with oneself and the gateway for this is through and with the body. Thank you Serge Benhayon for showing us the way and Alexis for sharing this so beautifully.
Give or take a few details, the essence of what was described in your early childhood was what I also experienced. In fact, one of the houses I lived in part time had a turtle and every day after school I would play in the backyard looking for Smiler the turtle, making sure he knew that he couldn’t hide from me. When I would find him, I would pick him up like a hamburger and pretend to eat him and he would tuck his head and feet in. I was free and life was about fun and adventure. Then at about age 10 I began to observer my older sister becoming a teenager and was exposed to what the world was ‘really like’. I realised that I had to change who I was if I wanted to be liked and get a boyfriend. That I had to act and look a certain way to get attention. In this, my innocence was lost and I began my false path to try and fit in. Now, all these years later, I am blessed to be free of trying to be cool and fit in and it is not because I grew out of it, as I see plenty of people my age still engaged with the world in this way. The reason I am able to embrace my inner child and have fun again without drugs or alcohol is because I found The Way of the Livingness. This teaching invites all to remember the child inside and celebrates the heart and the freedom it holds!
I too recall moments of ‘timelessness’ as a child with the sound of the lawnmower in the background, or a plane passing overhead. I love that feeling, that feeling of being and belonging to nothing in this world, yet knowing that everything matters, and I still cherish those moments when they happen.
Ingrid, I love the way you describe your early childhood years. We get to feel you as you explore the world around you – everything seen, felt and connected. To reclaim yourself after losing you will inspire others to know it’s never too late to begin again.
I love the freedom, the flow, the connection and joy that is shared here in Alexis’s childhood. I look around the world today and I very rarely see this level of ‘self’ in todays children. Yes there are some who have it and absolutely shine with it, but there are way too many that are already living lives of anxiety, depression and checking out from their families, schools and society. This is not normal and is something that we all need to hold high in our awareness as each of us holds the link back to joy – through claiming our own and living it again, as shared by Alexis.
“My sensitive body felt assaulted when it heard the F or C word and it reeled from the animosity that was directed at me and others.” I love this sentence as it brings so clearly to the fore how tough and rough we have all become to endure and live with the words we use day in day out. And yet we have all once been as sensitive as you describe.
So many of us have left that innocence and sensitivity behind as we grew up, meeting Serge Benhayon has been allowing myself and others as you show in this blog to return to our true self.
“By re-uniting with my body, I have been re-united with myself and by re-uniting with myself, I have been re-united with the connection to God that I knew in my body as a child.” Beautiful Alexis. Reconnecting with our body – what could be simpler? And how many of us – including myself – so often ignore its messages?
Being that we all have a body, one would imagine that connecting to it would be easy, but alas it’s not. There is a consciousness that is dedicated to doing all that it can to hamper our ability to connect with our bodies. What this has resulted in, is a world that is primarily geared up to distorting our connection with ourselves and this we have come to call ‘life’.
Thank you Alexis for a beautiful sharing of reuniting with yourself and God by reconnecting to your body. Staying connected to our bodies all the time is not that easy. So often I get carried away by my thoughts, but when I choose to stop connect to my body and just breath I feel a beautiful warmth and steadiness within, feeling the true me and my connection to the divine.
Jill the reason why most people find it difficult to connect with their bodies, is because the world has been purposefully set up to make it hard for us to stay connected to our bodies. The pranic consciousness that is layered over the top of life’s natural fiery consciousness is designed to way lay us in our return to soul and it does a very good job. I feel to add however, that ‘way lay’ is all it’s able to do because it can never actually sever our connection to God, our connection to God remains a constant, even if we can’t actively feel it.
I can still connect to that feeling every time I choose to be with my body… true I’ve found more distractions as I’ve got older, but at the same time I deeply value that feeling of being in my body, the beating of my heart, the pulse in my hands, the warmth throughout. So natural and easily available any time.
The body is the vehicle through which we live, and whether we acknowledge it or not, it offers us great insights every day.
Beautifully said Heather – it is for us simply to tune into the messages and listen to the body so that we can best benefit from the simplest and most powerful connection to nature, and thus the wisdom of the universe.
Melinda children are our true teachers but what’s devastating to feel is that rather than listen to their unabridged wisdom, we squash and compress them into contorted shapes to meet and suit our warped interpretation of life. It’s nothing short of a travesty.
Thanks Alexis, delightful to read your blog again. As a kid I met life with gusto exploring everything and not holding back, and particularly enjoying being me in my body – boy, doesn’t that change as we grow up, and often before we hit double figures. Children are our true teachers because they live in way we need to learn to return to.
Melinda children are our true teachers but what’s devastating to feel is that rather than listen to their unabridged wisdom, we squash and compress them into contorted shapes to meet and suit our warped interpretation of life. It’s nothing short of a travesty.
I re-lived your experiences as I read your blog Alexis, just so many memories of my own mixed with yours. Why is it we jump to anothers rhythm when we feel ill-at-ease in a new environment? How wonderful to have found your way home.
I was looking at some recent photos taken of me running a race with my grandson and his friend. The joy on our faces from playing that simple game was just bursting out of the photos. I allowed myself to have fun with them rather than standing back and leaving them to it. Lots of adults seem to hold themselves back from being playful. When did life become so serious?
There is no appreciation when we are young to just how sensitive we all are and in trying to protect our sensitivity we harden ourselves against our environment. And like you Alexis it wasn’t until I came across Serge Benhayon that it was brought to my attention of the possibility that the vast majority of us are walking around in suits of armour trying to protect ourselves against the slings and arrows of life. But if we re connect back to the true flow of love that is within us all we do not need to go around suited and booted in armour, this falls away naturally so.
“I lived life from my body; my senses were what connected me to life. Life and I were one and the same.” When we see life and how we move within it as an equal part of the whole we can see how the energy in which we move and how we connect to our bodies fine movement all plays a integral part in our health and wellbeing. Moving from our bodies true expression will carry a quality of life that mirrors this movement.
By ‘moving from our bodies true expression’ we effortlessly get absorbed back into the body of Life. It is by deliberately making our movements separate to the natural flow of Life, that we end up standing out in relief from it, hence the almost universal experience of feeling displaced.
I can relate to everything that you share here Alexis. I also was very alive when I was a child, simple, wild, trutful, expanded, sensitive, joyful,… Life was simple as myself, and love was a natural flow that supported me subtly but strongly at the same time. I also moved from the place I grew up during my first 6 years, to a very unloving place. I also shut down myself for long time and I’m also coming back to my vulnerability again with Serge Benhayon’s teachings. It’s beautiful to feel and confirm in this process that I had never lost anything from my essence. The great news are that I’m as pure and alive as I was when a child.
There is nothing that comes even remotely close to returning to the truth of who we are. In fact when I look out from the gloriousness of the reacquainted me, I can see that so much of life is a very shabby substitute for the connection that most of us have lost. We seek it here, we seek it there but most of us fail to peek inside, which is where it sits like an untouched jewel.
It’s interesting when we step back and look at life – as children some of us can’t wait to grow up, even if it is just to the next age level or for some it’s wanting to be a teenager and to have more ‘freedom’, and yet when we get there some put the brakes on and say ‘I don’t want to grow up’ and equate being a young child as more carefree and fun and want to go back to that. If only we learned or was reminded that this is just because we separated from our true self as a child and that it is not about us wanting to be a child again it is more accurately us wanting to be connected to ourselves again and not taking on the stressors of life. If we don’t get this then we are in the illusion that we can’t live that always because it’s way back in the past… instead knowing that at any time we can choose to connect and all the love, joy, playfulness and lightness of what we know from being a child is there in an instant.
So well said Aimee.
Alexis, when I look at your photo I am reminded of that same feeling that I used to have as a child of being loose and relaxed in my body. It is an exquisite feeling and what is fantastic is that I have re-discovered this same feeling as an adult. Getting go of hurts has supported me to do this.
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Reading this I was reminded of the joy and freedom I felt in my body as I child as well and then chose to harden up and protect myself as I felt this was the only way to survive. It’s been quite a journey to unravel the hurts and protection but a great joy to begin to experience a deeper connection to the body once again and to feel how simple and empowering this choice can be.
It’s so true that an open heart is the best form of ‘protection’ we can ever have! It shows us that we have access to love from within us all the time regardless of how another is behaving and so our connection is not dependent on others but on how we are ourselves.
There is no other way to access love than from within.
I read those words, I know them to be true and I so wish we were brought up to live that in every moment so it was our normal in the face of conflict rather than the hardening as a form of protection. Time to be that change for the next generation.
There was a time when I felt quite bogged down with the misery of being an adult and feeling bereft for having lost that childhood connection, and meeting Serge Benhayon was key to coming back to the childhood innocence and wonder we experienced as a child – it never leaves us, we just bury it under protection.
Sometimes we allow distractions, beliefs and or pictures of things in and disconnect from our ever present innocence, gentleness and joy and yet with just one simple choice we can return to that natural flow and see the key of truth that is our bodies one connection to the soul within. The quality felt from this connection is also undeniably noted by all who flow into our lives also.
The pathway back to who we truly are, is simply that… A path of return.
“I have come to understand that it is through our connection to our bodies that we re-member who we are.” And from this reconnection to our bodies, our every movement made brings us back to the divine relationship with God and the absolute joy, clarity and awareness we return to brings us closer to others we connect with too. A very cool way to live and be in the world today.
No matter what life presents we can choose to stay in that connection and knowing of who we are or if we do ‘fall off’ we can also return to that knowing. When we finally do acknowledge that everything is energy, when we are faced with situations where people are not themselves we can see that they are simply choosing an energy that is not them and there is no need to take anything personally. This has been a grand revelation.
‘But alas, I left the Land of the Real Me and went walkabout in the Land of Who I Was Not. My walkabout lasted nearly forty years. It seems that once I left The Land of the Real Me, I also lost sight of who I was and so chose an array of different images to inhabit. For all intents and purposes, I became as authentic as a hologram.’ Love the symbolic 40 years Alexis! And I love how you write about leaving the Land of the Real me. This is a wonderful way to describe the vibrational levels at which we can choose to live. And every one of us who steps away from our connectedness to God lives as a shadow of our former selves – a hologram – a virtual reality! I certainly now what THAT feels like. Thank God for Serge Benhayon who has illumined the return back to Soul!
Our bodies are well and truly designed to respond a greater version of ourselves, impulsed purely by our Soul rather than the mind driven existence that we currently experience today. This greater version is in harmony with the universe where we are no less but in fact a part of the flow and synchronicity, as we, our bodies are all constituted of the same quality of particles and a such belong to the same Divine order. As children, we live as you described with ‘…an exquisite lightness and natural ease that seems to flow through…’ our bodies, yet we soon learn that this natural way is not the way that is lived as we grow up and we begin to shut down, harden, override this connection and so we deform our natural way of being to fit in or protect ourselves. But forever remains the particles in our bodies that hold the truth of who we are, forever waiting for us to return to this truth so we are guided by the greatest friend we could ever ask for in order to freely live the greater reflection of who we are in essence.
Wow! Just five minutes before literally stumbling upon your post I was remembering the time I was hanging upside down on my swing set and how flexible and relaxed my body used to be. I miss that body! And I miss the pure joy that simple act of hanging upside down brought me. I too moved a year or two later into a very rough neighborhood that I was unprepared to face. Fortunately, I was able to escape to my father’s house every so often where I could just be me. Thanks for sharing.
I too was one who left “the Land of the Real Me and went walkabout in the Land of Who I Was Not.”, but I didn’t think it was abnormal to do so as everyone else around me appeared to doing the same thing. It sure made it very challenging to get to really know someone as from the moment they began to speak something felt off. To be presented with the key and with it the choice to return to the “Land of Real Me” by Serge Benhayon, was the most wonderful gift ever, especially when I realised that I had actually never left me, I had just buried me under my endless array of un-loving choices. That sure was an ouch moment!
Ingrid that is a key point that you have shared, none of us know that we have left the Land of the Real Me because everyone else is shuffling around in exactly the same land. Not only that but that wasteland has actually become our focus, it is full of ideas, images and pictures that are so full of promise as they lure us towards them. We are encouraged to think about different jobs and what identity they will bring us and in addition to that we can then add hobbies that will also bring identification, as well as an entire array of an insurmountable amount of other images that we add to our empty carcass in the false hope of feeling full.
Life was simple, life was joyous, life was harmonious and life was very, very easy. Life is easy and simple when we just be the love that we are….and we make it about people first, life just unfolds and flows and all that we need for our future is already within.
When we think about it what has changed? If we listen to who we are, to our body and then act and respond from there it changes our life and all those around us. After all what could be more true than knowing who we are? And what could be more simple than knowing that by connecting to/with and feeling our own body?
I also can remember the times before life got serious and it seemed like the light/life was sucked out of me. It’s such a shame that the world is set up to do this to us and we have to go all around the houses to get back to what we didn’t need to leave in the first place.
You have summed up the trajectory from losing ourselves to the world, what we find we can’t handle and what is expected of us, really well: “It seems that once I left The Land of the Real Me, I also lost sight of who I was.” We leave behind what is innate, true and precious and play ball with whatever until there is someone who reflects a true way to be – thank God for Serge Benhayon and The Ageless Wisdom.
I too have beautiful memories of the simplicity and absolute joy I felt as a child, much like you Alexis, enjoying very basic things and exploring my environment and nature, these all gave me great joy and a deep curiosity of these things.
So gorgeous and delicious the way you describe what it was like being a beautiful, willowy girl. Amazing how we can still hold all these sensory memories after so many years. It really makes me wonder how much else the particles of our bodies can reveal to us if we truly let them.
Connecting back to my body feels like I am being reunited with an old friend. The truth is it has never left me, but I can leave it, and have done often. Life is much simpler when I stay connected to it. It feels familiar and solid.
It is so simple and easy to be in life when we live through our bodies, as our body is where our true intelligence lies, not in our mind.
To live and move through the body we have greater access to the true intelligence that unites us all.
“The true intelligence that unites us all’ is available to us all equally through the way that we move.
‘I have come to understand that it is through our connection to our bodies that we re-member who we are.’ So true Alexis, our body shows us the way.
The esoteric teaches us that the body is actually made up of divine particles, and whilst it is said that our true essence is not physical in nature, and that in truth physicality is not our highest form of being, we must equally embrace the fact that the body in which we are housed is actually divine by way of nature. And so, whilst the esoteric student is devoted to understanding that life is multi-dimensional, that there is a divine energy that we can feel and respond to called fire, we must still devote ourselves in full to physical life. Indeed, it is through our dedication to the body that we start to become aware that life is energetic as much as it is physical in its outplay, and as such become aware as to the true nature of GOD.
I have many moments especially early in the morning when I feel this exquisite lightness when I move, and my body feels really spacious….but as the day goes on I notice my movements have changed and are not so light because I have went into the ‘doing’ and the drive. As soon as I clock this, I bring my focus to my movements and my body. It is a work in progress for me to hold the lightness I feel in the morning throughout the day.
“I have come to understand that it is through our connection to our bodies that we re-member who we are.” Having recently started an exercise program I can feel a real difference because I am connected to my body and my purpose has changed from competition and drive to simply being with me in each movement. The difference is incredible and I feel the lightness and grace of my body and it’s natural state of being. Truly awesome.
The richness of what you described Alexis in childhood connection to your body and senses is beautiful to read. Everything is seen and felt as magical in a garden, even the compost heap and creosote shed along with the willow branches forming a tent and that sense of timelessness of hearing the plane up high in the summer sky. I too remember the shady, mossy corner where the violets grew, the cubby formed by the overhanging branches of a huge lilac hibiscus tree, the sight of a bright red strawberry peeking out from under its leaves in the vegetable garden, the little dent in the back step where we placed bush nuts (now called macadamia nuts) to crack them open with a hammer and the agony of waiting until it was your turn in the family to get to eat the next nut cracked. And most of all that sense of timelessness and freedom of movement in the body. Inevitably the reality of the world’s harshness comes in and thanks to Serge Benhayon we are learning how to be open to feeling it all once again from whole body intelligence and let go our hurts. Like you Alexis no words could ever say how I feel about this gift from this great teacher.
Its remarkable to recall in such detail how we feel as a child a long time ago. the freedom in our movement is something so many of us lose, but how normal is it to lose this. We accept it as part of growing, but actually is it our response to the world around us that makes us change, more than the ageing process I wonder. The response to the harshness that is created that leaves many of us hurt and protective, losing the open heart that Alexis describes.
Life lived from the body Alexis I remember that too, and at times I connect to it again now as an adult. The truth you share here is profound, it’s not what happens to us and our lives, its how we choose to react, to stay open or to harden. Many of us choose the latter in the false hope it will protect us, a lie, when in fact there is no need for protection, if we stay open we are not hurt, it’s just our reactions that feed those hurts.
Re-learning to connect with my body is not always easy or straightforward as there’s a lot going on that I haven’t wanted to feel – emotions, distractions and numbness and the checking out – all tools that I’ve used to escape and try to protect myself, none of which have worked anyway. But not living from my body, living in a state of high anxiety or checked-outness – is proving futile and uncomfortable. I feel so much more ‘me’ when I live from my body by connecting to what I can feel, and expressing from there.
This blogs shows so clearly that true wisdom can only be found through the body as it is connected to an intelligence that is beyond that what our minds can imagine or think of. We can though walk away from this but in doing that we have to harden our bodies as to not to feel the suffering this disconnection brings and in that hardening we do not only hurt ourselves but many we are with by our way of reflection in that telling them that this is the way you should be with me. But we have to remember that we can make the choice to let go of this hardening and reconnect to our bodies any time we are ready. Our body will be thankful but without any resentment or whatsoever, as that is the nature to which we belong.
I really appreciate the ‘timelessness’ you referred connecting to as child. What I can feel is the way something may activate a memory and rather attach to thinking that was a preferred situation, activity etc, it may be much more about the quality of connection with my body that is the stored memory.
“I lived life from my body; my senses were what connected me to life. Life and I were one and the same. Life was simple, life was joyous, life was harmonious and life was very, very easy. I never thought twice about the fact that I loved life.” what a beautiful memory of childhood and how we are born and it is thanks to Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon that we are being reintroduced to reclaiming who we are in our livingness and love as adults and for us all to live everyday from our bodies and who we are in reality.
Our minds, if we let them can paint quite a false picture of ourselves. I saw a photo of myself in my mid teens twelve months or more ago and I was so surprised to see in this photo my sweetness and steadiness. Yet my mind has had me believing that neither were present in me at that age. It is the greatest of tricks, to see life only from the mind, without first feeling the truth from our bodies.
The descriptions in this article had me as if I was there too, not in the authors memories but reflecting in my own. The simplicity of life as a child, the smells, the freedom, the play, the laughing and the list goes on. What changed? Why isn’t this reflecting in my life now? Some may say more responsibilities, mortgages, money, work, adulthood and that list goes on as well. What is it though? What I am feeling is different? It’s more simple then all of that because reading this story I could feel my life as a child clearly and it’s not to dwell there and wish for something but more embrace fully what I am feeling and then seeing. What I take this morning is the lightness, the simple and yet powerful connection to everything around me. Don’t get locked into life in the grind, break out to play with what you see. You can live life from wherever you feel to and even though you may ‘carry’ more with you doesn’t mean you need loose yourself and dull your lightness. Life can be child’s play and possibly when it is, you will find you are greater.
Having chosen to shut down in protection as young, we often forget the power that remaining open in our bodies has on our ability to cope with whatever is presented to us in life. It is beautiful however to be reconnected back to our bodies and our true selves, learning to remain in connection and move and express from the wisdom of both, no protection required.
‘I lived life from my body; my senses were what connected me to life. Life and I were one and the same.’ Beautiful Alexis, and very simply how we can be.
Yes Alexis, the fact that we know what we miss is showing us that we indeed only need to come back to it again. Hence the terms re- connection, re-discovery, re-development are great words to use, as they show we are never inventing something new but our true selves back again. This than takes the whole load off of the ideals that we have to become something.
Most people will identify with leaving the land of their real selves and walking the land of everything we are not which causes so much misery, complication, struggle and fear….and so much more. I walked this land too. Meeting Serge Benhayon and attending two courses for the first time for 10 days, changed so much in my life, and I am still changing and refining my choices to self-care and self-love. Seven years on I feel so vital, healthy and wealthy in all areas of my life as I now walk in the land of ‘being love’ to the best of my ability.
It is amazing the gift our bodies actually give us when we choose to stop and listen to it! It is so easy to dismiss a bump, a soreness, a headache etc.. as just something that happens in life but what if it is our bodies way of saying hang on how are you living – are you moving with the tenderness that you are or simply trying to get from a to b? There is so much love on offer when we stop to appreciate and see quite how supported we are. Or we can continue going letting ourselves think we are all alone – it is amazing the stories our so called ‘intelligent’ mind can run with!
James the stories that you talk about have and continue to have an absolutely unfathomably huge effect on humanity. The effect that the stories and beliefs have had and continue to have is to convince us that we are separate individuals, in charge of our own lives! To demonstrate just how ludicrous and incorrect this actually is, it’s like a tiny area in the middle of the ocean thinking that it is separate from the rest of the sea.
