Have you ever been overcome with emotion as you lay in Savasana at the end of a deep yoga flow? Or been running and felt a euphoric ‘high’ even as you push your physical limits? Our physical bodies are deeply connected to our emotions.
I recently sat down with Andee Love, an embodiment coach, and Love Vibe facilitator. A former therapist, Andee has been studying somatic healing her whole life. She is on a mission to help the coaching industry embrace the fullness of our human experience by redefining success and co-creation. Many in the spiritual space are calling us to embrace ‘high vibes’ but doing true spiritual work, the kind that shifts us toward our highest self and allows us to connect to our highest purpose, is not always about positive energy. Sometimes it means speaking truth to challenging times or sharing the parts of us that have experienced trauma.
In my work of helping clients reach their highest performance, I’m often faced with the same challenge. It’s one of the reasons I embarked on a year-long mastermind with Andee and am bringing this work into my coaching. How do we push forward and seek joy, while honoring the deep work that can sometimes feel overwhelming? We may have had our conversation weeks ago, but it’s honestly more relevant than ever.
In the past few weeks, our nation has been thrust into an extremely important global conversation around the role of race and social injustice. As we process our collective complicity and the systemic trauma that plagues black communities, we have to peel back the layers, take off our masks, and get radically honest. Joy is not something that lives in a space separate from our pain. Rather, it’s in our ability to sit with our pain that we can move through it and past it, into a place of true personal power.
Here are Andee’s top tips to embrace the full spectrum of our emotions, so we can connect to and embody the highest version of ourselves:
- Peel back the layers. When you really allow yourself to sit with the emotions of being human, you will uncover illusions you hold about yourself. And only through acknowledging them can you work through them. Allow yourself to get still. Only in the stillness can you listen to your soul.
- Identify what your body needs. We all too often shame ourselves for feeling the “wrong” emotion. Here’s a secret of the embodiment work: there is no such thing. When you get good at acknowledging what your body is feeling, you start to learn how to identify quickly what your body needs.
- Thinking does not always solve the problem. Sometimes you need to move the energy of your body to heal and connect to your deepest truth. Our minds provide us powerful information but there is nothing like the power of moving the body to disrupt and reset our patterns. Listen and learn the language of your body so you can go deeper into all the work you do.
We are living in turbulent times. Black communities have experienced centuries of trauma and many of us are being awakened to our collective responsibility, and demanding change, but the changes will not be overnight. Doing the inner work to make sure we are clear and ready to be effective allies to make systemic changes is going to require deep healing and long term commitment. We can’t bypass the darkness to get to the light, but instead, we can work through the dark to find the light.
To hear our full conversation, make sure to listen to the episode! To learn more about Andee and her work, you can find her at www.andeelove.com. I’ll be hosting an online SoulFlow event in the coming weeks, so stay tuned for more information.
