In this article, I want to share more intimately the journey that led me to the most salvaging act I have ever been given to experience: inhabiting my body. Whatever therapeutic techniques I study, meditation teachings I receive, or experiments I go through, I always return to my dear friend the…
In this article, I want to share more intimately the journey that led me to the most salvaging act I have ever been given to experience: inhabiting my body.
Whatever therapeutic techniques I study, meditation teachings I receive, or experiments I go through, I always return to my dearest friend: my body, my cells, the sensations moving through me.
Why is it so difficult to inhabit one’s body?
As for many people, this capacity to inhabit this precious friend was more of a fighter’s journey than a gentle and easy path. That is why praising presence seems essential to me today.
I blame our social conditioning to rely only on the mind and abandon our body. I admit it, I have a weakness for blaming society.
But it can also come from trauma, which often pushes us towards more control and a loss of trust in the body.
Everyone talks about it.
Trauma specialists speak of regulating the nervous system.
Meditation teachers speak of being present with what is.
It took me time to understand, hear, and accept all of this.
When understanding is no longer enough
The number of times I was told: « You don’t need to understand », and I replied: « But of course I do! »
This is also why I deeply understand the people I support. I am not different.
The challenges you go through, I have gone through them and I still go through them too.
The difference is simply that today, my practice has offered me an experience and an understanding of the body that I wish to pass on to everyone who has not yet taken this path.
Out of fear. Out of unfamiliarity. Out of resistance.
Because I have lived all of this as well.
Even today, a part of me sometimes resists. A part that loves to understand everything and dissect everything. A part that wants to make sense of everything before accepting to come back down into the body, to inhabit it.
When I started meditating, I had to force myself. It was not enjoyable. And yet, I continued because I observed very gradual changes.
I did the minimum. Guided.
Then, after a few years of practice, my body felt. It remembered.
This path I take every time I feel my body is the path towards my inner world — hence the name of my programme.
It is the one I can take every time I lose my way, every time I lose my centre.
It is the one that, without ever holding it against me, brings me back home: deeply anchored in my centre.
Sometimes, I would like to use a word other than « meditation ». Because meditation can give the impression that it is a practice, a hobby like any other.
For me, it is much more than that.
We were taught to eat. To sleep. But we were never told to inhabit our body.
We were never told that inhabiting ourselves, being in ourselves every day, is perhaps one of the gateways to a fully lived life, an embodied life.
Recently, I increased my meditation time — or rather my time inhabiting the body.
From twenty minutes of practice, I moved to one hour.
It may seem like a lot.
And yet, today it seems astonishing to me to spend twenty-three hours of our day without fully coming to inhabit, feel, and meet our being.
Inhabiting the body in daily life
Since I extended my meditations, something in me relaxes more and more into this new way of inhabiting life.
The stresses of daily life finally have the space to be supported, welcomed, and moved through during this time of deep inhabitation.
My relationship with the world, my presence with myself and with others, are transformed by it.
More joy, calm, and tranquillity have also settled in.
And yet, the purpose of this approach was never to become happier or to live in peace.
My only desire is to inhabit my body a little more each time, in order to receive myself and receive the world from this space.
It took me several years to anchor this level of trust within myself.
And I am eager to discover where this path can lead me.
But one thing has changed.
Now, my knowledge is no longer only in my head.
It is deeply anchored in my body.
If this article had a humble intention, it would be to inspire each of you to try.
To come back and feel your home.
To be WITH rather than against.
To be here rather than elsewhere.
To inhabit a little more fully this body that has accompanied you all along.
And if certain questions arise about this practice or this path, do not hesitate to write to me. It will be a pleasure to exchange with you.
And to go even further, I offer two programmes around meditation: click here to find out more or write to me.