That is a great analogy and I agree – just because we wear different clothes, look differently, speak differently etc.. we think we are separate and effectively individual because we enhouse a body. But just like when we move in water every movement we make creates ripples and it is up to us what the quality of the ripples we send out are. They can either love or not love – the choice is always ours and what I love is we then get back what goes out – just like the ripples bouncing back off the side of a pool.
I can find periods where I feel out of sorts. The things that bring me back are always marker to do with how I feel within my body.
If that be food, excise and rest.
In the end the only thing you can trust is the body and its self.
Luke you’re so right and I always remember something that Serge Benhayon said, which was ‘the body never lies’, which is so true, although boy oh boy are we experts at ignoring it!
I really love the way you describe how you have become reconnected with yourself. Its shocking that we can spend decades in disconnection. I know I have. I feel this blog is a real celebration of your return and in that mine and others too.
‘…. alas, I left the Land of the Real Me and went walkabout in the Land of Who I Was Not’. How many of us can honestly say this is true for ourselves too? But what is surprising is that its only as you come back to yourself that you realise how far you have deviated looking outside of yourself for something that has always laid within…. Great blog Alexis.
How beautiful to come full circle back to who you really are.
Yes, the connection with our bodies brings us back to the joy of being who we are. More and more I understand how important every movement the body makes is, that with changing our movements we can change the quality of the way we live, the way we express etc. It is all in our own body, our sweet and tender body.
Annelies I agree that potentially ‘the connection with our bodies brings us back to the joy of being who we are’ but also understand that our bodies have become so utterly miserable and depleted as a result of our unloving treatment of them that we have to first care very deeply for them, if connecting to them is going to actually bring about a feeling of joy.
Beautiful example and also how you bring it back from were you came from, the 9year old girl who knew very well who she was and the joy she felt, this shows us that , we only have to come back to who we are , we do not need to find it anywhere, only inside again!
This is the profound truth that must be taught to all children… That reconnecting with our bodies is essential for navigating our true pathway through life
“The Land of the Real Me” . . . I love it Alexis and we leave this land every time we jump out of our body to reside in our head whether it is because of a thought of how we should be or a reaction or distraction in order to escape from a situation or a hurt .
When we escape in this way we actually hurt even more as we are now disconnected from our bodies and miss feeling the love and wisdom.
Re-uniting to our body is re-uniting to all we are from and made of – love, God and the Universe.
“I have come to understand that it is through our connection to our bodies that we re-member who we are.” – and yet the mind constantly searches for answers, which, is what we’ve been taught. And yet maybe the answer is to connect more to our body and let that be the master rather than the mind.
I like the simplicity of this article Alexis, as simplicity has so much intelligence
Being educated in how to genuinely deal with our hurts is one of the greatest things we can be supported with and I have huge appreciation for Serge Benhayon helping me find clarity with this. I can relate to going hard and trying to ignore feeling hurt but can see now how there is a way to simply be honest with yourself about what you’re feeling, to not indulge in it but to be able to resolve it and move on with greater understanding of ourselves and life.
Through re-connecting to my body I am learning that these reactions and emotions do not come from the body. They come from the part of me that doesn’t want to accept what the body is feeling about life. My body is very open and accepting of life and knows how to be in life, but the reactive part doesn’t want life to be that open and easy, joyful and flowing. So it holds on and that reaction gets held in the body to the point where I have blamed the body for holding on. But it is not to blame and when allowed to be it doesn’t hold onto those reactions and pain because they simply don’t belong. Before Universal Medicine I was completely blind to such a way of living, what Serge Benhayon has offered is the chance to explore this connection to what was innate to us as children.
“I have come to understand that it is through our connection to our bodies that we re-member who we are.” What I love about the connection to our bodies is a depth of awareness and clarity that is like no other. It’s a forever evolving relationship that shifts and changes over time and space and one I truly enjoy exploring. Thank you Alexis.
The sweetness and zest for life we are blessed with as children, can be returned to, that is what we are reminded of when we meet the Benhayon family, that is what sets them aside. The Benhayon’s are actually not selling any cure, fix or outside aid that makes it all better. They are simply being living with the joy we have all felt as children, expressed in an adult body of course and in a quality that triggers a memory that we can live that way too.
Alexis I too recall living from my body up until I was 8 and then everything and everyone started to change. Other children started to be horrible and bully, they would stop talking to me and I did not understand why and what I had done. From 8 onwards I struggled a lot as one minute you had friends and the next they pushed you out of the group, it felt like there was constant jealousy as I was always a joyful and loving child.
I have just completed an Esoteric Massage course and the habits and movements we have chosen were discussed “My body still holds the memory of the stiff bolt that had to be worked free in order to get in amongst the wheelbarrow and tools.” What I can feel is something all of us can relate to, the body holds memories, habits, movements, energy we have chosen. How often we choose something that creates the habit, the energy of what we do? This is the awesomeness that is Esoteric Massage, it supports the letting go of habits which do not support us, amazing.
We often look back at memories we have of when we were kids and they always seem light and fun, because back then we were so present with our bodies and our feelings, and didn’t have anything to over-ride what we felt we simply lived in the rawness.
It is through the connection with our bodies we get to know the essence of who we are and the simplicity of life when we choose to live that way.
The photo shows how at ease young children are in their bodies, something adults can learn so much from.
Just the title of your article is super healing. I’ve avoided feeling my body because of the anxiety I’ve let in and held onto. But, by staying with my body I can feel beneath the anxiety there it is that I lay. I’ve let so much energy in that is not of my essence and, at various points in my life have mistaken it for me so as not to feel the harm I’ve caused myself. My body has been so faithful to me in every breath but I’ve not returned this love at all. It’s humbling and beautiful to feel how I can be with my body and be a trustworthy companion.
Thank you Alexis. I really enjoyed reading your blog. I too remember my childhood through my body and it was only when I disconnected from my body that my memories became vague. These days when I misplace something and am looking for it when I let myself connect with my body I know exactly where I have put the thing that I have misplaced. The body knows because it is with me, even when I am not with myself!
“I lived life from my body; my senses were what connected me to life. Life and I were one and the same. Life was simple, life was joyous, life was harmonious and life was very, very easy. I never thought twice about the fact that I loved life” This is gorgeous Alexis I see this in many children at the checkouts when I am working, especially between the ages of 3 and 7 you can feel there connection with everything, they are not afraid to say what they feel and there is a joy and ease as they move from one thing to another, life really is simple, imagine what life would be like if we never lost this connection and how different our lives would be.
“I lived life from my body; my senses were what connected me to life. Life and I were one and the same. Life was simple, life was joyous, life was harmonious and life was very, very easy” I can feel the joy and freedom in this comment living with this connection with your body for so many years of your child hood and how you rediscover a way to return to the connection you once experienced with your body.
Life is supposed to be that simple as you describe and I remember it myself from little, that life and me was one and the same and that life was lived through me.
To rediscover the lightness, joy and playfulness of our childhood and begin to live it in our adult years is a miracle and a blessing for all.
Our bodies really do hold the truth of who we really are, along with the imprints of our choices. This can sometimes be a tough one to accept, because we usually much prefer to blame our bodies for what it shows us. I know for me this has been a very long standing issue that I have had with my body, it would present something and I would get frustrated and agree at it because it wasn’t doing what I want it to. But I am learning that our body responds to love, appreciation, deep care and honouring. These are all works in progress, but awareness is deepening every day.
If this is the truth which it is with more and more depth for me, “Our Bodies Hold the Key to the Truth of Who We Are” then what are we genuinely and consistently doing about it? I mean a detox, a 4k run, cross fit, liver cleanse, juice fast etc or are we looking at all of it. I mean exercise important, food yes and health tick but where is quality? I don’t mean eating organic or going to a personal trainer or anything like that but the how it feels. I mean if you own a super expensive car do you run it with no oil for a time to clean it out? Or do you over fill the oil or do you buy the most expensive oil because it’s better or do you simply have a look what it needs and bring to it what it’s asking for. You check the type, brand and quality of oil and then that’s what you pour in. But when it comes to our body it always changes depending on outside influences, time of day, availability, mood etc. Why do we treat ourselves that way? I know more and more it makes no sense to me.
I can also remember times when the harshness of the world rocked my world, until eventually it became a ‘normal’ event, and I started to harden myself, protect myself from the world and the people in it. How wonderful it is to be breaking free of those binds and embracing true nature of everything.
I love this article because it takes me back to a time when I lived from my body and listened to all that it knew. In reflecting back on this I can see that the interim years were simply wayward wandering from this and that I can retrace my steps (by giving some care and listening space to my body) and re-connect to the wisest guide I have ever had.
Such a great story which many of us can totally identify with, it may happen at different times, at different places and in varying degrees but all of us have been there and Serge has shown us the way back.
It is kind of surprising, but I would venture that most people would admit that they are uncomfortable just feeling being in their body. I know that sounds strange, but the truth is most of us are extremely disconnected to our body, not even registering when it is injured or in pain, or cold, or tired. And that is largely because we have developed a series of coping mechanisms and techniques for overriding the natural cues that our body gives us.
I love your description of life in your garden as a child, and that you have now returned to you with re-connecting to your body, ‘I have come to understand that it is through our connection to our bodies that we re-member who we are. By re-uniting with my body, I have been re-united with myself’.
Alexis, this is so beautiful ‘The profound teachings that Serge Benhayon presents have supported me to re-connect back to my body and I am beginning to feel like the beautiful, willowy child that I once was.’ I feel similar, I have been re-connecting to the gentleness, delicateness and loveliness in my body that is naturally me after years of living in a hard, driven way. The difference is huge and it is gorgeous to be coming back to me.
Our bodies have travelled with us since the beginning of this life, they are the expert witnesses of every choice, action, thought and expression we have every experienced or omittted.. It stands to reason that our body offers very wise counsel – the ultimate record keeper and orator – never holding back Loving wisdom for our learning and growth.
Yes, i agree Alexis…”it is through our connection to our bodies that we re-member who we are…” and this makes all the difference in living a fuller life.
Going ‘walkabout in the Land of Who I Was Not’ is a vey lonely and long walk. Returning to the ‘Land of Me’ is such a joy and, like you Alexis, there are not words to thank Serge Benhayon for enabling the return.
Our deep wisdom is our bodies, and so is true joy. And all choices we make and have made to leave this is having a deep effect to our ease of connection with what is shared before. It is through feeling this and letting go that we truly start to reconnect.
As we grow up, each of us tries its own way to develop, to go forward in life. The problem is fourfold: that this process is totally tainted by images; that we make those images ours; that we allow those images to dictate the ‘arrival point’ (hence the way) and that we learn how to move to get there and that we invest so much in that movement that to change tracks at some point is not easy. Most people add a little something to that movement but essentially keep going the way they have learnt.
Alexis, I too remember living such a joyful childhood in nature with lots play, this felt totally natural and a harmonious way of living. As I grew up bit by bit I hardened to the world and forgot for a while how sweet it is to just be me. Its beautiful to return to this now with an understanding that I don’t need to be swayed by anything outside of me, when I hold myself steady with Love.
Alexis the body really is the key and I love the picture, it does indeed say more than a thousand words! And we feel the world through our bodies, so in writing this I can feel how often when I want to numb my body I am actually not wanting to feel the world or feel how I am feeling.
How beautifully written! Your expression resonates in me very well! While I was reading, I kept picturing the major move that my family went through, however, I realised that I had hardened myself in preparation for this move. I joined my new school as the girl that nobody can mess with, I remember that I used to fight with guys just to show them that I am stronger than them. During my high school years I used to compete with guys in every way I could – I watched top gear to be more knowledgable in cars, I started to lift weights because I wasn’t going to be the wimpy girl that can’t carry heavy bags up the stairs, the list can go on and on.
This truly disconnected me to my body, and to read your blog and feel this in me is just amazing. Thank you!
What I love about your comment, Viktoria, is that your realisations about the waywardness of your behaviour are inspirations for what to choose next rather than hooks for self-flagellation, regret and remorse… super cool, thank you.
Love this…”…I have come to understand that it is through our connection to our bodies that we re-member who we are…” Oh how so very true!
There is a level of intelligence that comes from the body that the mind cannot grasp, and that is because the mind in itself cannot feel energy, whereas the body can. This is simple to test. Learn to watch your body when you react to something you don’t like, and it will find for example that your muscles across chest area and forearms perhaps are already flexed even before you have the thought to be angry. In time, you notice that the body responds to things the mind is not even aware of. You think you are calm, but the body is telling you otherwise. You think you are not angry at something, but your body is telling you otherwise etc etc etc. And the mind cannot deliver this level of intelligence, because the truth is that more often than not it will lie to itself about what is truly going on. And that is why the field of psychology is such a complicated mess. The mind makes life complicated, because it simply has not the intelligence of the rest of the body to understand what is going on energetically.
There is something very beautiful about our childhood, there is a simplicity that has no complicated thoughts and we connect to the world through what we feel and trust that feeling 100%. Decades later to actually reconnect to our body and start to feel the truth from our body again is a wonderful feeling.
Alexis your words ‘It seems that once I left The Land of the Real Me, I also lost sight of who I was and so chose an array of different images to inhabit.’ When we get swept up by images we leave ourselves behind and live a life that is not true to who we really are. I have now started to reconnect to my body, and live through the feelings I have through my body and not the images I once followed, and today I am much freer from the images that bound me, and closer to living a truer life from my heart.
Very beautiful Alexis – ‘I have come to understand that it is through our connection to our bodies that we re-member who we are. By re-uniting with my body, I have been re-united with myself and by re-uniting with myself, I have been re-united with the connection to God that I knew in my body as a child.’
Yes Alexis to go forwards we have to go backwards to when we were kids.
Thank you Alexis, this is a lovely reminder that we can all connect to that level of stillness we enjoyed when we were young, this is something that never leaves us as it is our true nature to surrender and flow with the simplicity of life as part of the all and never as an individual with the complexities and inequality created by that way of being.
I felt I had to come back to this blog Alexis ‘My reaction was to actively choose to change the way that I was being. My body hardened as I pretended that I was not hurt by what was going on. I tried to fit in and please others, I tried to fly under the radar’ the result of which was you ended up feeling ‘as authentic as a hologram’. I so get that. I also think that it is rare to have the support to not do that, to not try to fit in. That is the normal. Well -re-membering me has been the greatest gift heaven could have given me. Thank you for the reflection from your blog, it felt like looking in the mirror so many times.
‘The ironic part is that if had I chosen to keep being the real me, then I wouldn’t have needed any protection at all because it’s impossible to hurt an open heart.’ – this is great to consider Alexis – that if we live with an open heart – then we can’t get hurt. Wow this makes things so clear and shows the importance of responsibility in being open to others.
As I learn and grow through my body and not through what I learn from my mind which becomes the modes of living life when I close my heart and harden my body as a consequence of choosing a life of protection, I stop with evolving back to that beautiful tender and sensitive being I sense lives inside me.
I love the way you have expressed this Alexis, that it is through our connection to our bodies that we re-member who we are. The body is a gateway to the universality of us, ever deepening I find.
“It’s impossible to hurt an open heart” Thank you for the reminder that we can actually choose to live joyfully and stay open in our hearts. We don’t have to harden up and shut down, It is all a choice to stay sensitive and observant.
“By re-uniting with my body, I have been re-united with myself and by re-uniting with myself, I have been re-united with the connection to God that I knew in my body as a child.” The re-connection and conversations we have with our bodies is a confirmation of the essence of God within and shows that we can indeed return to our child like wonder and ways of being by simply connecting to how our bodies feel. Thank you.
” Our Bodies Hold the Key to the Truth of Who We Are” this is so true Alexis, something I have become more aware of is the more I open and surrender to my body the more I let go of the individual self that gets me into trouble and repeats behaviours that I know do not do me any good. Getting out of the mind and into the body is the best medicine for anyone.
I am returning to an inner feeling I knew as a child, I can feel the more I let go of the pictures I have in life the more I surrender to a feeling I held and expressed as a child. It is not a ‘childish’ feeling it is an essence, I knowing of our universality, of love and truth and our unity.
I have known how , when I have tripped or fallen I have pretended that I was not hurt, getting up in shame. I have also done that with an unkind word or a provocation, me I am fine, not hurt…this over time hardened my body and how I related to people. I would feel attacked and put the hard shell up. Letting it go has been a process, which continues. It is so worth it.
There is great simplicity and beauty in choosing to be with the childlike joy still there in our essence. There is also great power in this to dissolve those images that have taken us away into a type of adulthood where we actually lose that natural ease and grace. By taking on an image of responsibility that leaves us scrambling to get through each day we remove ourselves from a truly response-able way of living. It can be a daunting place to come back from unless we understand that it is simply a return to a child like quality within us as you so well express Alexis.
Yes Alexis, it is a lovely experience when we get the full body memory of our connectedness, it is timeless.
I too remember the lightness and natural ease of being in my body as a younger girl. Also the joy of movement for movement’s sake before pushing it into all sorts of unnatural positions and forces when going into sporting endeavours to seek recognition, acceptance and approval.
A simple life that flows with harmony is a life to Live – it is true that this deep knowing never leaves us and is a marker forever calling us home.
You, me and so many, many others “left the Land of the Real Me and went walkabout in the Land of Who I Was Now”, and some of our walkabouts have been very long and very destructive to our whole being. Looking back now I can see how exhausting it was existing in the latter, after all going against something that we naturally are takes a huge, demanding and consistent force. I celebrate every day that Serge Benhayon stepped into my life and shared with me the wisdom and the common sense to see that I was actually living who I was not, and through the peeling back of the many layers I had smothered myself in, I am now finally re-connecting to the “real me” once again.
Beautiful blog Alexis that has really made me stop and appreciate how open children are and the fluid and rhythmical way they walk, talk and simply enjoy life just by being themselves. It makes me wonder, can we learn just as much from children as they learn from us?
Great question Suse and I would add another question to yours and ask, are we harming our children by teaching them the things that we do? With what we are teaching our kids are we in fact teaching the truth out of their bodies and aligning them to untruth?
What you have expressed here Alexis is so simple, succinct, wise and profound, thank you;
“I have come to understand that it is through our connection to our bodies that we re-member who we are. By re-uniting with my body, I have been re-united with myself and by re-uniting with myself, I have been re-united with the connection to God that I knew in my body as a child”.
Having spent a long time away from my body, it is incredible, inspired by articles such as this, to start a dialogue with my body again… to let its wisdom become a part of what informs my choices every day – it makes life very simple.
By re-uniting with my body i have reunited with myself – priceless. This is Gold to be able to find our way back home.
This is great – reuniting with the body = reuniting with self. This is great to read and feel in the body. It makes so much sense and when I start to do this, I can feel the power of my body communicating back to me.
“I lived life from my body; my senses were what connected me to life. Life and I were one and the same. Life was simple, life was joyous, life was harmonious and life was very, very easy.” I love how you have described your garden Alexis, the full sensory experience that a child delights in, there is much in your words that i too can relate to. Today i observe how my youngest son lives life from his body – uses his movements to express and feel everything – its a magical reflection and reminder of how we can all be living.
The simplicity and joy of all you share and who we are is beautiful and can be felt throughout my body. A great reflection and inspiration to reconnect to this in ourselves by the way of the livingness to access who we really are by the way we live in connection to our very knowing inside.
It is amazing how much our bodies are here to support us and remind us of the love that we are. And it is equally amazing how much we mistreat our bodies to not feel this fact. Something as simple as overeating, or eating when our body does not need food is a way to suppress the love our body is showing us we are. Essentially any moment we are not love our body is showing us so whether or not we listen.
It is truly remarkable that the Will to return to who we are and to let go of the images that have defined other than ‘us’ delivers us instantly back to where we began – connected to our inner-most Truth.
Universal Medicine brings awareness to the fact that it is our choices that draw our experiences to us and that we are responsible for the choices we make. Alexis it is empowering when we start to take responsibility as you did when you realized that, “it is how I chose to react to the challenges that presented themselves that set me on a completely different tack.”
This blog highlights the fact that our education is sorely lacking in that we are not confirmed in our joyous, simple approach to life as children nor are we taught how to deal with emotion and discern what is us and what is not. Universal Medicine has filled this gap for many people by offering us a reflection of a true way of living and simple steps that we can take to return to who we truly are
Yes indeed Sandra, we have been offered a real gem by Universal Medicine and an opportunity for deep healing.
Alexis it is lovely to revisit your childhood with you and feel the simplicity and openness of the child we all were, and still are, and lovely that you are reconnecting and returning to the innocence, purity and love that is always within us. In this state we need no protection – as you say, “. . . had I chosen to keep being the real me, then I wouldn’t have needed any protection at all because it’s impossible to hurt an open heart.”
“…I lived life from my body; my senses were what connected me to life. Life and I were one and the same. Life was simple, life was joyous, life was harmonious and life was very, very easy…” This is a really great description of what it felt like when being a child… there was no disconnection between the body and life, it was all one of the same movement. It’s interesting how if something tragic happens during childhood, that this connected feeling gets severed, and from this point life is experienced from a separative point of view. Your blog shows that there is a Way to come back to the body and feel this beautiful expansive and joyful feeling again, that it is always there, we just have to re-connect.
Gorgeously said Jo and I simply love how the photo of the two young girls here is the perfect reflection of just how connected and open we all have the potential to be and were all once were as children.
I always notice how children move and play with such lightness, simplicity and ease, they are not holding back, questioning, doubting themselves, saying is it okay if I move in this way, do that or do this, they just move their bodies. If you shared with a young child all the things that really go through your head in the sense how should I move my body etc, they would think you were crazy. We tend to overthink everything. Kids just feel, and do, and listen to their body – it’s really really simple.
“But alas, I left the Land of the Real Me and went walkabout in the Land of Who I Was Not. My walkabout lasted nearly forty years. It seems that once I left The Land of the Real Me, I also lost sight of who I was and so chose an array of different images to inhabit. For all intents and purposes, I became as authentic as a hologram.” This sums it up so well Alexis, I too can relate to changing myself to fit in with what the world demanded I be. This process was possible from my own lack of self worth, and also the fact no-one at home was able to remind me of who I actually once was, no one noticed I was hardening/ conforming/ losing myself/ and so so sad. The reason for this was because they had lost themselves too.
your blog makes it all so simple Alexis. There almost feels like no excuse for not living who we truly are, especially if it is always there with us.
A gorgeous sharing Alexis of the quality of childhood, enabling the reader to re-connect to that quality in themselves.
I remembered there was a time in my life when all I felt and experienced was darkness and I was convinced that that was who I am. When my child was born, I was shown a reflection of pure joy in my life, and suddenly I remembered deep down who I naturally was. Joy is our natural way, and when I met Universal Medicine I understood how to live this truth from my body, and that naturally becomes support to others. Being this reflection in our world, how truly blessed are our children and everyone we encounter, and how much to appreciate of ourselves. Thank you Universal Medicine.
The more detail I find myself paying attention to the more grand and expanded and in my power I feel. Walking with an absolute knowing and authority of who I truly am – what a reflection of what is possible for us all as a society. Serge Benhayon has been a grand and true reflection for me and many others to know the love that can be simply lived in our daily lives – this reflection is a true blessing for all who choose to see it and live it.
What is so amazing is that the beautiful, true, loving aspect of us is always there under the hardness and protection, waiting to be re-connected to.
I am drawn back to the lightness and joy of your blog, Alexis, to remind me of the same feeling you describe that I remember from my childhood. We can easily reunite with ourselves when choose to rekindle the light.
After coming across the presentations of Universal Medicine and the Ageless Wisdom, I have spent some time exploring its principles and have found that it has been a process of discarding layers of rubbish and unnecessary baggage that I have accumulated over the years only to leave me back in the lightness and aliveness and awareness that I remember living as a young child. We have this naturally within us, so why do we let life take us so far from it, and what would it be like if we could grow up holding on to this sensitivity and understanding of our part in the all.
I loved reading your blog Alexis as it brought back my own memories of being a child and living in a world of timeless days, playing in the garden with bare feet with not a care in the world. I can so relate to your sharing of coming down with a bump when you moved out of the idyll into the ‘real’ and not so loving world. What stood out for me was your sentence “The ironic part is that if had I chosen to keep being the real me, then I wouldn’t have needed any protection at all because it’s impossible to hurt an open heart”… this feels so true to me, an open heart cannot be hurt and therein lies all our woes. Have we shut ourselves off from the world because humanity has lost its way and we don’t like to feel it? … I realise that this has been my experience and it makes me feel sad, but more and more I am coming back to my body, back to me, thanks to Universal Medicine I can turn it around, open my heart again and show the world that it is safe to be yourself and come out and play.
It is very powerful to feel the totally natural qualities of childhood emerge through the veils of adulthood and social conditioning.
‘Re-uniting with my body’ – a simple and hugely profound phrase – coming home to our body as our wisest guide and barometer.
Amina I also agree with you about being ‘amazed at how quickly our bodies can and do heal’, after goodness knows how many lifetimes of self abuse, neglect and lack of self love our bodies respond to the tiniest drop of love like flowers in the desert respond to rain.
At any point we can stop and choose to re-connect. Anytime we are ‘carrying’ thoughts you know you are carrying something that has happened previous into your present experience. Anytime we find ourselves in thought mode about what has been, this is a moment to stop and re-connect. It’s not that you can’t have thought it’s more that your thoughts should be connected to the rest of you and not the two running at the same time in different places.
Alexis, your writing is gorgeous, so beautiful to read. You have used words with such care to illustrate the life you lived as a child for the reader and then take them through the transition you spoke of. Very powerful and easy to connect to as a reader.
“There is an exquisite lightness and natural ease that seems to flow through both of us.” Thank you for sharing this Alexis. This is something that I am currently rediscovering, a natural flow, lightness and playfulness with life. Bringing back the simple joy I felt as a child. Rediscovering this lightness is a revelation for me.
Our True flow is only a ‘connection’ away. When we connect to our inner hearts, we will discover in an instant that our infinite wisdom and knowing of life has never left us.
This is such a beautiful sentence Alexis “I have come to understand that it is through our connection to our bodies that we re-member who we are.” The messages are all within us, all we need to do is feel them again and the joy of life returns.
I love the memories that you have shared from your childhood, and that these memories are actually held in the body and that this feeling of freedom and ease can be returned to and remembered in a tangible way.
What really stands out is the contrast between being young and more than content to roam around for hours in fields or on the beach looking into pools of water and playing, to then going to school and feeling deeply how the other children interact with each other, and how we are then received ourselves. Then throw in the mix the teachers and how they feel to us, is it any wonder the experience can be overwhelming. Then how awesome is it to discover that we can have that care free feeling which is only related to children in our bodies as an adult.
There is a real beauty in the way you share the joy of your early childhood and a way of living that is natural to us all…a way of living that we can all return to when we lose our way in life.
That exquisite lightness and playfulness as a child, which is abundant and makes life a simply easy flowing joy -It’s life changing to reconnect with that and know that it is never lost but always part of us and ready to be lived as we peel off the layers we have covered it over with.
It is I have discovered all in the choices we make everyday,even every second of the day, which can set us adrift from the purpose of where we are meant to be heading and this can go on for life times until we reach the breaking point that there has to be a different way life surely cannot be a constant struggle, there has to be more. It was while looking for the answer to ‘there has to me more to life’ that I came across Serge Benhayon and from the first workshop I knew that he was talking sense it was painful to hear because I could feel in my body just how much I was off course. I have discovered he does have the answers to the questions that everyone is asking, I feel we are asking the questions but we don’t want to hear the answers given because then we would have to take responsibility for the mess we are in. It’s so much easier to bury our heads in the sand or put our fingers in our ears but there is only a short space of time that we can do this and time is moving very quickly towards us and then we will have to deal with the consequences.
A great confirmation that life is about the body and not the head, as you say “It seems that once I left The Land of the Real Me, I also lost sight of who I was and so chose an array of different images to inhabit.” which is the same experience. Not being connected to myself meant I was living for the outside, living for images of how and what I needed to be and look like in every part of life, It was exhausting and my body felt exhausted. Fast forward to today and it makes sense that if the body holds the key then to separate from the body and just use the mind instantly means we don’t know who we are.
The mind is capable of extravagant lies, whereas the body simply reflects the truth.
I could really feel your connection to the innocent and joyful child you were, and the simple pleasure of living from the ‘willowy’ body. How beautiful that you are reconnecting to your body and the simple pleasure this connection brings again.
Our bodies hold the key to the truth that we are and the truth is that we are love.
Coming back to our natural way of being, full of love, joy and playfulness is accepting simplicity of life and harmony in the body, feeling our tenderness and to make the choice to live this again.
Yes, your statement Alexis, ‘Life and I were one and the same’, is so true and exactly what it feels like when you are connected to your divine essence where you can feel everything/everyone.
I love your description Alexis, of the exquisite lightness and natural ease that flows through children, they are not self conscious but full of joy when they are engrossed and playing together. We all know this in our bodies and can choose to return to it as we relearn and return to deeper connection back to the body. We can get so much information from the body about ourselves when we choose to feel it.
Beautifully expressed Alexis Stewart. Reconnecting to the wisdom of our bodies is a wonderful thing – a homecoming – as you so aptly describe here when you state: ‘Life and I were one and the same’. How glorious to feel.
We underestimate the power words have and the effect they have on our bodies, it is so easy to recall cruel words that were said to us as children many years later, but the effect is also felt in adulthood too, where the idea of banter is often a mask for abuse of one another, bullying and put downs that keep us protected from one another and any opportunity for true intimacy.
It is also remarkable how powerful the right words are at the right moment and how they can be remembered as a supportive and positive influence for a very long time.
This is very true Christoph, and of even greater importance. Remembering how much someone’s word can lift us, can if we wish give us the responsibility to provide that same encouragement to others in what we choose to speak.
To live life from the body and feel connected to life at all times, is a way of being that as you say, Alexis, is easy and natural. This childhood re-collection is a great reminder to all of us about how simple life can be, and shows up the complexity, the ideals, beliefs and pressures we needlessly put on ourselves and others, making life appear to be a struggle.
Looking at your picture reminded me of how easy is was when young to climb and spin on the monkey bars at school, and to play for hours without needing to collapse on the sofa in an exhausted heap. I love observing children at play these days, as there is much we can learn from them.
‘There is an exquisite lightness and natural ease that seems to flow through both of us.’ Why is it that we generally tend to lose our natural ease in life, when we should surely become more at ease with ourselves the longer we live…It exposes a great deal about the way we choose to hold our bodies and the quality we choose to live with.
Great point Kylie, to never compromise on our quality would lead to different choices.
If we were to continually keep refining our quality, then eventually we would lead ourselves back to the quality of God.
You so beautifully described the care free life of a child under ten years old that you experienced Alexis. I too look back to about that age and from about 9 we in my family were given a lot of responsibility looking after farm animals, so in some ways that carefree life was cut short too. I now recognize that I am the one making the choices in my life and need to take full responsibility for this. It is with much appreciation for the teachings of Serge Benhayon that I have come full circle.
As I was reading your blog Alexis I was re-minded that we are re-turning to a way of living that is known and very natural for us when we re-connect and re-unite. Our bodies do hold the wisdom and truth of who we are.
Is it really that simple, “Our Bodies Hold the Key to the Truth of Who We Are” Years ago you wouldn’t have got me to agree and even further I may not have even read this line as I would have been ‘too busy’. I had to stop, well I was stopped by an illness and it was obvious the way I had been with myself, my movements, thoughts and actions weren’t helping me. I didn’t want to look at anything I just wanted it fixed so I could get back to my life. It took sometime but I realised this was the problem, the way I was living my life was literally killing me. Something had to change as I couldn’t go on, it was like being really sick and looking for a cure but not wanting to look at the ‘how’ I got sick. The more I looked at the how and my part in the how the more things made sense. I wasn’t all at fault but to get back on my feet I needed to see that I had made choices to walk myself down a path and then if I truly wanted out then I would have to be the one to walk myself out. This was a corner stone of me feeling more solid, self responsibility and in that I saw that this is true and was the whole time, “Our Bodies Hold the Key to the Truth of Who We Are”
My reconnection started with the Gentle Breath Meditation (as presented by Serge Benhayon) many years ago and I am still learning to bring a focus or conscious presence to my breath so I can be fully with me!
For more on the Gentle Breath Meditation go to;
GENTLE BREATH MEDITATION http://www.unimedliving.com/search?keyword=gentle+breath+meditation
I can remember the feeling of absolute contentment and safety within myself when I was a small child . But the word safe does not really describe it – as I had no need for protection or hiding, I could simply feel me, and was so steady and joyful in that.I felt life from the inner me out, with no need for approval or recognition.
But gradually the intensity of life chipped away at me and I gave into it’s story . . and made plenty new stories of my own! But here I am now, peeling them all away and standing firmly as the true me, returning to my soul.
Our bodies hold the key to the truth of who we are as much as everything we have brought our way by means of moving in disconnection to ourselves.
Gosh I can relate to this feeling of timelessness and carefree joy as a child also. What strikes me thinking about it is how at ease I was, without any protection, guardedness or burdens. And I can also pinpoint the time when this feeling really ended – the beginning of high school for me. I too chose to fly under the radar and pretend to be someone else for a long time (still unpicking it) and I agree the only way out of this quagmire of illusion is to reconnect back with your body, which is the doorway to a reconnection back to the essence of who you are.
aaah a treasure to read thankyou Alexis. My body tingles and comes alive reading the connection and openess you felt in your body as so does my body remember as a child, which in itself is living proof of how our bodies respond to the openess, the willing connection to god, the all.
“The Land of the Real Me” gives me a feeling of walking around expressing from my own body, solid, confident and trusting in myself, whereas “the Land of Who I Was Not” feels empty and full of only fantasy and illusion. Yet this land that many of us walk about in feels real when you have walked in it for so long you wear it like a second skin. Then the hurts and self abuses become normal and magic becomes the wave of a wand that you hope will take it all away. But magic to a child, true magic, is the Magic of God, the knowing that when you open your eyes in the morning the world is there to be explored and lived, and everything you meet is a reflection of who and how you are, that it is not synchronicity that brings surprises and unexpected happenings and meetings your way, but everything constellations around you as you walk the real you, in your body, feeling what is. Serge Benhayon shows us the way to return to this knowing of who we are, and the truth of why we are here.
I have been appreciating more and more lately, just how much we’re missing out on when we are not allowing the divinity of who we are to flow through our bodies. It’s a bit like having the most amazingly beautiful home to live in, where we have absolutely everything at our fingertips, but instead, we turn our back on this and choose to go outside, squishing our selves into the dog kennel ….. makes no sense at all!
I used to love climbing frames – as a child we had access to one but it was made of metal and in the Middle Eastern sun, would warm up during the day until it was too hot to touch. I remember the colour to this day – it was bright red. I also recently saw a video of the pool we used to play in in the 1950s and it showed me just how accurately I had remembered it. I can remember small details of my childhood very accurately, but of my early days at boarding school, I can remember being chased around the playground one day but not much else after that. Perhaps that’s when I shut down my ability to feel, sense, see and remember.
The simplicity of childhood re-accessed through the body is profound. We knew it then and we can know it now. The joys, the play, the smells of trees and grasses, the beauty, the timelessness, are ever-presently ours.
The simplicity of life that can be re-accessed from the childhood memory in the body is profound. We knew it then and we can know it again. the wonder, the joy, the play, the smells of trees, grasses and plants, the beauty!
“The profound teachings that Serge Benhayon presents have supported me to re-connect back to my body and I am beginning to feel like the beautiful, willowy child that I once was.”Yes l too am feeling that child returning as l come back into my body after so long away! God is within our ‘whole’ body. lt makes sense to me that l felt this so much more as a child. l was so much more connected to my whole body.
What a beautiful reminder that our true selves that lightness our being is still there untouched waiting to be reconnected with at any time. Nothing to be done or improved or fixed just the letting go of what is not truly us.
“I have come to understand that it is through our connection to our bodies that we re-member who we are. ” How awesome it is that we can remember who we are by reconnecting back to our body and with connection remember who we was as a child and who we truly are.
This reminds me of the joy that is within my body. It is always there and surely had been when I was young. And I know I can make the choice to connect with it in every moment. Although I sometimes still seem to forget how it is to be in this joy, I find it in true movement and connection with others.
Living from a connection to my body and listening to all the feedback that my body provides has opened up a whole knew awareness for me, or rather, reconnected me to an awareness that I once had.
Love how you have expressed every detail of what you sensed, smelled, saw, felt, experienced back then – it is still very much alive and deeply felt – Thank you.
“By re-uniting with my body, I have been re-united with myself and by re-uniting with myself, I have been re-united with the connection to God that I knew in my body as a child…” Its interesting how the word ‘God’ has been manipulated and changed to mean something so far removed from the very joyful, playful feeling and lightness that is naturally present and felt as a child… We naturally knew God as this feeling without knowing it by any name, for it was not labelled, it just was. God was simply a feeling of love, innocence, and fullness. And yet, as we grow up into adulthood, this word has been reinterpreted to mean so many different things to many people, and even become the cause of tension and even war between people. How incredibly polar opposite in meaning and interpretation that happens between childhood and adulthood.
Our bodies tell us everything, and when it speaks it speaks loudly and clearly, it knows who we are and it never stops telling us, and on top of that it works non stop clearing and carrying all the extra stuff we take on.
Know life by its movement and you can never be fooled.
I am so glad you shared this, I too changed schools at similar age and felt the harshness of life coming at me from the new environment and how different it all felt.
I love the remembrance to the childhood and the reflection how present I have been and how much I have naturally sort stillness often in observing for hours how things are working and moving.
We could even say that our bodies hold the key to the universe.
Your warm description of childhood memory evokes so much Alexis – I can feel my own remembrance, of playing for hours on end outside, in our backyard, in the bush nearby. The expansiveness, the feeling of the sun on my skin, the bird and animal life, the creek, the trees, our cubby-houses… The interconnection with everything and my brother and friends was natural, joyful and an absolute delight. It’s well worth reflecting upon whether any of this has been lost today, and then also, realising that it’s there – right now – just the same as it always was, and well actually, deeper…
Thank-you for your poignant blog.
Words of such wisdom Alexis, inclusive of these: “…it’s impossible to hurt an open heart.”
If only such wisdom were the mainstay of our culture, the way we interact, share with and support each other – that to keep one’s heart open, to oneself, life and all others, is the key to truly living and knowing the power of such innate connection in our everyday lives.
Thank God for Serge Benhayon and the teachings and wisdom he continues to pour forth – wisdom that is the same as every one of us holds, but that we have let be diminished and disregarded due to all that we experience. Clearly, this needn’t be so, and the Grace of the truly open-hearted is most deeply needed.
Reading your blog again it struck me that the lightness of the body of the child that you describe is so much more than just physical in nature and that we accumulate so many layers and hurts that then impede the suppleness and joy that we naturally are; in your words, we become “as authentic as a hologram”.
“I lived life from my body; my senses were what connected me to life. Life and I were one and the same.” What a beautiful reminder that this is how life can be when we connect to the love that we are, which connects us to all that surrounds us. As children this is very normal, but as we get older we tend to lose this connection for hundreds of different reasons. But we can reconnect with it if and whenwe choose to, at any moment in time.
We tend to forget that God is in everything, and all around us all of the time, and that when we express our essence, we are actually speaking Gods language, the language of divine love.
The more than I live connected to my body the better I feel, the healthier I am and the younger I look. When we live from our bodies as we do when we are kids we are in a flow that does not deplete us, in fact, it revitalizes us.
The simplicity and consistency of my body’s signals to me are an ever increasing source of inspiration… it is always with me (!) sign posting the way – the variable is my willingness to listen, see and respond.
I felt like I was right there in your back yard with you Alexis, great blog, loved it, but felt you summarised so beautifully here “I have come to understand that it is through our connection to our bodies that we re-member who we are. By re-uniting with my body, I have been re-united with myself and by re-uniting with myself, I have been re-united with the connection to God that I knew in my body as a child.” Reconnecting to our bodies is the way of bringing the ageless wisdom to the 20th century and living the light of our soul on earth.
The ‘burden’ of adulthood is one of our own making and I appreciate Alexis your testimony to Serge Benhayon for sharing and inspiring people to rediscover their essence and that quality of timelessness that can always be reconnected with through our bodies.
Children are known for being playful, bubbly and for their ability to find joy in any seemingly mundane activity. I wonder what it would look like if we didn’t give this up or compromise our joy, and if we loved life to the same degree into adulthood.
It is not so much that children find joy in activities but more that they have joy in their bodies and bring that lived joy to the activity.
Yes the memories of the body are very strong – even after years, once it has learnt something it won’t easily forget it.
Once something is known by the body, it is known forever.
The face of a child hardening trying to pretend something didn’t hurt when it did, is hard to see and sad to recall. Thanks for sharing this story, Alexis.
Alexis, I absolutely loved reading your blog, it is so evident to see just how much our bodies are designed to feel and read everything with far more space, understanding and grace than that of our minds alone. To have lived this, stepped away for 40 years as you say and returned to your once absolute knowingness of your body is not only so beautiful it is a story that when shared with the world reignites us all to know that this is well within our capabilities too. Thanks again! Loved your picture too!
Gorgeous picture Alexis , ‘I lived life from my body; my senses were what connected me to life. Life and I were one and the same. Life was simple, life was joyous, life was harmonious and life was very, very easy. I never thought twice about the fact that I loved life. ‘ And I can very much relate to this as a kid…
‘It seems that once I left The Land of the Real Me, I also lost sight of who I was and so chose an array of different images to inhabit. For all intents and purposes, I became as authentic as a hologram.’ This feels creepily familiar – even now, at the age of 66, I find that on some days I am still not sure who I am. I spent most of my life trying to be what I thought other people wanted me to be or liked, but over the last eleven years I have relaxed much more and am enjoying letting the real me out.The problem was that I identified with what I did instead of simply feeling who I am. This is now changing as I begin to appreciate the qualities I bring regardless of what I am doing.
Such a beautiful blog to read Alexis and one that bought back vivid memories for me of my early school years and how I thought the best way to cope with the verbal assaults by other children was to ‘harden up’ so I couldn’t feel it as much. I had no idea that such feelings could be held in the body for so long. Thanks Alexis.
The body is a remarkable marker of truth ( as now famously known to many!). I was just reading an article in a recent magazine at the hairdresser, which reported that within ten years there would be a process on the medical market whereby unwanted genes for various serious illnesses could be deleted from the body! This is a very serious ( if understandable) move for medicine to be making given what we know about the body being an exact and true reflection of the way we are living life. This takes burying issues to a whole other dimension.
The photo of you both feels exactly as you describe Alexis – light and fluid. How marvelous it is that we can return to these early images of ourselves for confirmation of who we are at heart.
On reflecting I can remember as a child how I loved being outdoors. I lived on a farm and every chance I had I would go outdoors to play. I loved the smell of the countryside and connecting to the animals and nature. I can vividly remember going to school with some freshly cut wild flowers and hedge growth picked by my Dad. I loved sharing with others what I enjoyed. It is interesting as I reflect on the feelings coming up in my body. I have tended to focus on those moments that weren’t so great when I was a child but as I read this blog, it supported me to connect to moments where I felt joy in being me. Thank you Alexis for sharing.
It is quite brilliant how tangible a memory is evoked by being able to re-connect to ourselves as it was as a child, from a family photograph. This just goes to show how our body does hold the truth of everything, which, suggests our body is the key to knowing exactly the origins of where we come from… Self care, self appreciation, self love are all tools to tender to our body that support our way back home.
The wonderful memories came to life in me when reading this blog. It’s sad we feel the need to change to fit in with the so called normal and then for many including myself later begin the search for something (our true self) to fill that empty void feeling from someone or something outside of us. With love I’m totally appreciative and inspired by Serge Benhayon presentations, the quality and integrity of his workshops and he and his family’s livingness, that began and continues the journey for me back to connecting to my innermost love, accepting my own unique expression, and love for all.
Reuniting with the wisdom of our bodies, brings a much needed support and solid foundation in a world that tries hard to get us operating from our head, in stress and mental energy or from emotional reaction. And it is our body that gets assaulted by the stress and dysfunction of this way of living as it works hard to keep bringing us back into balance… But we can do much to support the body to clear these impacts and restore itself to its naturally vital, flowing, easeful state, and even moreso get to understand the true beauty and wisdom within that is our natural birthright.
I love how I am transported into your garden and upside down by the vivid descriptions in your blog. For me, that is the difference in descriptions from the head and the body. Gorgeous to reclaim the space in your body as an adult now.
As soon as we re-connect to our body our innate wisdom is available to us.
To me my re-connection started with the Gentle Breath Meditation (as presented by Serge Benhayon) many years ago and I am still learning to bring a focus or conscious presence to my breath so I can be fully with me!
For more on the Gentle Breath Meditation go to;
GENTLE BREATH MEDITATION
http://www.unimedliving.com/search?keyword=gentle+breath+meditation
How beautiful to connect with your childhood Alexis – and also to connect to my own experiences. I always felt a freedom and an openness when I explored the garden or the beach. Nature offered me a place to be with me without judgement or imposition. I enjoyed the smells of the grass being cut in the garden and the warmth and musty smell that I would sense when I had been on the beach too long and retreated to the beach hut. Like you I began to disconnect from my senses as I felt the assaults from the outside world, where things felt harsher and more abrasive – I shut down my sensitivity for many years and only now am I reclaiming it. My sensitivity has remained in tact – the world has not bludgeoned it into non existence and numbed me totally, as I now rekindle it and gently nurture myself back to wholeness again.
Alexis, I love the photo of you and your sister and how at ease you are in your bodies – very beautiful and natural, it is great to have the reminder that ‘it is through our connection to our bodies that we re-member who we are’, this is so simple and so powerful, it is wonderful that you are returning to feeling at ease in your body again as you did as a child and how possible this is for an adult to feel like this too when we are in connection with our bodies.
I love this photo and sharing of the “exquisite lightness and natural ease that seems to flow through both of us.” so true and beautiful to see in children and reflect to us who we naturally are with out the protection and holding damage to us that happens as we emerge through life as we currently know it to be. The knowing that there is another way to be and the returning to it is offered to us from the reflections and teachings of Serge Benhayon, Universal Medicine and the Ancient Wisdom and cannot be denied as it is carried in our bodies as we come in for us all to feel our natural freedom of movement and Divinity that we can return to by our choices lovingly.
More and more I wake in the morning feeling just so yummy, so at ease in my body that I take a few moments to appreciate this ‘exquisite lightness and natural ease that seems to flow through my body’. I have so much to appreciate in all the letting go of all my old ways: the hardness, the protection and the hiding. And the more I have let go, the more I have returned to my natural state of being.
Wow Jacqueline, thank you for sharing – this is beautiful to read and very encouraging.
Hear! Hear! Jacqueline, my body feels very much the same as what you have presented. I also feel that I have released lots of the ideals and believes that held me from be connected to the natural me!
Some of my best childhood memories are from being outdoors in many different kinds of weather, just enjoying moving my body.
So simple yet so memorable.
Spot on Christoph – I too recall body movements so limber and easy and also smells. There was such a simplicity in childhood that got forgotten as I grew, but am now bringing back again!
Alexis, when I read your account of your life before you were nine, there is a lightness, a beautiful flow and ease, a connection with yourself and everything that is just beautiful. How lovely it would be if we could teach ourselves to keep that connection no matter where we are or what is happening around us. That beautiful open heart is within all of us.
yes, I felt the same on reading this article, and how in my workplace and many other settings I can choose to harden and protect myself when things do not feel in the natural ease and flow I know they can be. This is all learning i know and coming back to allowing myself to feel the open heart within all of us is super supportive, thank you.
No matter how our external circumstances change or reflect back, the simplicity, ease and joy you mentioned Alexis is always there within us! We may not be as flexible in our physical body as when we were younger or hang from trees anymore, but that sparkle within, is always there when we connect with ourselves, and this is what life has given us to explore and to live.
This is so powerful – our absolute love is always there within in full volume just waiting for us to reconnect to it and also live in a way that allows it to be fully magnified throughout every cell of our body. I am always totally amazed when I am a bit off but then choose to stop, feel, be honest and surrender just how quickly I can feel my true self.
We have a choice even as a child as to how we react to new situations when we choose to harden as I certainly did at a very young age and lost my true way of being I then led most of my life as a victim to that hard cold loveless reaction to life. I now see life through the eyes of my essence through the connection with my body take responsibility for my responses to life’s challenges and how I choose to respond to them.
One thing I clearly remember was my two brothers and I going on many walks into the bush on our 50 acre property and beyond. We would be gone all day having had breakfast only, we knew where the apples and blackberries grew, we knew how in dense bush to navigate in whatever direction, we avoided snakes and any incidents around creeks, building cubbies, observing kangaroos and wombats, following fence lines. We would always arrive home in time for dinner having had the best day with adventures to tell and we were all around or under 10. I reflect now at the trust that was naturally there from our parents, which was then naturally there for us in trusting our own instincts and Wisdom. To this day I have a knowing that I can navigate my way in life and my Wisdom within is my guiding light, the relationship I built with my body as a kid is still there, there were times when I ignored my inner knowing, but always with hindsight my body knew the truth… a relationship and connection I now deeply appreciate has always been within and is constantly my guide.
A beautiful sharing about great life learning as a child and the foundation built of trusting your innate wisdom, which has supported you throughout life – thank you, Merrilee.
Thank you Alex for a really beautiful sharing bringing up memories for me of the joy and fun climbing trees and running through the long grass being at one in the moment with nature, I too have done the full circle coming from the land of the what is not back to the land of the what is, feeling life from my body once again and the truth it holds for me to live by.
It’s so beautiful how vivid and 5 dimensional our childhood experiences are. To live this as an adult is more than a dream come true but deeply natural for us all.
The picture says it all, Alexis, pure timelessness and joy and it’s beautiful to hear that you’re now reconnecting with that. I’ve been hanging out with a friend’s kids this weekend and it was such a beautiful reminder of how simple life can be meeting each moment as it is without expectation or pre-conception. It was great to see and remember that that is how I was, and is now something I’m learning to be as I come back more to the world of me and not who I think I should be.
Our lightness, beingness and presence in childhood is so strong and so precious and most people can remember it and long for the simplicity of it. Your sister must have felt something quite powerful and beautiful about your relationship and childhood itself to have dug this out and sent it.
It’s such a joy to rediscover living from ones body – even to a small degree of what will be unfolded. I don’t have strong recollections of doing so as a child, I feel I choose to shut down at an early age as I often felt uncomfortable in my own skin and wanted to disappear. But it doesn’t matter what went before and my quest to search for something lost from my past I have often chosen to keep me in distracted from feeling all of me in my body now and disbelief the wonderful truth that our bodies hold the truth of connection with not only ourselves but each other and God no matter what. A beautiful inspiration to care for them deeply!
“I have come to understand that it is through our connection to our bodies that we re-member who we are.” And that is the key really, re-member-ing, re-connecting with our physical bodies, re-establishing a relationship with ourselves, listening to, appreciating and expressing with all of us, not just a narrow strip that the world approves of but all of us as God made us, sweet innocent, tender and wise.
As children we are naturally in our whole bodies but as we grow up we being to change and adopt the ‘unreal’ concept that our head is somehow separate from the rest of our body – disconnection.
Yes, and the joy of just moving our body can become a distant memory.
When we are in our heads it is impossible to be in our bodies but the great thing is that the opposite is also true, when we are in our bodies, it is impossible to also be in our heads.
I love remembering how I was as a child – how innocently free i felt to be sweet and cute and open before I felt the world telling me to be sexy and attractive and hot – all these things we feel we need to become and fit into, and in the process leave behind all that was naturally there and beautiful in us.
When we’re young we focus on the joy that’s there to be felt in everyday life rather than getting stuck on any ugliness or ill-choices people are making around us. Although it’s important to read and address the latter, there is no need for us to live our own lives stuck on what other people/society is choosing; we can inspire changes in this if we live love rather than indulge in the bad stuff.
When I am connected to my body I feel alive and I feel truth. Rather than a bombarded of thoughts, ideals and beliefs, I feel present, more confident and life is more light and fun.
Hello Alexis and it is very sweet that your sister sent you this photo and from that all this has come. It shows what you say, from the smallest spark can come a larger flame. It is similar to the feeling that come from your body. You could say ‘I can’t or don’t feel anything’ and I certainly would have been one of this crowd in years gone by. But each time there was awareness around just the smallest feeling, I appreciated what came from it and it’s grown and grown. When you look back into history there are many many clear signposts to let us know that “Our Bodies Hold the Key to the Truth of Who We Are”.
It is crazy how we can feel so gorgeous and beautiful, aware of everything and to then not know how to be in a situation so we change who we are. Choosing to harden and put up an wall of protection thinking this is working but actually doing the complete opposite.
‘Thank you’ just doesn’t cut it when I feel the absolutely priceless gift that Serge Benhayon and Esoteric Yoga have given us, to learn to reconnect back to my body has been the pathway back to knowing God and his vibration of stillness.
I only remember certain parts of my childhood and usually these memories are the carefree and playing moments. There is something in what is shared here “I never thought twice about the fact that I loved life.” in that I remember not thinking a lot as a child but accepting how life is just what it was and there was an innocent acceptance of this. It was very much in the moment – which, in writing this, feels very simple. Thank you for the lightness in your sharing, Alexis.
“By re-uniting with my body, I have been re-united with myself and by re-uniting with myself, I have been re-united with the connection to God that I knew in my body as a child.” Bravo! How magnificent and true this statement is for me also. A little more daily without perfection.
I was very moved by your expression Alexis, your description of your childhood took me to similar memories of mine, and the joy of moving. So often it is a shock we receive and the choice we take to harden that override the truth we really know inside, that what influences us and even educates us in different behaviour is not the true way. I think few people are able to see it is a choice, but when we at last recognise it , then we can choose for ourselves the one we know we are in our heart of hearts.
I love the feeling of being connected to my body, it makes me feel as though I glow like a pregnant woman.
‘I lived life from my body; my senses were what connected me to life. Life and I were one and the same. Life was simple, life was joyous, life was harmonious and life was very, very easy. I never thought twice about the fact that I loved life.’ – What strikes me here is that when we are connected to our bodies we are also naturally connected to life – as children we learn to adjust to the demands and expectations from outside and start to replace simplicity with complication. Slowly but surely that becomes who we think we are and that life is supposed to be strugglesome.
What I love the most is how real you have made this post and the fact that we never lose our tenderness. We only get to feel the emotionality that life has thrown us into thanks to the presentations by Serge Benhayon. After 12 years of being a Student of The Livingness I am still finding pockets of resistance that have kept me from the ‘land of the real me’.
As someone who has lived their entire life in protection, i was not even aware that i had a stiff or hard body until i was in my 30’s and after i had been introduced to Sacred Esoteric Healing. In fact – i remember clearly in my 20’s that the goal was to have a firm hard body as a trophy rewarding the endless hours of running, gym and yoga that i was doing at the time – that was a symbol of fitness and strength to me. The reality is that i already was adorning a guard of protection and an encasement that was not unlike a steal fortress well before i leaned more heavy on sport. How freeing it is to now feel what my body must have felt like as a baby – without the protection, now -surrendered and in harmony with the world around me.
If this is accepted in absolute fullness of the truth that it is, then every single movement that we make with our bodies, every single piece of food that we put in to our bodies, every single expression that comes out of our bodies matters.
Returning to live our lives from our senses brings the connection and joy back into life. We remember the appreciation of all the little things we had forgotten, the feeling of soft squidgy grass between our toes, getting wet in the rain and splashing in puddles, walking on damp sand and loving the imprints of the feet, blowing the dandelion clocks, picking daisies, or the smell of new mown grass. The list is different for everyone, but the feeling of the connection is the same and the body responds by releasing the tensions and returning to its natural rhythm and flow.
‘I lived life from my body; my senses were what connected me to life. Life and I were one and the same. Life was simple, life was joyous, life was harmonious and life was very, very easy.’ To live life this way is joyful and natural and something we can all reconnect back to as it is innate.
What stands out here is the freedom in your body as a child and the joy that came with it. It’s so delightful to read and remember this in my own life.
To find back in our adulthood to our innocence as a child is a blessing. This is a beautiful reminder to come back to our natural playfulness, deep love and interest in life.
Loved reading about your childhood Alexis and the ease of living you had with your body, and to some having that freedom again from the worries of adult life may seen unachievable or indeed far fetch, but many students of The Way of The Livingness are now finding that there is a difference from living from the mind as supposed to living from their bodies.
Alexis, it is beautiful to read this, ‘I am beginning to feel like the beautiful, willowy child that I once was.’ I can feel with what you are presenting that as adults we can also live with very light bodies that are at ease and we can be playful and joyful – that these are not only ways of being for children but we can re-connect to these feelings and live these ways as adults too – this is very inspiring.
My life changed dramatically at the age of seven, new continent, country, family, home and school. Be-wildering time, I adjusted and adapted to the new to be accepted and survive and with this came layers of protection held on to until recently when, with the support of Universal Medicine practitioners I learned that it is possible to release it and be myself again.
“My reaction was to actively choose to change the way that I was being. My body hardened as I pretended that I was not hurt by what was going on. I tried to fit in and please others, I tried to fly under the radar.” Until I met Serge Benhayon this was my approach to life and my hurts too. I would bury them and pretend everything was ok. Learning to accept my delicate sensitivity has been a work in progress but I am finding that the more I allow myself to feel what is going on and to feel the hurts the more they are healed quickly in the awareness and understanding of why they are there in the first place.
“I have come to understand that it is through our connection to our bodies that we re-member who we are. By re-uniting with my body, I have been re-united with myself and by re-uniting with myself, I have been re-united with the connection to God that I knew in my body as a child.” Inspiring to have it re-confirmed how connection with our bodies is the key to so much more than we ever imagined.
For many it is difficult to tend to their bodies, because most bodies are not in a good condition and what we first get to feel is how we have treated them. But that’s only a transition phase, a gateway to the lightness that you so poetically describe, Alexis.
In is interesting what you bring to me with this blog Alexis and I love the picture. It makes me ponder on the fact that I too as a young boy was flexible in my body and experienced everything from that and I also remember that life was simple and joyful. What I remember from that time I remember form my body, from how it felt and was connected with all that I touched, saw, heard and smelt and in a way is thus stored in my body, not in my mind. Now being in my fifties, also re-establishing my connection with my body and inspired by the teachings of Serge Benhayon, I wonder why we choose to disconnect from that simplicity that living from the body provides? For myself I can say that somewhere in my teens I have chosen to disconnect from my body and to start living from my mind as a result of not being able to cope with becoming more aware of the waywardness society was in. With this choice, as many people do, I have hardened my body that in time has become less supple and flexible. People say that this is normal when we age, but now I know this is not ‘the normal’ as I now can feel that this stiffness is withholding me from living that life I once lived as a child. But with choosing to reconnect to my body as being my guide in life, I feel that the stiffness is fading and I do become more flexible again especially in my pelvis, my back and my legs. The joy that comes with feeling the responsiveness to life in my body is returning to me as is that same joy I know I have lived as a child.
We have been sold a lie that a stiff body is a pre-requisite for middle age. Yet the fact is with the right way of being, the untethered lightness of being we had as a child is something that can not just be rediscovered, but lived in full until our dying breath.
The natural beauty of connecting with and living from our body takes us instantly back to our childhood. It is possible to once again live with no worries or burdens and a simplicity, flow and playfulness in our day. Thank God for Universal Medicine for reminding us how to re-live this way.
Looking at the gorgeous picture of you, Alexis, with your sister, I know that I can again feel that joyful freedom and suppleness in my own body. As a consequence of all the choices I’ve made over the last 50 odd years, there is a hardness that I am gently plying and softening with a very special balm called LOVE.
Utterly gorgeous and very evocative Alexis is your communication of how life felt when up until the age of nine. I can relate to so much of what you have shared here and how much the body registers and remembers. I was a city kid whose parents also had a country property where we spent every weekend for years. It was a wonderful place to grow up in and very complementary to my primary school years which were characterised by a similar (relative) freedom of expression. These moments are very precious and are there to return to even though we can toughen and lose sight of them for decades. I love feeling that childhood feeling today.
I agree Katie, one way is expansion and the other is contraction.
Alexis if I allowed myself to, my body could still harden and find ways to numb every time I feel the city I am in, every time I walk into cold and big offices for meetings, every time I walk into any school, every time I get on public transportation and see noses glued to screens, but I am also given a very precious gift to as you have so wisely shared, just be the real me, and what a gift this is.
I recall as a young child around with my best friend doing some gardening in her back yard, and as i was digging the soil to make way for the plant/flower getting this feeling i wanted to and could actually dig our way to Australia “on the other side of the world”, and shared my plan to my friend, and although we both were in stitches chuckling about the possibility of this totally illogical idea, there was no daydream fantasy, but very real talk that felt oddly possible, do-able, as if nothing was in the way from us accessing this part of the world from where we were. There were no other thoughts that sabotaged “the plan”, just the joy of the idea, the smell of the soil, the warmth of the sunny day, the friendship of us both…..and fast track that simplicity and knowingness to adult life where it seems thoughts come in to rationalise what “odd” ideas or impulses might be downloaded to us to scupper any action towards it. A child may not know the actual possibility of an idea from a practical/temporal level, but they do feel it on a more universal energy boundary-less one, and this is the joy of childhood for most of us; that knowingness of there ‘being more’ to life.
Even though I am older, and my body is starting to naturally wear a bit now as a result of coming to its ‘used-by date’, I now feel as young and beautiful as a child again. Much of my sophisticated jaded-ness has left (not that I was ever really good at that!) as I rediscover the wonder in the tiniest thing. Thanks to Serge Benhayon and the Ancient Wisdom.
Such joy and spaciousness felt in your photo Alexis, glorious to look at and observe especially how there seems to be no gripping or holding in the legs, and all the fun of simple play with your sister, heads of upside down hair standing on end into masses of expressive expression!
Hi Alexis
I loved feeling all of your words as you described being connected to your body as a child, You can feel the expansiveness in all your words and the delivery from an again connected being, Awesome blog very owned super inspiring,,,
This is a great example of the importance in educating children to remain open, loving and be themselves no matter what’s going on around them. But many adults are too shut down from their sensitivity to even be able to have these conversations with children. That’s why Serge Benhayon and what he presents through Universal Medicine is completely life changing for not only the students but for all they are in contact with. Our conversations need to change and we need to reclaim the once lived Love we all know in our hearts.
It is an amazing transformation from following the sense and feelings of our bodies as children, to override this with our thoughts and minds as adults. Reflecting on where this has got us as adults in society is why I am now focusing on the feelings in my body and trust what I know rather than using my mind to override this.
I remember how simple life was as a child – I also remember hearing adults say ‘enjoy it now because one day you’ll have responsibilities’. So I sort of grew up dreading responsibility and what that meant for my simple enjoyment of life. Interesting, I think children understand responsibility a lot more then adults – for we are responsible for being Love, for living honestly and treating everyone as equal and kids do this without trying.
I love the wonder and awe that we find in everything when life is lived from the body – as you have described when you were younger Alexis… If the same scenario was experienced whilst in your head, it would be completely different, missing the magic, subtleties and beauty that only comes with our full body awareness.
Love how the simplicity in the body gives us who we are,mas a child it is so natural to us and the world around us is known (like the climbing frame you mentioned). Something happens along the way where we learn to be pre occupied and this simple living ness is always pushed down, any slight feelings are immediately over ridden.
Children naturally have an exquisite lightness, it is clear to see and through the modality Sacred Movement I’m re-discovering this feeling within me that I shut down for so long.
Having also come to Universal Medicine and rediscovered that simple, joyous child after years of living in a false image, so as I could feel I fitted into ‘normal’. Now l realise the responsibility of claiming my unique essence, which when lived offers a reflection for all to return to claiming their true natural essence.
I too arrived on the doorstep of Serge Benhayon and the Ageless Wisdom after getting lost in the land of what is not, only to discover that in a moment I could choose to re-connect to who I am and be in my body again. There I found the wisdom that never ever leaves me.
Just beautiful – the spherical sense of being a child “I lived life from my body; my senses were what connected me to life. Life and I were one and the same.”
Through the Universal Medicine Esoteric Connective Tissue Therapy, I have come to understand that the natural and supple way of the body that we have as children and that you describe here Alexis is the natural order of our body. When we are open in our being, there is a flow of the connective tissue that spreads through the whole of the body. When we begin to take on emotions, get caught up in life, move in a way that is in protection or with restriction we develop a hardening in our connective tissue and we no longer feel the ease in our body that we had as a child. When we reconnect to our essence, our bodies respond to the natural flow within the connective tissue.
“I have come to understand that it is through our connection to our bodies that we re-member who we are. By re-uniting with my body, I have been re-united with myself and by re-uniting with myself, I have been re-united with the connection to God that I knew in my body as a child.” this is beautiful and so true and a gift shown to us by serge Benhayon to remember who we are. Serge Benhayon showed me who i was in our fist meeting in a one day workshop and i have never looked back from knowing the truth i felt in my body forever returning to who i really am like the child in your photo thank you for sharing this so beautifully.
‘Our body holds the key to truth’ is true in so many ways, ie in every moment with every movement; the body immediately expresses and reflects the quality of energy that makes it move, unavoidably. It is for us to read this expression / quality and honour it.
Ignoring the fact that we are incredible tender and loving beings is fooling ourselves with lies and lies and lies that we don’t know life. And in the ignorance we settle for illness and disease without us realising on a conscious level, yet unconsciously we do know. We’re the master of our own lives. Re-connecting back to our body is the greatest gift for both ourselves as for the world.
I recall when I was 11 since I had developed pronounced scoliosis, a curvature of the spine, I was prescribed a metal brace that kept my upper body from my neck to my hips rigid. When I realised I had to wear this for many years, I cried and cried for a long time because I could no longer feel the fluid movement in my body as I walked. But interestingly recently when I had a surgery and my movements were limited, I noticed how most of us as adults and the whole of the industry focuses on getting back to function so that the ‘normal activities’ can be resumed, but there is little focus on returning to that fluid movement. Perhaps because as this article explains most of us have already disconnected from our bodies. Thank God the Esoteric modalities offered by Universal Medicine addresses this area and I have always found them invaluable, especially so after my operation.
“Life was simple, life was joyous, life was harmonious and life was very, very easy. I never thought twice about the fact that I loved life.”
To connect back to this way of being and that inner source of joy is gold and this is exactly what Universal Medicine is supporting people to do.
I, too, have a photograph of myself at a young age that shows me in my open, tender glory before I hardened to fit in and this blog is a beautiful reminder for us all of that time and our return to that lived quality
Just today I was experimenting with my body and how it is an amazing marker – just listening to my foot steps and feeling my arms and chest and when they become fast or tight. Everything about my body can tell me where I am and how I am living if i but listen.
It is a story that so many can relate to. I marvel over and over again at how quickly we make ourselves small to not disrupt what is so lacking in love.
The title of this blog says it all …:Our bodies hold the key to the truth of who we are …” As when we deeply connect to the stillness that is within our body, you get to feel and understand that there is so much more to our existence and purpose in life.
I can still feel, firmly imprinted in me, the ease and joy in which I moved as I child. Every movement was an expansion and an expression in innocence.
Alexis, this is so beautiful to read, ‘By re-uniting with my body, I have been re-united with myself and by re-uniting with myself, I have been re-united with the connection to God that I knew in my body as a child.’ I love how simply you have shared this, that if we live life in our bodies then this allows us to be ourselves as we were as children without all of the complications and protection – gorgeous.
That moment of stumbling across Serge Benhayon and the presentations of Universal Medicine, woke me up to all that I knew was true, and also to begin to see the layers of falseness that I had assumed and carried believing that this was who I was. Being able to see and discard these false layers uncovers the beauty that lives always within, and relinquishes their incarcerating grip allowing the freedom of that beauty to shine forth.
I love this picture of you and your sister hanging upside down, it reminds me how much I loved playing in the forest, climbing trees, building all sorts of climbing and swinging frames and little ’houses’. It makes me realise that these memories are actually quite vivid in my body and it brings up a feeling of sheer joy.
The point is that when you leave the “Land of Real Me”, you don’t just hang out in some kind of limbo space, you have to be living and walking somewhere – The Land of Not Real Me. And this is the problem. We have all lived, developed, invested in and consciously created this Land of Not Real Me to such a gigantic scale and depth, that so many of us are under the ultimate illusion that it is the only Land.
With out confirmation of who we are and what we know and lack of support and education we are left to flounder in what we call life. A bastardisation of who we really are and here we are a limited in seeing what the truth is. The more we can give ourselves permission to feel and see that truth of what we have been choosing then we can start to allow ourselves to feel all of what we are feeling instead of numbing ourselves. Serge Benhayon has been an enormous support in presenting the truth and has opened to doors for many to look deeper than beyond what we are living.
Alexis it was gorgeous to hear about your childhood and the ease with which you we aware of life and its joyful simplicity. “I lived life from my body; my senses were what connected me to life. Life and I were one and the same. Life was simple, life was joyous, life was harmonious and life was very, very easy. I never thought twice about the fact that I loved life. This is how life was for me up until I was 9 years old.” I wonder how different our lives would be if we didn’t lose this childhood way of living from our body, our senses and remain totally connected to life.
It’s pure science this blog. I am still discovering the depths of the revelation that it is only through our bodies that we can see the truth. It’s so polar opposite to how we live – in blind reverence to the intelligence of the mind. It’s taking me a long time to redress this gigantic ignorance and I am deeply, deeply appreciative to Universal Medicine for showing me the door of truth. It’s my choice as to whether I walk my body through it.
This is a beautiful reminder of what its like to be natural… so so simple
The Truth about Serge Benhayon is very well captured here. He leads us back to the Land of the Real Us.
I remember fondly how as a child I enjoyed the freedom of my body: playing, running , climbing trees, hanging upside down, sledging, doing somersaults, hand stands and jumping over things with an ease I now re-call but can’t re-enact!
‘But alas, I left the Land of the Real Me and went walkabout in the Land of Who I Was Not.’ I too have gone walk about into the land of who I was not. Your writing about your childhood brings up true memories for me also about living from my body and how that felt then. Through the teachings of The Ageless Wisdom I am relearning what it means to be the true me and living from the reconnection back to my body.
“it is through our connection to our bodies that we re-member who we are.”- it is through our connection to our innermost heart where we find our connection to God, our divinity. From here we know we are part of the all, just like your story reminds us when we are young, innocent and openhearted.
Your story is a great example of how our body remembers everything… even when we may have consciously forgotten the details
I love the fun and play of children being upside-down. The joy of this is such a great reminder that ‘seriousness’ in life is something of a hindrance!
So much to comment on what you have so poignantly shared Alexis but today what I felt so strongly as you described your time in the backyard was how much kids take in – they do not miss a trick! Especially when they are open to life and not hardened by it, as we so often become. When you are open to the intricacies of life you can see the daily magic that goes around – like how a tortoise eats!
Alexis, as I have said before, your writing about what it was like to be in a child’s body is so joyful and so evocative of my own childhood experience. And as I felt this I remembered that when I first met the work and Serge Benhayon, a fellow student gave me a healing one day and when she has her hands on my back and I re-remembered in my body the feeling of childhood, and it was not specific images but a way of being that I associated with being among the grasses, that was absolutely an experience of joy in nature. It is such a blessing to come back to that harmony.
It’s fascinating what a difference living from our senses and feelings makes over living from our heads; trying to control and best ‘do’ life from our heads really reduces the joy and expansion that can be felt.
It truly is unfathomable just how far we have strayed from the openness and lightness as Alexis shares in her gorgeous childhood story. But the amazing thing is, it is not lost and can always be reconnected to and deeply freely lived in our body if we so choose to remain in connection with ourselves.
Reading your blog has inspired me to look at and consider my childhood memories too. There was a place we lived from age 3-8 that was a childs playground even though it was in suburbia – a large garden, tree fort, an old intriguing wooden barn-style shed, and a vacant block behind us and another across the street which had a creek. It was a dead-end street full of families with children so there was always someone to play with. I loved life and living there, then we moved and my story is the same as yours – a new school with behaviours I didnt know how to deal with. I tried to hold the joy but eventually chose to shut down, protect and join everyone else… until meeting Serge Benhayon when my life completely turned around.
“Life and I were one and the same.” This is true innocence and a quality that remains forever inside us, even in our darkest moments, un-tainted by our experiences in life. Studying with Serge Benhayon has without a doubt re-connected me to my innocence, a quality that I once felt had been lost forever and one that I now have the joy to appreciate deeply everyday.
I loved moving my body, just feeling the exhilaration from moving on the ground, through the air. I still do.
These words are gold, reconnecting and living from the body, no matter what age we are, is a glorious way to live. The body loves simplicity. It is through Esoteric Yoga that I have come to know the wisdom and joy that is alive within the body. “I lived life from my body; my senses were what connected me to life. Life and I were one and the same. Life was simple, life was joyous, life was harmonious and life was very, very easy.”
The absolute simplicity of surrendering to our innate nature and connected with everything all at once and feeling this within our bodies, is something that a child so naturally does. We haven’t lost this most innocent and pure way of living, we just created an external world we thought we needed to be a part of, to be accepted and loved, and left our stillness, inner deep knowingness and light, behind us.
“When I look at that photo now, my body remembers exactly what it was feeling at the time.” It is remarkable how our bodies are reminded of how they felt by looking at an old photograph, or even at the sight, sound or smell of something. There is an instant knowing and feeling which is unquestionable to us, but somehow when we get so caught up in our busy lives we forget this internal connection we have with oursleves and override what we feel in order to avoid being reminded of what we have left behind.
This is classic, you can’t hurt an open heart because and open heart only ever feels and shares the Love – ‘The ironic part is that if had I chosen to keep being the real me, then I wouldn’t have needed any protection at all because it’s impossible to hurt an open heart.’.
It really is so much simpler than we at times choose to make it.
I thank God for Serge Benhayon, and that I can now see and choose the simplicity that I had lost sight of.
Great to enjoy the world from this upside down angle! To a child that is feeling life spherically this upside downess must not feel odd at all – but simply another way to enjoy what she’s feeling.
The upside down angle is very reflective of our world and how far it is from our truth.
After considering and being in awe of the detail that you have gone to in this article I feel inspired to share some detail myself. My Willow tree was a Golden Oak Tree, my sisters and I would live in its branches, it was like a second home to us, along with the crab apple tree, that was the pace we went if we were hungry. When we moved to a smaller house I found a new memory and special spot in the branch of the blooming Magnolia. Every memory was in nature, it was like our own imagination seemed to blend into gods country and the smells of the secret rose garden, the spring in our every step and in our cartwheels was like we were grasshoppers, I thought I could fly when I jumped and was light as a feather. Thank you for connecting me back to this time, for we can return to this freedom, through connection to our hearts, maybe no cartwheels or tree climbing but a body that sings.
This is such an evocative sharing, Alexis, and brings up lots of memories for me of my younger childhood. Your description of the climbing frame reminded me of the large Xmas bush in the next door property which was like a small tree. I used to climb that tree like a little monkey with my young boyfriend next door. I doubt that my parents quite knew what I was doing there, but they trusted that family fully. Otherwise, I was very protected and restricted as to who I was allowed to play with, and as I grew up a little, that protective shield (although well meant) became much more solid. When that family moved away, I found that I was not allowed to play with most of the other children around, who were not deemed to be suitable playmates. I became a very lonely young girl and as we did not mix much outside of the family, became withdrawn and not able to make friends easily at school. In other words, I shut down to people which I can now see was how I lived most of my life until the past 9 or so years when I met Serge Benhayon and attended his presentations with Universal Medicine. I had buried myself in books instead, living my life in a strange mix of the real and the imaginary from the books that took me away from the loneliness I was feeling. I can see how much damage I actually did to myself from my choice to shut down from others as I did. I lost all my confidence and developed an awful lack of self worth. But I can now see that I did have the choice to stand up for myself against the rules that were set, I can see that in all ways we have the freedom to make our own choices. I did not have to shut myself down either, had the choice to live such a different life. I thank Serge for the understanding that I have developed to put great changes into my way of living since I became a student of The Way of The Livingness, a life now of great joy and great friends.
“There is an exquisite lightness and natural ease that seems to flow through both of us.” I love reading this because I can also feel the inner naturalness of this truth in my own body. There are layers covering this up a little for the same sorts of reasons you describe. However this doesn’t take away from the truth that I know my original lightness and natural ease is just a choice and release of old stuff away, perhaps in my next breath if I’m truly willing to let go and embrace all of me in my fullness.
Yes, to move in joy is wonderful!
Beautifully said Alexis, I agree with all you share – it is a powerful feeling when we are connected to our bodies and we get to experience life and love on a much deeper level.
I love how you expressed this ‘I left the Land of the Real Me and went walkabout in the Land of Who I Was Not.’ Most of us have done this I know I did for 45 years until I came across Serge Benhayon and in a one day workshop he supported me to come back to the real me after all those years of wandering around in the dark
I love this too. It’s a great way that Alexis has expressed this. Thank god for Serge Benhayon who has supported me, along with many to reconnect and relive in ‘the land of the real me’
‘My body hardened as I pretended that I was not hurt by what was going on.’ – I can very much relate to this, eventhough I was never bullied, I always felt a strong need to protect myself and never show anyone who I truly was, so I kept people quite distant eventhough seemingly close like all the others. This all made my body hard and tense.
“I lived life from my body; my senses were what connected me to life. Life and I were one and the same.” I remember this way of life as well and it makes me wonder why we collectively choose to leave this way of living. Because we do it all, besides a few maybe. I remember this choice to leave myself when I felt the misery that was around in the world. But the misery that was there and felt was from all the people having left this spacious way of life too! As you say it was my choice at that time to join it yet it is never too late to go back to that way of living as I am experiencing now. In the end if we started our life living like that it must be our original way of living so we can always go back to that.
The fact is that when we live from being deeply connected to our body, life is very simple as the body guides us in an explicit way and in detail as to what’s next. There is no thinking required, just the tell tale signposts that the body offers.
What a great point Alexis, that it was really a choice as to how you reacted to your new school and home location (choosing to change the way you were being) that lead to the hardening and losing the true you in a way. I can see now how I had done the same thing when our family moved when I was 7 and how I have used that as an excuse for my changing the way I was and desperately trying to fit in to not feel different to others. This victim mentality is a crafty tool we use to divert responsibility for our life challenges and how we are in the world.
Good point Michael. It is responsible for us to feel and deal with our hurts rather than use the craft victim mentality.
The victim mentality we use can be life long and change the way we do things and how we are. It is, as you say, ‘a crafty tool’ aimed at us not taking responsibility.
I feel it’s really important we actually say we are hurt by things, it makes life far more real and raw, and far less escapist. I also feel if we do this then we would live much more deeply from our bodies, instead of escaping into our head. It’s okay more than okay to say we are hurt or something hurt – so many people cover this up, saying I don’t get hurt, hurts aren’t real, or people can say you’ll get over it, no big deal, even not by words but their action and way of being with you, it’s like they are too busy or don’t care enough to listen – which is so dismissive of another’s feelings – it’s no wonder people don’t trust. But whilst we are on this planet, as we are human beings there will be things that hurt us. We are all walking about with this guard and protection up, this just in case shield. That’s not to say we all indulge in our stuff, but be mindful, respectful and deeply loving of our, (our includes everyone on this entire planet) fragility, tenderness and delicateness.
“I lived life from my body’. I am going to try this today – so simple, so profound and answer to everything really.
I love the message and sharing of this blog – that the key to life was never a deep philosophical complicated explanation but simply to connect to our bodies in each moment – we don’t have to try or do anything, we just have to be ourselves and from there life is a joy to live.
As children we live from the inside out until we start to live from the outside in by adjusting to ‘life’ as it is imposing, demanding, threatening, challenging, manipulating or simply very intense and yes. It is our choice how we respond to this tension, either staying true to our inner knowing and learn to be us in a world that doesn´t support that or trying to conform to reduce the tension that is actually the difference / contrast between the inner and the outer. In truth we cannot escape tension, either the tension of feeling the world while being true to ourselves or the tension of being distanced to our innermost because we have stepped away from it and it is forever pulling us back to be who we naturally are.
How beautiful to feel the natural appreciation and oneness between the two of you. A testimony of the fact that we are indeed one when we allow ourselves to surrender to our heart and body. The joy, cuteness and spaciousness ara palpable. Thank your for sharing.
You describe the simplicity of re-uniting with yourself and with this you have re-united back with the connection to God that you knew in your body as a child. We all had this connection whether we can remember it or not, it is a sense of joy and a love within the body that is there waiting for us to re-connect to. It is possible for life and us all to be one and the same in the future.
The photograph of two sisters hanging upside down, laughing, carefree, surrendered and joyful is an exquisite and timeless childhood memory reclaimed not just for you but all of us as we share in the joy you once felt.
In my process of hardening and hiding Who I Truly am I put on loads of weight, which gave me more problems with arthritis and painful joints, decreased mobility and a general misery. Thanks to the inspiring presentations of Serge Benhayon, I have refined my diet, become way less emotional and as a result, my body has regained its natural weight and I feel young again. I am 66 and my flexibility will never be what i was, but the difference between how I feel now and how I was eleven years ago is huge.
It makes sense that our senses are more sensory the more deeply we are connected to our body.
And of course the opposite is true, the less we are connected to our bodies the less we are aware of our senses, which is a dangerous and chaotic way to be, as it is our bodies that navigate our way through life.
It comes as a deep shock when we feel uprooted as children and are confronted with the swearing and harshness that so many seem to think is a normal part of life and expression.
Swearing is hurt on the outside that reflects hurt on the inside.
Living from our bodies and what it is feeling and sensing brings an ease to life because there are no instances of shock or surprise. It’s like reacting to walking into a wall because we chose to close our eyes. We can’t blame the walk when we chose to not see where we were going. At the same time these knocks can wake us up to the fact that there is more to be aware of.
“For all intents and purposes, I became as authentic as a hologram.”
This is quite a tough realization and one that I had myself after I re-connected more to who I truly am. I had to realize that my whole life resolved around trying to fit in, adjusting to everybody’s needs, to avoid confrontation and not to stand out – not a great purpose to have in life.
It is so beautiful to read and feel these recollections from your childhood. This simple sentence captures the joy in experiencing yourself, your body and everything around you as a seamless and spontaneous exploration – “Life and I were one and the same.” There is not a hint of separation or protection, but rather a natural awareness and knowing of your inherent connection to all things.
Simply gorgeous Alexis, my whole body was taken back to me as child and the joyous movements my body flowed in naturally. I too, am so incredibly grateful to Serge Benhayon, and The Way of the Livingness, for offering me the wisdom to find my way back to what I had walked away from.
Our bodies never lie, they are a library of every choice we have ever made. We can convince ourselves of whatever we choose in our minds, but our bodies only show the truth. When we choose to reconnect and feel the wisdom and magic that is there for us, waiting patiently for our return there’s a question I find very hard to answer, why on earth did I ever leave?
Alexis, your beautiful blog prompted me to recall some of my own childhood memories and the thing that struck me the most was how simple life was and, the joy I felt in being alive, living life and loving life. I have allowed life to batter me down, making me harder and flatter, however, it doesn’t have to be this way. I may have gone walk about without myself, but I am choosing to be with myself again now and it’s amazing. Interestingly as the years pass rather than feeling older, I’m actually feeling more youthful ☺
Alexis- l loved how you described your carefree, openhearted nature when you were 9 yrs old and the wonderful childhood memories your photo conjured up. I too can remember the fun times we had as a family when we went to the beach in Summer- my dad would go surf fishing whilst my sister and I explored the beach- looking for pretty shells, dipping our feet in the rock pools, looking for crabs, playing with the waves as they came into the shore… I was carefree, joyous and very connected to nature. However, this was a very different scenario at home- I was very anxious; tippy toed around my father; and very sensitive to how my parents spoke to each other and to us in a controlling, unloving way.
Thanks to Universal Medicine I have reconnected back to my true self and loving life once again.
I loved reading about your reconnection with your body Alexis and your natural way of being as a child; thank you for sharing. What you have expressed here is very inspiring;
“I have come to understand that it is through our connection to our bodies that we re-member who we are. By re-uniting with my body, I have been re-united with myself and by re-uniting with myself, I have been re-united with the connection to God that I knew in my body as a child’.
I have just been transported back into the exquisite body of my supple, willowy, wise, 5 year old self. Thank you, Alexis, hugely so.
There is such a richness in what you’ve shared Alexis, especially in the detail and aliveness of what you described from your garden as a child. I find this sort of richness comes from bringing full presence to what I am doing and allowing myself to feel, appreciate and express all of it. This can be at the time, or in reflection and is very beautiful to experience.
Alexis, I loved to read your beautiful sharing about your childhood and how you hardened, when you moved. I had a similar experience when my parents were moving when I was 5 years old.
Since then I never felt truly home again. For me in our first home I felt safe with the friendships I had and with my relatives, who were visiting us. In. our second home a lot of this stopped. I remember that there the children were quite jealous about me and this left me feeling alone.
when I lesrned to get in touch with Universal Medicine I am learning to reconnect back to my true home, which resides inside of me.
The descriptions from your childhood Alexis are so detailed and evocative, and it shows the depth of awareness we hold as children and many of us let go as we shut down to protect ourselves from the world, and the assault of the hurts we project onto one another, but of course it need not be like this, it is always there for us to feel the detail of the world around us and appreciate that when we feel our bodies there is everything we need within us, and the words and actions of others should not change how we act or move.
I love how this blog speaks from the perspective of your body and not from the mind. It is a true account of how things were and tells it in a way that is very understandable and relatable. And amazing that the memories for you are so felt in the body as well, remarkable. What a great reminder of how we can live and how easily children do it.
What a reminder this blog has been of the carefree days of being younger and living from our bodies. Life at around seven was pretty much as you have described in this blog, playing in the meadows and enjoying the flowers for hours on end with not a care in the world except making sure I got back for dinner at 6pm. Then came the school attendance when a choice was made to harden and toughen up to be like my sister because no one messed with her, and then she moved to the big school so I had no one to fight my battles for me anymore. When we look at the stark difference to how we feel prior to school (unless of course there is abuse at home) compared to how we then change whilst going through the education system it is no surprising that these days there is a high percentage of teenagers who are on anti-depressants.
Alexis, I love reading this article, it is beautiful to read the description of you as a child and how easy and harmonious life felt, I observe this in children, this playfulness and freedom – children simply being themselves and then I see this change as children get older and then go into adult hood, these supple young bodies harden and we often loose our playfulness and lightness. I am coming back to this feeling – a feeling at ease in my body and feeling a lightness and joy after many years living in a hard tense way, this feels very natural and gorgeous.
Serge Benhayon’s ‘doorstep’ is an amazing threshold to the doorway to the ‘Land of the Real Me’.
“I left the Land of the Real Me and went walkabout in the Land of Who I Was Not.” I did that too. And it seems so unavoidable when everyone around lives in this strange land (who we are not) – how could I stay in the true land? I would be alone…but this is not true. In fact we are alone with all the others if we give up on our natural and true way of being. Our bodies become hard or bloated and all the true qualities of life are just available in their bastardized version. A poor imitation. And this Land of Un-Truth must be fed by us as well. So it is very exhausting to exist like that.
Coming back into the land of the real me after decades of ‘being out’ is a blessing but also I have to face all the damage I have supported by my choices. Not only for me personally, but also that I did support others to join the land of who we are not. I could have been the one that reflects that it is possible to choose the real me land, but I did not. Anyway, now I do. Would make no sense at all to stay in the unreal land just to not count to accountability….what brought me in trouble the first time.
Sometimes it feels like I am in the land of the true me but still carry a few sunglasses from the no-real-me-land and when I look through this I become confused and complicated. To let go by and by of all this no-real-me-land-accessories and become totally natural again is the way to go.
I’m sometimes in the presence of two young children and each time they enter the house, I’m aware of the energy and flow they bring with them. I especially feel the lightness of their bodies and movement. It is incredible to observe the different ways children and adults move: and the tender feel of the child’s body often given way to hardness in the adult. Through Universal Medicine and Ageless Wisdom teachings we learn that it is never too late to re-connect to our true and tender selves and thereby releasing habitual tension and hardness from our bodies.
You have sparked memory’s most of us have put aside like the toys we have played with during those joy-full times of our youth. But they hold the essence of who we are. We never lose who we truly are… it just gets put on the shelf and forgotten. We all can re-connect to our selves what is sitting on our dusty shelves, it is always just a choice away!
Our bodies do indeed hold the truth of who we are, any situation is dealt with in the quality that we live in our bodies, and love how you describe the extras inset lightness that can flow though us, it is always there if we don’t try and control it and let it be.
Alexis, I love how you have talked about a photograph bringing back memories about your childhood – the smells, the textures, the feel and the temperatures and the feeling of belonging and knowing who you are. Such childhood memories are to be cherished deeply, as they are not just a memory of childhood but a memory of a connection that we hold deep within us that is age old. Such precious moments are ones we essentially can never forget at they are ‘etched’ in our body by the soul in a way that guarantees our way back. It may be many years later that we recall it through some seemingly random event (such as seeing photo or hearing a song) and then we are brought back to that place of joy that we once knew so well, but left behind. It is then that we feel like we have re-found a long lost friend, someone we knew well, trusted deeply. It is the re-discovery of ourselves. What a gift.
The level of freedom in our bodies and innocence that we enjoyed when were children still within us all it is a matter of reconnecting back to our bodies and claiming back our true nature of being who we truly are.
Why at school do we experience so much emotional pain? “This was the first time in my life that I can remember feeling emotional pain in my body.” Where has education not held its integrity towards children and teenagers? This is not to say that parents are responsible here too. Me personally I was sent to boarding school – a well-known prestigious high school – one of the best supposedly. I will never forget the bullying. I shut down all my ability to feel and be sensitive. To think this is ‘great education’ when you are not open and free to learn life, but to shut down from it. As Alexis points out she was not aware how to deal with the pain. I was the same where anger arose me and later in life I turned to drugs. No blame on my parents and the education system here because I chose how to be in all of this ie. if I had known and was supported to open my heart and be the real me. No more walk about for me too, but to listen to my heart and honour my body that is love.
The title says it all “Our Bodies Hold the Key to the Truth of Who We Are”. We do not have to go anywhere to find truth; we do not have to acquire knowledge to no more; we do not have to be recognised for what we do; and we do not have to worship anything to be closer to God. It is already ALL in our bodies. “I have come to understand that it is through our connection to our bodies that we re-member who we are. By re-uniting with my body, I have been re-united with myself and by re-uniting with myself, I have been re-united with the connection to God that I knew in my body as a child.” Our connection to God we know all that he knows. Not a big deal just an energetic fact of life.
This is very true… “through our connection to our bodies that we re-member who we are…” as we take and walk our body which is full of atoms, particles and space (the universe) with us wherever and in what ever we do.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading your account of childhood Alexis, and while I can’t say I can relate from my own childhood experience, I certainly relate to the ease and effortlessness you describe in being such an integral and entwined part of life all around you these days, also thanks to what Serge Benhayon has offered through Universal Medicine.
I can remember the same feeling, especially as a child during Summer- where the world stands still and there is a joy and grace to each day. I am learning to come back to that and hold that more in my days as it is what is important.
I loved reading about your natural way of being as a child Alexis and although that way of being was left behind for a period of time, there is nothing but joy in reading that you are re-connecting back to your body and beginning to feel like the beautiful, willowy child you once were.
Alexis, I found reading your gorgeous descriptive blog taking me back to a time of my own childhood – not necessarily as joyous as you describe your first 9 years to be, however, on saying that there were indeed memories that were sparked with the sounds of nature in the countryside where my grandmother lived. The night sounds of the bullfrog in the dam nearby, the sounds of the early morning chortles of the magpies, the distant gentle mooing of the cows on the hillside as the sun rose and the sound of my uncle’s big loose fitting gumboots as he walked the path down between the roses, up the wooden ramp, carrying pails of warm milk directly from the milking shed. These rare moments in the country, in the rawness of nature are the things that I held on to as supportive memories reminding me that somewhere out there all is well, all is safe. Yes, it appears I was looking for security, safety from an early age, and until I met Serge Benhayon and commenced attending the presentations of Universal Medicine that I learned all that I was so seeking was already within me, in my own body.
It is fascinating that we can be so carefree, loose and relaxed in the body with so much ease when we are younger then over time we ‘harden up’ more and more, that we even forget what it is like or that we had chosen to be that open and connected to our bodies and essences. We all know this feeling and sometimes we feel it is to hard to get there that we continue in our old ways and keep our fingers x that nothing serious is going to happen. Connection and Honouring is key.
Alexis, you may have chosen to react to the new and difficult environment in a less than optimal way but I doubt it would have been easy or even less than very difficult to preserve your innocence and joy as you may have been more and more targeted the more you preserved your joy.
“I have come to understand that it is through our connection to our bodies that we re-member who we are.” The more we connect to our stillness the more we are able to connect to awareness of who we are.
Nearly all of us have fallen for believing that we can harden our bodies to protect ourselves from any emotional onslaught… yet from those of us who have done it, it is just an illusion. What Serge has presented about staying tender in our bodies, remaining open and loving, and observing with understanding, is the greatest lesson to learn and the only way to not be affected by whatever comes your way.
“But alas, I left the Land of the Real Me and went walkabout in the Land of Who I Was Not. My walkabout lasted nearly forty years” – thanks Alexis, captured so well, love the analogy. I have experienced many different ‘walkabouts’ and when thinking and reflecting about them now, they almost don’t seem real.. that i went there, experienced this or that…but to feel my body at such times, reminds me of the fact that i did, and in this i’m reminded of the sheer grace and power that the body holds in reminding us of all our past ways/errors, but also what’s underneath those too – the Land of the Real Me, a body that’s an infinite record playing the music of us including all its bumpy scratches and near-misses. And including all its all-time number one favourite and loved hits too.
Hello Alexis and I love this photo as well. I love how old it looks and how we were around that time, we had such care for each other. I remember when I was a kid, we had so so much freedom and it was really beautiful. It would seem it’s not the same for us today and there is less and less of that feeling. As you are saying this is something we need to bring back and this blog and comments are a part of that. We all remember those days and I love photos for that reason, for what you can see and feel. Again that’s why I love your photo because even though I’m not in it I can relate to it, thank you Alexis for the memory I will now live today.
When I was younger swearing and abusive teasing or behaviour made my body recoil in the same way you’ve described in your blog Alexis, and although it still does this it’s interesting to realise that there are some things I have now learnt to ‘cope’ with, such as the majority of swearing. If we were to maintain the lightness in our bodies and ability to feel everything as we grow up perhaps we wouldn’t develop coping mechanisms, but instead read WHY someone is behaving in that way and not absorb it ourselves.
Beautiful description Alexis of the sounds and sights of life as you felt them as a young child.. i could relate to much of what you said particularly the timelessness and how easy life was in its long days… I also recall the willowyness of my body as a child and how i moved, i was so floppy and supple and would joyfully sing with my walk-phone head set on making up songs without caring that the builder outside could hear me, see me, what he thought of me.. or the sound i was making haha. I would occupy myself by myself (or with others but it mattered not if i was with someone or not) with complete contentedness. Contrast that a few years later and it was the complete reverse in every single way. It is with the grace of Serge Benhayon and teachings of Universal Medicine over the past few years that my floppiness has returned and my ease with life too.
Your gorgeous expression Alexis, has got me to feel that I too was connected to God at an early age, and loved the simplicity of my own life and how I felt within it. I decided to leave my own gorgeousness and join the masses much sooner than yourself at around age 5, when I started school, and saw other children’s inner lights going out in front of me, more and more. I was appalled thinking, what is this place that makes you do that and why? Then I just gave up on myself and the joy that I felt, as clearly, I was alone in that, so I chose to join the masses through being nice and doing good.
What a gorgeous photo. Children love being upside-down! It is as if they know that the world itself is upside-down and so they show us through their bodies. Perhaps they remember at some level that they were not inhabiting place where there was ‘gravity’!
I love the way our bodies retain a memory of the way we felt years before. The detail in which it can be felt always surprises me, as though those decades count for naught and in an instant I can be transported to another time or space. This reminds me that my thoughts that the past is in the past and cannot be reclaimed are not true at all. It also shows me that I am not stuck with my current way of being and can always choose again, to reignite the real me.
Fiona the illusion of time being a left to right line, adds to the false belief that how we were as kids, is in the past (close to the beginning of the line to the left), this image compounds our feeling that how we felt before is long gone. However, it has not. The way that we felt as kids is alive in our bodies right now. We can access it in this moment if we discard the emotional concrete slabs that we’ve encased it in.
I absolutely agree that living life from the body is simple, joyous and very easy. I have similar childhood recollections of feeling so much delight in being in life, of loving everyone and feeling in complete harmony with everything in the universe. It is only the complications I have brought in from my mind and the abandoning of my lovely body that made life hard.
I love how my daughter walks and I see other kids doing the same .They just move however their bodies want to, be it to skip, run, saunter, be all over the place what ever it is wanting to do. She does it with no restriction or compliance to how she ‘should’ walk. It is a great reminder that we were once ONLY connected to our bodies.
The extent the investment in the ‘what is not’ has on the body is not fully known until the big ‘Stop’ moment happens and the depth of this sellout is known. We are so far away from what you have described as – ‘My body was as supple and natural as the thin young branches of the willow tree’. The re-connection asks that we surrender to our natural fieriness and be absolute in the love we are and have for ourselves. I am only now starting to feel the depth of this sellout and the effects physically in my body.
What a delightful story of the joy and loving connection you experienced as a child Alexis.
This is a beautiful picture that captures the lightness and freedom of kids. I have been aware of having lost this lightness and playfulness as an adult, however, I am starting to claim it back. I realise that a lack of playfulness in my life as an adult is my choice, and the lightness and playfulness is still there, within my body when I connect to it.
“My sensitive body felt assaulted when it heard the F or C word and it reeled from the animosity that was directed at me and others.” – my body to this day feels the assault when these words are used by adults, and although I don’t swear these days, I used to sometimes use the F word. I know now that when I did, I was so very disconnected from myself and in frustration at not being able to express what I was feeling. So when children use swear words, they are feeling sad or hurt about how life is, and expressing it so through hardness and agression of swearing.
We all have our willow tree, our upside down dangling childhood photo but the detail you choose to explore your memories in was extraordinary, the detail was not just to remise or glorify but to truly nut out why your body was so free then, to explore exactly what it was you stepped away from, the detail is what helps us return.
It is through connecting to our body that we are able to reconnect to who we are and to God. Our bodies are incredible, simply divine and highly intelligent beyond what we recognise it to be. We have this amazing vessel (our body) yet not many of us on earth realise how powerful it is. I have recently started to slowly learn to reconnect to my body and listen to its wise messages. I now understand, it is through this deep connection with our body that we get to feel how powerful and loving we all actually are.
As children we feel so much joy, fascination and love of life, and yet it isn’t what we see and feel around us especially from adults. Imagine if we were taught to keep our hearts open, and the adults around us also had open hearts… our relationships, our work environments, and the world in general would be truly inspiring to be in!
I also always tried to hide how much I was hurt by what was going on at school and around me. I wonder why we almost instinctively try to hide how much things hurt us, first from others and then from ourselves?
Because we have really bad experiences when we show how much we hurt?
Thank you Alex for the beautiful picture you depict of living in the world of the ‘real me’ and the irony that we harden to protect but need no protection with an open heart.
Re-uniting with our body and living from that connection, as simple as it may sound, makes a profound difference.
So true Alexis… we do live from our bodies as children, life is simple, fascinating and joyful – until somewhere along the way we feel hurt, and in reaction we choose to morph into various roles and behaviours to hide the hurt. And yet as you say, if we were to stay open we wouldnt need the roles to hide behind – ‘because it’s impossible to hurt an open heart.’
The sensitivity of the body is very revealing and can be our manual to how we live our life.
Alexis can you write a book i could read more and more of your beautiful descriptive writing, with such quality. You took me into the child’s experience of the joy of being connected to the body and then i could feel the awfulness of the disconnection in reaction to a world that can be very tough on us, assaulting. This seems to be a common theme for probably most of if not all of us. At some point in our lives as children we loose that connection as we are so sensitive, and that sensitivity never leaves us, we live it. Thank you.
This beautiful blog reminds me of a cute photo of myself when I was around 2 years old. I find it difficult to really feel how joyful and light I was at that time. Almost 2 different people. As if I’ve accepted at some stage to not live the innate joy that I felt as a young boy. It feels very sad that I’ve chosen to give up on myself. I know that I’ve got a choice, but it feels like I haven’t. As if the pain is too much to handle. Thank you for this sharing as I’ve never been as honest as now, never allowed myself to feel how innocent, curious and cute I was back then.
The innocence and joy felt in our bodies when we were kids is always still held within our bodies and we can always re-connect to this beauty when we consider our movements made. Thank you Alexis, what an exquisite blog shared.
Considering how many children feel a type of assault from life at an early age is something we could all stand up and take much more notice of. We all know it happens we were all children yet we turn a blind eye and shrug it off as a normal part of growing up. It may be normal but it isn’t natural for our bodies to be ambushed. Alexis your description of your joy-full and delightful connection to your body and life as one is our natural way to grow up and evolve as adults. Why would we want to cut the most foundational support out of the whole?
Thank you Alexis, what this shows is how we let the outside environment dictate to us how to be rather than just simply staying with what is felt inside and choosing to not alter any part of us for anything. How different could life be and the choices we make in it if this way of being was so? Serge Benhayon and his family are showing how this is possible.
The body is the true historian.
Agreed Otto, with each event chronicled exactly as it happened, rather than how many of our books and historians re-hash, re-invent and re-interpret history retrospectively.
And thus one could say that the true student of history is one that reads bodies rather than books. Serge Benhayon knows more about me than anyone else in the world yet I’ve hardly ever told him any ‘historical facts’ about my life. Everything is there in the way that I am. Makes a mockery of the masks that we wear and the pretence that we try to maintain!
Otto, I couldn’t agree more.
The suppleness of a child is always a joy to feel, a little hand in mine, the lack of tension and hardness, the sweet gentleness and delicacy in their fingers, it takes very little to feel the connection to God that they know in their little bodies.
Do we really have a physical register of how we felt when we first decided to leave the Real Me land behind?
Eduardo every single experience is registered physically, it’s just that we choose not to visit the archives out of fear of re-living the pain again.
Recently, I have shared two pictures of mine. One was taken when I was 10 approximately and the other when I was about 12. The difference between the two pictures is stunning. In the first one, I was there with my sensitivity. In second one I had hardened to a point of no return. I was gone.
So strong and true. I have so few memories of my childhood – and most of those are supported only by photos, rather than being true memories, from me. This blog is amazing to read as it speaks so much of the absolute abandonment of my body that I have done – and it is through the body that the true memories exist. The mind will bastardise and twist and morph. And thus through the re-connection to my body, that has been inspired by Universal Medicine, do I begin to re-awaken that child that has always been inside of me. Thank you, with all of my heart, for everything that Universal Medicine has shown me.
Alexis, I love the description of the 40 year walkabout from the Land of the truth to the Land filled with illusion pulling us down, far from the truth and into roles of who we are not. So clever in fooling us to believe this was real.
“But alas, I left the Land of the Real Me and went walkabout in the Land of Who I Was Not. My walkabout lasted nearly forty years. It seems that once I left The Land of the Real Me, I also lost sight of who I was and so chose an array of different images to inhabit. For all intents and purposes, I became as authentic as a hologram”.
Yes, this is all very familiar – I did all this closing down and contraction stuff too and paid the price for these ill-choices with anxiousness, tension, disharmony and the sense of deep separation over many decades (yes, decades). Thank God, Serge Benhayon’s presentations inspired me to make new choices and re-build the foundation of love in my body and life. Constant ‘work’ in progress, but so worth it.
“My reaction was to actively choose to change the way that I was being. My body hardened as I pretended that I was not hurt by what was going on. I tried to fit in and please others, I tried to fly under the radar. The ironic part is that if had I chosen to keep being the real me, then I wouldn’t have needed any protection at all because it’s impossible to hurt an open heart.”.
Alexis, what a gorgeous and very relatable blog. The memory of your childhood through the senses is exquisite in its detail and so very real – I felt I was there with you feeling the openess and freedom in my body with your every word.
I appreciate this reminder of how incredible it is to live in full connection with our body and what we are feeling.
I wish every child could grow up with role models, permission & encouragement to stay true to who they know they are via their bodies!
How lovely that you ‘found your way home’ Alexis… indeed Universal Medicine holds up a light on the world so that everyone can find their way back to their true selves, and the grace, freedom, and energetic re-awakening that comes with this.
As I read your blog Alexis and felt the innocence and freedom you felt in your body, I then reflected on what’s happening for kids these days being exposed to an adult world at a very young age through technology and media and the affect this is having on them now, and the long term affects it will have on them into their adult life.
I am remembering that amazing feeling i had as a child more and more, with the support of Universal Medicine. I am getting rid of all the ‘not me’ in my body and just allowing the real me to come out.
It is all about surrendering and not having any pictures of how things should be. When you can let go of what you think needs to happen then everything is possible!
There are so many material thing we can strive for in life, but nothing compares to feeling the settlement of joy in our body.
‘I have come to understand that it is through our connection to our bodies that we re-member who we are. By re-uniting with my body, I have been re-united with myself and by re-uniting with myself, I have been re-united with the connection to God that I knew in my body as a child.’ – Beautifully expressed and so true – the childhoods joy and pure innocence is remembered in our bodies and always available for us to reconnect to.
What is so beautifully shown in this example is that regardless of how far we walk away and how much we train ourself to act differently to who we really our, that knowing, that awareness is always always there within us just waiting for us to choose to reconnect. And this connection is our strongest support whilst we wean ourself off the false habits and patterns we have become accustomed to.
I have the same vidid memories of hours spent in the woods by our house, the way life was fully experienced and yet, not taken on or absorbed into my body. I can also see how as I have grown up I have become more disconnected to my body and lived life tucked away in my mind where I presume it is safe, thinking and doing rather than ever just being me. And in the end the scary world I think I am avoiding by being in my mind is not avoided, and in fact it is simply creating a tension in me because I am not myself. When I connect back, all that I am is always there, and as kids we may not know our times tables or how to balance an account book, but there is a wisdom in us and the way we naturally live from our bodies and what we feel.
What a great blog. It really shows the effect it has on another when we speak from our bodies. As I read the blog I started to remember my own childhood and how much I loved my body and loved being very physical. When we speak from our bodies we invite others to speak from theirs rather than from their heads with a whole lot of mental ideals and beliefs.
And that Elizabeth is the absolute power of Serge Benhayon, everything that he communicates, he communicates from his body. He never shares thoughts, ideas, ideals or beliefs.
The way we remember through our bodies is beautiful. There are many things I remember through smell or sound and it is amazing how the body can bring you back to that precise moment, that moment when we were truly present. I loved reading this blog. The childhood memories were so vivid. Meeting anyone that has become hard is a shock. I know I was really hurt by some of my experiences and found ways to protect myself that I now have spent years undoing. It is so lovely to realise that the person we thought was lost, that gorgeous essence that was us, is always there, ready to be lived.
Alexis I can relate to leaving the land of real me as a way to cope with life. It certainly does make you weary when you spend day after day not being yourself, but I am enjoying my return, and am doing this by developing a relationship with my body again. Simple things like catching myself when I start to hunch my shoulders at the computer help to break the old patterns of tensing up.
I guess we believe we need to move on from being the child, which of course we do but there are many qualities in the child that it is very supportive for us to retain, that suppleness in our bodies, that wonder at the world, that innocence and sweetness are qualities that look and feel great in an adult. I love what you say Alexis that an open heart cannot be hurt, I experienced the same change as you describe at age 8 and the challenges that are there to retain our openness is something I feel we can all support young children to deal with more easily.
i remember the freedom of being a child and living from the body in the way you describe Alexis. As adults we have accepted that this is no longer possible when we grow up as we get burdened by the expectations of life. But what if it is the children who have got the “secret” to life and to joy and is they who we can learn from?
It’s amazing how observant and naturally clairsentient children are – if we were to not shut this ability down and continue living life from our bodies into adulthood it would be interesting to see the difference in business, workplaces, in how we parent our own children and so forth.
Susie in response to what you have shared ‘if we were to not shut this ability down and continue living life from our bodies into adulthood it would be interesting to see the difference’, I would venture so far as to say that what we would be living would be Heaven on Earth.
Alexis I love how you write, your attention to detail and what you remembered as a child. the joy you felt up until you were 9 years old was a joy to read. Imagine if we knew as a child that one of the most important things in life was to stay with ourselves regardless of what is going on around us. As you say, “The ironic part is that if had I chosen to keep being the real me, then I wouldn’t have needed any protection at all because it’s impossible to hurt an open heart.” So true Alexis, and a huge thank you to Serge Benhayon for bringing this awareness to us.
Alexis -The way you describe your climbing frame and all the smells around it is really beautiful and shows how much our bodies can remember details such as what something felt like, smelt like ect. I have this too – memories of when I was young and I just loved being outdoors with my dad whilst he was gardening, allowing myself to be all of me – not holding back. I too can say that since knowing Serge Benhayon and what he brings, I have been able to start to go back to who that open, expressive, inquisitive little girl was.
Very very interesting to read this blog and what it brings up in me. At first I felt jealous. As I can totally relate to what you write about hardening, it was much earlier for me that I chose so. So it seamed to me you’ve got a bit more time, a few more years in that innocence, light body feeling and so…I’ve got the reflection that it is possible to hold on to this feeling longer and my choice was exposed. Then, by feeling more into it, my early years, I was remembering my feed enjoying the juiciness of walking through moist meadows, the running through deciduous wood and playing with other kids in and with nature. I remembering special flowers from the meadows which I loved, they were so delicate and full of life, coming up each year again and again. I remember how much I loved the sun on my skin… And I had to see that most of my life I did not remember this part of my life but the other part. The moments when my father shouted at me because I did something wrong, the shock in my little body forced to stand in front of him, who was four times larger and 90kg heavier, like an out of control violence that comes over me, crushing me. And the moments I did hide crying under the seat corner in the kitchen because my mother has deprived her ‘love’ for me, because I’ve done something wrong. The moments when my sister did tell me she would gladly and immediately exchange me against an older brother and that I am not worth anything, not because I’ve done something wrong but in general…. And just now I see how I am again have the choice with what I connect to. I can go in to the hurts of my past or take the responsibility about my choices in this time. As understandable they are on a human level, I did chose to subject to the same energy that was flowing though my family members instead of holding on to the beauty of innocence and lightness. And I can remember the body-feelings I’ve got from the time I was connected to it, reconnect and unfold from here. I choose again. And one choice is to not judge me or my family members for what happened but to see the two kinds of energy that is on play, designed to hold us back or to support us. My body belongs to God and I feel it when I remember my feed walking in moist meadow years ago and I feel it now by breathing and enjoying the sun on my skin while writing this words. Thank you Alexis for this reminder.
What a beautiful picture and a joy to feel the lightness and freedom in you both, its amazing how we can be so open then feel so hurt and go into shut down. If we stay strong with ourselves and keep our hearts open we avoid going into hurt that can ultimately spiral out of control.
Life as a child is all tangible, sensitive, vibrant and as you say “Life and I were one and the same”. The body memory is a good marker for us as adults to rebuild this connection to ourselves and our relationship with life. We all know because we have lived it when we were young. Much of healing as an adult is coming back to the quality of being at-one we know from our childhood. This could relate to the saying by Jesus of becoming like children again.
Even reading about the changes in your life at the age of 9 feels abrasive, aggressive and very sad. The freedom with which you lived up until then feels so light and gorgeous. What a relief to eventually come back to that through reconnecting to your body.
Perhaps the first thing we lose is that sense of timelessness you refer to, and from there is a downward spiral into anxiety, drive, and an overall sense of lacking that so typifies adult life for so many.
I have a friend who visited recently and had not seen me in person for a couple of years, he was staggered and said you are like you were when you where a teenager, when we meet. If I place this in context, this is after 20 years of adult hood, getting, hard, cynical, driven, heady and bloated, overweight from food and drink choices. I now have a flow, openness, vulnerability and delicateness returning, I have lightness of movement and form that was there in my teenagers years. I could feel what he was observing, I am returning and letting go of the layers that are not me, returning to a knowing and lived knowing of my essence, soul, connection with God. I also share heartfelt appreciation and gratitude for Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine.
Gorgeous recollection of how you felt as a child and I relate to it and it is something I have observed in the children we have. The simpleness and ease with ourselves, flexibility and flow in the way limbs are move. I talk to my children about how I am returning to this, something that they are connected with, that somewhere along the way I lost awareness of, but am returning to. Through my commitment to be open to this return, I offer support to my children in terms of appreciating what is lived within them, and they inspire me.
Samantha it’s wonderful that you are able to appreciate the connection that your children naturally have. So often as adults we completely miss the fact that our children are interwoven with the magic and majesty of life, because we ourselves are living in and from a place of separation.
The way you express and describe your childhood shows how very much our bodies ‘store’ that which we have lived and that the joy of simply being that we have lived in our childhood is never lost but always there to rediscover and express from.
Alexis what a brilliant sharing of living Life from the body. It reminds me of the way I approached life, how much I could feel from my body, how that was what life was like for me and then the shock when I felt the assault of school and boarding school. The photo is great in that you really can see and feel the ease in the body, the playfulness. It’s lovely to be reminded of that and to also appreciate that same joy can be with us today. It shows that we don’t need to “find ourselves” we just need to re-connect and live in a way that supports that connection.
Alexis, this lovely story takes me back to ‘the Land of the Real Me’. It is so true how we take on different personas, images or pictures of how we think we should be, when we had it all in the first place and then lost it and went walkabout. Returning to natural childhood feelings brings us back to reality, what is truly happening around us and we can be wonderful adults in the world with that connection.
Alexis this is great to read. I observe how at ease young children can be in their bodies, how playful and light and joyful and I see at school that there is so much pressure for children to harden up and toughen up and not live the innocence, sweetness and playfulness that is so natural for children.
Once we grow up into the hardness and take on protecting ourselves the way of living as a child is seen as childish, and the belief comes in that we couldn’t be like a child because we have serious adult stuff to be getting on with, like work and paying bills. But what you describe here Alexis feels exquisite, to have the care free naturalness of a child once again and to be free of the tension would be awesome and no amount of money or being serious could buy that feeling.
As adults we have brought in ‘manufactured’ versions of play, such as paint ball, trivia nights and sport but none of these activities conjure up the same childhood feelings as they rely on bringing stimulation in from the outside, whereas a child’s natural delight comes from the inside.
“I lived life from my body; my senses were what connected me to life. Life and I were one and the same. Life was simple, life was joyous, life was harmonious and life was very, very easy. I never thought twice about the fact that I loved life.” So beautiful and I can feel the joy in the photo. Children have such innate wisdom – they know how to just be. So why do we allow ourselves to get taken over as we ‘grow up’? I am so appreciative of Serge Benhayon and knowing there is a way back – to reclaiming ourselves and finding once again the joy and love of truly living in the moment.
My body loved reading this Alexis – “Firstly, I was upside down and my whole body delighted in being upside down; it also loved to spin, jump, run, tumble and roll.” A friend and I were just talking about this yesterday how we can remember everything in our body, the freedom, joy, lightness and grace… without any issues or any thoughts of perfection creeping in. The thing is we can re-connect to this knowing in our bodies whenever we choose to and it is there untainted and divine as ever.
The body always remembers that loose feeling, of just being… I recognise it now, as well as recognising when I harden up, and that gives me a choice each day for how I live, as well as a marker for exactly what is going on for me.
The timelessness in your writing is like eternal poetry. It’s healing to read testimonials of the fact that our innate beauty and innocence is never lost, just covered.
I loved reading this, Alexis, as it reminds me of the natural joy I and no doubt many others experienced in childhood, living in direct relationship with our bodies, nature and God. What you describe is so tangible that my body lights up in response, feeling the truth that life can be this flowing and simple again, no matter what has happened in the meantime.
It is amazing how much we change and essentially give up on ourselves thinking it is the only way to fit in and protect ourselves, when all it does is make us not feel what is going on by hardening but does not really change anything. At least by staying open and aware we get to feel and understand what is going on. Life then makes sense when we read and understand it – otherwise we are simply at the mercy of what ever energy chooses to come at us.
Thank you Alexis, I had a very similar childhood experience, moving from the countryside into suburbia aged 7 and then many years later, battle weary and exhausted, arriving on the doorstep of Universal Medicine, where I was gently shown how to re-unite with my body once more and the innocence I disconnected from all those years ago. You, me, Serge Benhayon and thousands of other people are living proof that whatever hardships we have been through, we can if choose to dedicate ourselves to the task, re-connect a pristine innocence within us, an innocence that remains forever untainted by our worldly experiences and perpetually there for us to return to.
Reading your evocative description of your childhood experiences immediately re-connected me back to mine and the beauty and flow in living life from our bodies. Our bodies never forget however long it has been but the mental pictures we have of how hard life is etc creates barriers to feeling this joy and freedom. The more I appreciate the truth that my body is always willing to show me the more grounded I feel and the ease with which I move through life is ever expanding.
The beauty of feeling in our bodies as a child is an amazing reconnection to who we really are and a joy to share with you Alexis in this beautiful blog and not only a time to recall but a way that can be lived now by our choices and healing of our bodies.The gift of reflection from babies and children is very inspiring and something to really appreciate and honour them to stay in all they are in their freedom connection to their bodies and the oneness of all.
Many of us travel all around the world to ‘find out who we are’. Some will travel up steep inclines to remote hill tops in an attempt to uncover ‘the true me’. Yet what you show, so beautifully Alexis is that this part of us, our delicate tenderness is always and permanently available, just waiting there for us to connect to. The barriers in the way are much greater than the Berlin or China wall but are simply those we have created internally. Thankfully once we know, we can get through in any moment with just a gentle breath.
Thank you Alexis, the freedom of your early childhood was always there in your body to return to. So many have found the environment of school teaches us how to shut down our natural joyful essence of childhood. Serge Benhayon and the teachings of the Ageless Wisdom present a way of reconnecting to our inner child that is never truly lost, just buried.
I loved your description of a moment of your childhood complete with all your senses highly in-tune with your body. When we start to shed the things we had collected over time that had dulled our senses and become something we are not, we slowly re-connect to what we were again when we were young.
The way you describe living from your body as a child makes it very tangible and easy to remember, from the body – yet again.
The first 9 years were beautiful. That is a great, great blessing.
Reading your honest blog Alexis helped me to remember my childhood and my connect to my body at that time. You wrote: “I have come to understand that it is through our connection to our bodies that we re-member who we are.” That is so true as the body remembers every little thing we chose to do – we can see and feel how we chose to live in every gesture and movement we do but most of us avoid to feel it – that is in fact a bit sad as this is the greatest gift our body can offer us.
The way you convey the simplicity and joy of being a child is just gorgeous and so relatable. Being in connection to God and living from our bodies is effortless. The exhaustion we feel as an adult is the a result of enormous ‘effort’ we put in to not being all that is right there before us, within us and all around us. Thank you Alexis
Sara reading your summation of life for most ‘The exhaustion we feel as an adult is the result of the enormous ‘effort’ we put in to not being all that is right there before us’, really highlights just how crazy we have allowed things to become and still the intensity of the madness shows no sign of abating.
“Weary and exhausted, I arrived on the doorstep of Serge Benhayon and the teachings of The Ageless Wisdom.” This line Alexis made me stop and ponder what we allow our lives to become. As I do also remember that when I was young how I was with nature and how I lived completely from my body which later on I have replaced with going into my mind and with that disconnected from nature and not least my body as that was what society made me to be. But what you say Alexis is so true to me that running our lives in that energy in disconnection with who we naturally are does wear and exhaust our bodies and sounds actually not a healthy way to be.
Another gorgeous blog Alexis. The way you describe your early childhood has left a feeling of expansion in my body, a memory that this way of being, before we learn to go into the ‘doing’ mode is so freeing within the body. To return to our state of being can only be done through a deepening and appreciation of our relationship with our body and also with space.
Claiming life as joy and not accepting anything less than our power is what life has recently become for me. Returning to all we innately know without delay or compromise.
And to think that so many people believe that life is a hard slog, pitted with disappointment and frustration, something to be endured rather than enjoyed. The truth that life can actually be exactly as we experienced it as kids is utterly unimaginable, as it was for me for so many years but as more and more of us reclaim our childhood expansion we offer a true reflection to the world.
Thank you Alexis. I felt like I was with you in every word and I can feel it resonate to that child like godly knowing returning. ‘I have come to understand that it is through our connection to our bodies that we re-member who we are. By re-uniting with my body, I have been re-united with myself and by re-uniting with myself, I have been re-united with the connection to God that I knew in my body as a child.’ Your expression is glorious and I can’t wait to read more of your blogs.
This sums up so accurately the day I first met Serge Benhayon: “Weary and exhausted, I arrived on the doorstep of Serge Benhayon”, not realising that the decision I had made to do so was about to change my life in a glorious myriad of ways. Now many years later, and more reconnected to my body, to the world and to God than I have ever been, I am truly living in the world not just struggling to exist as I had done for so much of my life. As my body and I have finally been reunited, the wisdom it shares is my guiding light in every moment, no longer something to be ignored, for I know that I do so at my peril.
Ingrid reading your comment ‘As my body and I have finally been reunited, the wisdom it shares is my guiding light in every moment’ made me aware that I have ignored how cold my feet are for a while, as I continue to work on the computer, you underlined the fact that our bodies are always communicating to us and yet we so often choose to ignore them. How would life be if we heeded every message that our bodies shared?
PS Just off to get some socks!
Absolutely gorgeous blog Alexis, thank you for sharing this with us, it reminded me of how I felt as a child, the timelessness and unquestionable feeling of love. I too am now learning to reconnect to myself, to God and to people through learning to reconnect back to my body, and allowing it to guide me. The feeling of timelessness and stillness is always with us, it is a matter of choosing to connect to who we are and everything is already here available for us to embrace truth and love again.
‘But alas, I left the Land of the Real Me and went walkabout in the Land of Who I Was Not. My walkabout lasted nearly forty years’. Love these words Alexis. Your walkabout sounds positively Biblical in its ‘forty year’ proportions. And such an interesting use of the term ‘walkabout’ so highlighting that it is our ‘movements’, our ‘walk’ that are important, the way we walk, the quality in which we live. You so well depict the exhaustion of such a walk that was not connected to the inner-heart that the child knew so well.
Alexis,
I loved reading about your childhood, and the journey you have walked away from, and now returning to yourself. A couple of years ago I had a moment with a young child where they said to me, “I know you are going back, but I’m not I am going away”.
I replied by saying that you don’t have to. A very poignant moment that shows us clearly the choice many of us made to leave ourselves to cope in the world.
It is through my body that I have got to know how tender I am, how beautiful, delicate and magnificent I am – all the adjectives I would have never dreamed of using to describe myself, but very truly felt.
Very beautifully and engagingly written blog Alexis. The images are so evocative and probably known to us all, most certainly to me – the sound of a plane in the sky or some neighbour mowing the lawn in summer, are both sounds that evoke in me the sense of connectedness that we have in childhood. And then we enter into the outside world more and things change. We harden, we look to be liked and approved of, we compromise in our expression . . . ad all this has quiet an impact on our energy levels, eventually taking its toll on our health. You are so right, words cannot express what we have been given by Serge Benhayon!
Simply stunning Alexis. It felt as if I was there with you when you were 9 years old and playing so joyfully and feeling the absolute innocence and flow of our bodies connection. This line was so beautiful to feel from its simplicity “I have come to understand that it is through our connection to our bodies that we re-member who we are.” Thank you.
loved your blog Alexis! so much I can relate to in this blog, at 9 I also moved to a new school and was shocked at how different things were, and started to change and feel the tension with other people I hadn’t had before. No matter how deep we bury our true selves we can always be recovered and the amazingness that is within is always there.
Gosh Alexis you have sparked so many gorgeous feelings and memories of how life was for me as a child – there was an ever-present abounding sense of joy and timelessness. It is only since becoming a student of Universal Medicine that these gorgeous feelings and memories and beginning to slowly but surely be re-awakened within me.
Your sharing captures the clear reflection of what happens in life as we are exposed to what is not true in the world and it also confirms the amazingness of who we truly are and the truth that we are always connected to this truth. This is very beautiful Alexis and holds so much healing for us all. Thank you.
“I lived life from my body; my senses were what connected me to life.”
This is so true and I had never really looked at it this way…that it is our senses that connect us to life. This makes so much sense and gives us a clue as to why we pollute our bodies with a way of living that does not support the essence of who we truly are. By bludgeoning our senses by way of eating foods that don’t truly nourish us, adopting behaviours that are not an expression of truth but instead come from protection and by learning to move in a way that effectively shuts the world and others out, we ‘lock the door’ to our innate divinity for we effectively stop listening to the communication that can’t stop communicating from the Body of God (The Universe) that we live in. In order to reach Heaven, we do not need to die or transcend our physical form in any way, far from it – we need to connect more deeply to it and feel life and thus God through our every pore. This is something we as children naturally do before we harden in the face of the all that is being lived that is not of the love we all know we each in essence are.
‘Life was simple, life was joyous, life was harmonious and life was very, very easy. I never thought twice about the fact that I loved life.’ …. I remember feeling this way too, and it beautiful to know that it can be like this now too, it’s down to us, our commitment to ourselves, to each other, to being a responsible member of the universe. It’s up to us how we choose to live and therefore, how we feel with those choices.
‘I have come to understand that it is through our connection to our bodies that we re-member who we are. By re-uniting with my body, I have been re-united with myself and by re-uniting with myself, I have been re-united with the connection to God that I knew in my body as a child.’ – thank you for expressing your truth so beautifully, Alexis. It’s never been more important for us to share this with humanity, particularly our children as they navigate the rocky path to adulthood with all the same challenges that we’ve had.
This blog is pure magic and an act of grace, thank you Alexis. Every word you wrote stirred in me feelings, smells, sights and sounds of a childhood I felt I had left behind, showing me that this joy and playfulness is universal and shared by all. Despite what our personal circumstances may be, childhood is a time where we are able to live in connection to God/The Universe without having to question the nature of that connection. It just is. Even when we see children who are not thriving due to personal hardship be it abuse, poverty or famine, there are still glimpses of this joy compared to an adult who may have completely shut down access to such connection. I remember seeing a little girl in hospital who had been physically abused by her parents, she was lying with both legs up in traction, unable to move for weeks but singing away to herself and greeting everyone that came into her room. This was a real ‘stop’ moment for me because it let me see that there is a warmth and a joy that naturally emanates from within that can never be annihilated no matter the abuse we may suffer.
It is often very beneficial to recall our childhood to get a feel how we lived a very simple, relaxed and joyous life.
This isn’t to say we should try to replicate the activities we did to try and restore these qualities we yearn for.
Instead use our childhoods or any other rock solid experiences and say Yes that’s for me.
From there we build a marker to continually build upon.
I love reading about that feeling of lightness and ease in your body as a child. I have noticed how much I’m feeling it these days at age 39, the child like curiosity is back and noticing the tiny wonderful details in nature and saying what ever I feel like around others and enjoying conversations that are real. All for the grace of Serge Benhayon and him sharing the way of the livingness… And never holding back on the magic ✨
It is great how you explain when and where the changes started for you and how you lost yourself.
I love how you described being a child, feeling this and smelling that, really using your senses. I could remember things this way too as I read through your blog. It is quite interesting how our senses show us and reveal so much.
Alexis, I remember being that way as a child too, connected to my body, the inner warmth I always felt, the joy to explore, move, and be part of life, and the way my body was filled completely with me. I am also on my way back to this way of being of living in connection with myself and my body, with the support of Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon.
It is beautiful to read just how carefree and free in your body you were when you were under 9, Alexis. And it feels a pretty idyllic start to your life. Yes, life in the city can be so different, everyone goes through much more tension and stress, and I can relate to the hardening that one can find among even quite young children in school etc. Although on the outskirts of the city life in Australia, when I was quite young I had a good deal of freedom to play with the boy next door and we used to wander in the bush down to the tadpole ponds in the valley nearby, where I had lots of freedom, so long as I was with him. My parents trusted this boy who was very gentle and thoughtful. But when his family moved away, I did not have that company and as a young girl slowly growing up, I was subjected to far more restriction as to who I could mix with, as a girl, and I could feel the fear behind the rules that were now imposed. I was subjected to much rejection and cattiness from girls at school and I too hardened my body against the impacts I was receiving. I then lived my life in that way for another 60 years and it took me until I was close to 70 before I discovered the Ageless Wisdom through meeting Serge Benhayon. It has been an amazing journey of discovering my true self, a lot of undoing to be done, and still a work in progress, but boy, Alexis, isn’t it so worthwhile? You have certainly made it very clear here, thank you for your sharing. All those who have come to know Serge Benhayon have so much to thank him for, so many transformed lives.
This is beautiful Alexis. What an inspiring revelation you received from the photo of your 9 year old self. Looking back I can see there is often a time around this age when life becomes about being more responsible and at the same time we lose that beautiful free divine spirit that is natural to us, and we stat to pull back and not trust the world. I have to join you in saying thanks is not enough for the appreciation I too have of Serge Benhayon and the teachings of The Way Of The Livingness.
Thank you Alexis for this powerful reminder of how most of us, when we were children, have experienced how it feels to live in connection to our bodies, to our inner-most being and to life. This is in fact natural for us all, who we are and a way of living that we long to return to live. Through the years we learn to leave this connection and instead build layers of protection from the hurt of separation, and we search and search outside ourselves for fulfillment. It is through our connection to our bodies that we can return to live in connection to the fullness and lightness of who we are within, in essence.
As a child I can also remember living day in day out feeling a fullness and lightness in my body, where there was an openness to be guided from one place to another from an impulse from within me. I spent a large part of my childhood playtime outdoors, in our garden ‘wonderland’ which never ceased to offer endless hours of discovery and wonderment. I never questioned these impulses as I often simply moved knowing where I felt to go next to explore the magic, wonder and endless awe’s of life and nature. This was a natural and effortless way of being and a way of being that I too have re-discovered again through the The Way of The Livingness as presented and consistently lived graciously by Serge Benhayon.
‘I became as authentic as a hologram.’ I still feel like I’m coming out of my hardened shell of protection and wanting to be the toughest of the tough; a discovery of who I am and allowing myself to express with the world without letting old definitions of who I think I am get in the way.
You have a lovely way of expressing it felt like reading a chapter of a book on childhood. Kids are even more numb these days and hardened its quite shocking where we are at as a whole society.
I feel both inspired and sad by reading your blog. Inspired that you have re-membered and are learning to be with your body again and sad for you, sad for me and sad for humanity that we go on these long walk abouts being people that we are not. I also love the way you write, you are a natural story teller. Look forward to reading many more to come.
As soon as I began reading your blog I could feel that lightness that you were talking about, that lightness that was there as a child. “I have come to understand that it is through our connection to our bodies that we re-member who we are. By re-uniting with my body, I have been re-united with myself and by re-uniting with myself, I have been re-united with the connection to God that I knew in my body as a child” . The thinking that is encouraged at school and the emphasis on learned knowledge can crowd out this spacious feeling and take us way from our intuition and inner knowing.
‘I have come to understand that it is through our connection to our bodies that we re-member who we are.’ Re-member who we are. A simple hyphen paints such a clear picture. So perfect, as when we are disconnected from our body, all that is needed is for us to come back to it or re-member who we are.
Alexis, I absolutely love this blog post. As simple and obvious as it is, I have never actually considered how it is our bodies that remember experiences, and always just assumed everything was done from my head. But the moment I read it, I said YES!! Of course!! The smells that remind you of your childhood, the feelings you get on warm summer days, every memory is sitting in our body, good and bad. It’s amazing how much this resonates with me as it exposes how much of my day is spent living or rather believing that everything is coming from my head.
“Weary and exhausted, I arrived on the doorstep of Serge Benhayon and the teachings of The Ageless Wisdom. ” I so can relate to this i too i left the land of of me at the age of 9 and to went on a walk about, lost who i totally was and become someone else. From then trying to find myself back, but in the process got very exhausted, until i met Serge Benhayon and my world changed.
When we lose the connection to our body that is so innate when we are children, we do not just ‘grow up’ or ‘grow out of childhood habits’, we choose – often deliberately – to abandon the wonder and flexibility that once came with every step we took. This is not lost to us, it is simply pushed down and suppressed. But it is waiting to awaken with the simple choice to remember what it is like to feel everything that we are.
I’ve noticed recently how children can ‘bring out the kid’ in adults – which goes to your point. It’s always there within us, even if we don’t realise it. A child can be as much of an inspiration as anyone.
I love how there’s not an ounce of blame in what you’ve shared here Alexis, just an honest observation of what happened, what choices were made and committing to choose differently now with all that you know. Thanks for sharing the joy and clarity that you’ve reconnected with!
Exquisite, you have triggered memories in my body of very similar childhood freedom and sensing Alexis. Amazing how we shut that down. Love the Walkabout’ analogy, mine lasted quite a few years longer than yours but the catalyst for change was the same – Serge Benhayon, the man responsible for waking me and countless others up to their beauty and purpose again.
How beautiful this is Alexis – like a reunion with self after so many years.
I too can relate to what you have shared here – the experience of timelessness as a child, the sound of the plane in the distance, the warmth of the sun on the skin and the looseness and delight in the body.
It is all about re-claiming this now, about allowing ourselves to re-turn to a body that knows joy, that knows nature that embraces the lightness again. Time to let go of the control and the protection and come back to a deep knowing and sensitivity that we all hold inside.
I remember well the ‘lightness and natural ease’ I had as a child and have spent a life time searching for ways to get it back. I’m now learning that it is the choices I make on a daily basis that determine the quality I feel in my body.
OH
It might be fair to say that there is an inevitable journey for every child, from that sweet innocence back out in to the world where aggression and pain are not spoken about but lived with each day. With the science of reincarnation and karma however, there is the possibility of seeing this journey as one where each and every one of us gets to take responsibility for the world we left behind, and has a chance to re-imprint what once was our normal way of life, with a new, more loving way to be. By this view, we can see how any discomfort, and any painful experience is actually a time to roll our sleeves up and bring something different to the situation – something where everyone is respected at the very least.
Thank you for sharing this Alexis. What strikes me about this blog is that it is not what we go through in life, the various situations and experiences, that can change us, but rather our reaction to these. It is actually in the reaction that we choose to leave ourselves and our connection with our bodies.
Lee, you have honed in on a crucial detail ‘ It is actually in the reaction that we choose to leave ourselves and our connection with our bodies’, take away reactions and we are naturally left being who we innately are. What Serge Benhayon supports us to do, is to dismantle the apparatus that supports our reactions and therefore eliminate the devices that are inbuilt into our lives that continually take us away from ourselves.
Awesome, Lee – what a great point. Proving further that the hardening is not our natural way of being at all.
Great blog Alexis, my body became hard too as soon as I was sent to school.
This is a beautiful blog Alexis; I love how you shared how life was from the point of view of an innocent child. This could be any one of us because as children we were very connected to our bodies. It is by returning and reconnecting with our bodies that we will find our true selves.
Alexis, thank you, what you’ve written has helped me remember how I felt as a child and to then feel the layers of protection I subsequently laced myself with and also to understand how unnecessary and futile and damaging it is to do this when as you say: “it’s impossible to hurt an open heart”.
The joy and freedom that we have we have to reclaim in full is presented right here in this photo Alexis. It is proof and ‘truth of who we truly are!’
That’s right, Bernadette. As they say, ‘a picture speaks a thousand words’ but a photograph can also be felt, something that is clearly a wonderful reminder for Alexis and is possibly the inspiration for this article.
’Weary and exhausted, I arrived on the doorstep of Serge Benhayon and the teachings of The Ageless Wisdom. The profound teachings that Serge Benhayon presents have supported me to re-connect back to my body and I am beginning to feel like the beautiful, willowy child that I once was.’ – Gosh, can I relate to this Alexis, meeting and studying with Serge Benhayon has not only been life changing but life saving.
Oh, I love the way you write, I was transported to the willow tree, remembering my own sense of adventure in a friends back garden. I remember the feeling of space and flow in my body and I remembered, as you described it, when my body started to harden at the shock of what became known to me as ‘normal life’. Re-connecting back to that space and flow and bringing it into our day to day now that we are adults is how we share with our young people how to keep hold of that sense of us, and not buy into the illusion of ‘normal life’ which simply assaults space and flow. As you have demonstrated here, it is possible to do.
Thanks Alexis. You really nailed it with this sentence – ‘It is how I chose to react to the challenges that presented themselves that set me on a completely different tack.’ Once we realise that we are in control of our reactions – that it’s always a choice to react or respond, we’re empowered to start to choose differently. it might take a while to change our old patterns of reacting to certain things in a certain way, because they’re so ingrained and old that they feel automatic, but eventually, once we’re aware of them and start making different choices, the old momentums run their course.
It’s quite incredible what we know and that we knowingly choose to make those changes in life to protect ourselves from feeling hurt. At some level though we know that this is simply not true but we ignore that one very thing that is communicating this to us – our body. A super responsive instrument that if given the opportunity will guide us through life.
And yep — we can have a joyful and light spring in our step as adults, walking down the city’s alleyways and in fact anywhere, just like we might have done as children when we felt carefree. That feeling of being carefree is not restricted to children, it is for those who choose to be aware and responsible for their care and well-being along with how they always will have an impact on others. True responsibility removes burdens we otherwise carry. And the innocence of the child is embodied once again.
Beautiful Alexis, the answers to everything we seek are within our bodies – which are made to be warm, supple and tender and super aware of everything going on around them. Going back to the childhood innocence we once had and embodying this innocence as adults is the BEST thing ever.
Leaving our body for our mind is the biggest hurt so many of us hold. There’s nothing more yummy than feeling like an innocent child, at one with life and body. Light and powerful, all very natural. The Joy in feeling myself, my love, my Soul within my body is something so precious and delicate that it’s hard to describe in words. When I look at it now, it is very obvious that our body is our natural guide, yet it took for me also Serge Benhayon and everything he presents to make the choice to come back and build a friendship with my body, my precious vessel for all the Love I am and represent.
Hear, hear Floris, what you’ve shared is so beautiful. Trusting what we feel in our body and allowing it to guide us is the most amazing feeling, the joy, love and stillness we can connect to is endless.
How gorgeous is your awareness of how you feel in your body and the childhood knowing is still within. It’s very confirming to feel that all we are is always present regardless of what we take on through life, we don’t loose us we just take more on that isn’t us.
Hello Alexis and what a historic blog. When I read this it reminds me of my childhood and the games we use to play and how it was. Almost like you didn’t have a care in the world and the only concern was being inside by dinner time. Much of the time I just loved hanging out with my parents, I loved being around them and their friends. It’s really important to appreciate the feelings we have and as you have done in a detailed way. The more detail you give something in this way the more easily you are able to see what has been right in front of your nose the whole time. Like a childhood memory like you have spoken about, always there and now deeply appreciated and almost comes to life again, it did for me. It’s great to see and miss those child like qualities you have described Alexis, thank you.
Thank you for writing this Alexis, from your blog I recall the same feeling of living from my body instead of my head. When you live life from your body everything becomes magical and you do feel everything. A beautiful way of living to come back to.
Beautiful Alexis – it totally shows that we have our hands in life and breath to breath and choose to be in connection with God or not. And to run the show in the World Of Not Wanting To Know Who We Are , or to actually Know Who We Are and commit to knowing so. Thank you for this beautiful explanation and your way of how you came back straight to that beautiful kid.
I love the way you express Alexis. I’ve just read another one of your blogs and felt the same. You have a gift for bringing words into tangible feelings – something that can only truly be done when the words describe something lived and known. I can relate to so much of what you have written – and we are pretty much the same age too, so your experience of school was very similar to mine. I only wish I’d known this truth when I was growing up, “The ironic part is that if had I chosen to keep being the real me, then I wouldn’t have needed any protection at all because it’s impossible to hurt an open heart.” but wishing is empty and leaves us wanting. The only way to change this is to ensure that children now and in the future feel and know this. How can I do that? By living the real me now and showing everyone I meet that when we live life with an open heart we cannot get hurt.
Lucy, I love that quote too. And I love the question you pose – and the simple answer. It reveals the level of our responsibility in today’s world – to live with an open heart.
Alexis ,this is a beautiful honouring of the simplicity, harmony and love that many of us have felt in the world as children. It is possible for us to feel that free and connected again as it is still within us but covered in protection from the hurts we may have experienced. A timely reminder for me.
A beautiful Blog Alexis – I love the way you write, so clear and so descriptive, I can’t help but understand what you are describing – how as children we living in a way that it totally involved with life with all of us open, all our senses aware – but as we grow up and the intensity of the world begins to creep into our lives we don’t often get supported to hold onto this openness – we harden up. But it is though reconnecting to our bodies that we will rediscover that childhood joy and love that never really left.
It’s amazing – thanks to Serge’s presentations- that we are returning to this level of awareness. That for many of us today it is something we have to work on, to drop our protections, to not let our hurts define us and to live from our bodies first.
Serge has had thousands of exhausted and weary people arrive on his doorstep and he greets every-one of them with an open heart and an open house.
Alexis I loved reading this blog. I have just been watching my daughter and her friend playing outside doing cartwheels, back bends etc. They are truly living life from their bodies and you have reminded me I used to do the same. All those childhood memories you have in your back garden are similar to mine and you have reminded me how profound but natural it is to live in this way. Being reminded of this also reminds of the joy of living from the body and this is supporting me to connect to my body and to simply be with it. Thank you.
The simplicity and joy of being in the moment connected to our body in a quality of stillness and harmony is something we all experience as a child. Unfortunately we all leave this too, and up until I met Serge Benhayon I just thought this is how it was and there was no way to go back. Re-connecting to this way of being has been a dream come true and everything I ever missed.
Danielle, I too thought that ‘up until I met Serge Benhayon I just thought this is how it was and there was no way to go back’, in fact I actually thought that it was a biological boundary that was erected once we left childhood. The incredible thing is I am now feeling that the impediments to feeling the spaciousness that we felt as kids are self imposed and therefore can be removed by us whenever we choose.
It is interesting, I also had this picture of development and could not place why or how I lost what I felt and lived as a child, the idea that we just get old and so cynical, harder, less mobile, heavier etc…I know for a fact this does not need to be the case. There is nothing ‘childish’ about being a child, they offer a depth of wisdom and lived knowing of God that is deeply inspiring, and I can feel that I am developing a lived quality that I felt as a child, in an adult woman’s body. A beautiful expression of what I have been born to express.
Alexis your blog brings back childhood memories of the way I used to delight in hopping and skipping; the great pleasure I gained from balancing along a wall on my way to and from school. These days I am inspired when I see young children and the way they are so joyful and free in their movements. I am enjoying releasing the many tensions I have held in my body for decades to again delight in that uninhibited freer way of moving.
Absolutely Debra, releasing my many tensions is something I also enjoy. Our movements play a huge role in the way we re-connect and after 12 years of being a Student of The Livingness I can feel that there is more to release!
This feels like a big wake up call for us all who knows there is so much more to life and yet just feel they are not able to grasp what that is. WE are that more-ness in life. And what’s more is that we already have that within us ready and waiting to be let out.
What we chose to let god is something so precious, that the hard world is often of great influence of it. But in truth it is a strength when we allow ourselves to be, and not choose to protect but show it in all its glory.
Thank you Alexis. Your childhood sounds quite amazing and I can see exactly what you mean when I look at your the photo you have shared here – there is such ease and lightness in your bodies. When I was a child I often felt tense and sad but I can still remember feeling light and free in my body at times. Now I have had a taste of what it is like to feel this way as an adult and I am inspired to cultivate a relationship with my body so this lightness becomes my new normal.
Simple and to the point, what you share here Alexis is undoubtledy as similar experience for many, that the innocence of childhood, that freedom of allowing oursleves to feel everything in our bodies somewhere along the line gets shut down through a ‘need’ to protect ourselves against the outside world. Thank goodness for Serge Benhayon, who has re introduced the fact that we do not have to do this because we have all that we need to protect us within us, we just have to choose to reconnect to it. And how beautiful that there are so many children now that are being reminded daily of their innate wisdom, who will grow up not losing that connection and will be able to show their friends, relatives, teachers etc there is another way to live, simply by lving all that they are. A new, ground breaking generation on the horizon.
Absolutely, Sandra. And the beauty is that all is not lost because we are now grown. As you say, ‘we just have to choose to reconnect to it’. This way of being has always been there for generation after generation. It puts a new spin on being childish – what a way to live!
I loved loved loved reading the beginning of this blog. I felt like I was there with you by your side experiencing the absolute joy, freedom and yummyness you felt in your body and the safeness you felt in your environment knowing all that was around you. I feel many people can relate to this if we allowed ourselves the space to recall moments in our childhood ‘I lived life from my body; my senses were what connected me to life. Life and I were one and the same. Life was simple, life was joyous, life was harmonious and life was very, very easy. I never thought twice about the fact that I loved life. This is how life was for me up until I was 9 years old.’ Also I feel many can relate to traumas, stresses, anxiety that led us to feel unsafe, unsure, go into protection and harden our bodies. And sadly currently for the younger generation this does not seem to be getting easier for them with statistics saying many as young as 10 or younger are said to be suffering from depression. Clearly this shows us something, that how we are living, and what we are contributing to in life is definietly not working. And it is imperative that we truly understand this and work both on ourselves and collectively to restore the harmony that is innately there. You are so right in saying ‘Our Bodies Hold the Key to the Truth of Who We Are’. And Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine are the only ones who I know that are initiating and truly starting to restore this harmony. Through the Sacred Healing modalities I have been able to truly let go of so much tension, anxiety, nervousness, protection, sadness, anger, misery and bitterness to name a few, which is pretty awesome. I am now starting to allow myself to feel instead my love, tenderness, openness, beauty, care and feel as lovely in my body as you described you felt as a child and now. So we can change this for ourselves it is just a matter of how and Serge Benhayon is absolutely the person to guide us there.
Yes, I have some beautiful memories from childhood too like the summer daylight sky with the faint sound and vapor trails of aeroplanes.