Reclaiming Your Body: Healing from Trauma and Awakening to Your Body's Wisdom - Book Review
Did you know that our bodies are communicating with us each and every moment and include an inner navigational system? In Suzanne Scurlock-Durana's newest book, Reclaiming Your Body: Healing from Trauma and Awakening to Your Body's Wisdom, she outlines the many ways that the body communicates and enlightens us with it's wisdom to help navigate life in the most effective manner.
A large majority of people only recognize communication from the body when it is related to pain and discomfort. These signals are hard to ignore but long before the body experiences pain and discomfort it communicates to us what we need to know to prevent these undesired states. From health issues to intuition, our bodies are our closest ally in navigating the various challenges of life.
The author states, "The body has it's own language that is older and more primal than most of us realize. Our bodies speak to us with sensations, images, emotions, and an inner knowing that is beyond words." For many, this "inner guidance system" is shut off at an early age as a result of our culture's infatuation with the material world, technology and the absence of knowledge about how the body works. Combined with trauma which also inhibits our ability to perceive communication from the body, we are forced to try to navigate life without being able to access all of the available information. As we stumble through life, our body continues to send vital information to assist if we could only comprehend.
The main wisdom centers of the body are identified as the Heart (Gift of Inspiration), Gut (Gift of Instinctual Knowing), Pelvis (Gift of Power), Legs & Feet (Gift of Movement), Bones (Gifts of Clarity and Steadiness), and Brain (Gift of an Integrated System). These are the "specific areas where wisdom resides, and each one has its own characteristics," says the author.
"It is our present-moment sensory experience that provides the foundational data to the prefrontal area of our brain for the wisest decision-making possible. Without a conscious sensory connection to the present, we are forced to orient to the past."
Yet again, another reason why mindfulness is so important. If our mind is in the past or the future, we miss out on all of the communication from our body. Once we learn how to listen to the wisdom each center provides, we are able to navigate life's challenges with priceless information that affords better choices. This is how we reclaim our "inner guidance system."
The wisdom in this book was learned by the author through decades of personal experience practicing and teaching CranioSacral Therapy (CST) which healed her chronic pain and inspired her to share this transformational knowledge to heal others. She describes CranioSacral Therapy as a "gentle hands-on technique...that utilizes light touch and engages the body's wisdom and healing potential through a series of physical and emotional releases."
Reclaiming Your Body is full of valuable information to transform, heal and guide you successfully through life. It includes explorations at the end of each chapter focused on the main wisdom centers and also includes a free download for each wisdom center from the authors website.
Grab your copy of this life changing book to heal and awaken to your body's wisdom today!
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Enjoy this insightful interview with the Suzanne Scurlock-Durana and New World Library...
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Check out this book and Suzanne's first book, Full Body Presence, here.
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Cultivating Mindfulness: How to Practice Mindfulness Meditation
Cultivating mindfulness is the key to overcoming suffering and recognizing natural wisdom: both our own and others'. How do we go about it?
In the Buddhist tradition and in Contemplative Psychotherapy training, we nurture mindfulness through the practice of sitting meditation. There are many different kinds of meditation. For example, some are designed to help us relax; others are meant to produce altered states of consciousness.
Mindfulness meditation is unique in that it is not directed toward getting us to be different from how we already are. Instead, it helps us become aware of what is already true moment by moment. We could say that it teaches us how to be unconditionally present; that is, it helps us be present with whatever is happening, no matter what it is.
Mindfulness, paying precise, nonjudgmental attention to the details of our experience as it arises and subsides, doesn't reject anything. Instead of struggling to get away from experiences we find difficult, we practice being able to be with them. Equally, we bring mindfulness to pleasant experiences as well. Perhaps surprisingly, many times we have a hard time staying simply present with happiness. We turn it into something more familiar, like worrying that it won't last or trying to keep it from fading away.
When we are mindful, we show up for our lives; we don't miss them in being distracted or in wishing for things to be different. Instead, if something needs to be changed we are present enough to understand what needs to be done. Being mindful is not a substitute for actually participating in our lives and taking care of our own and others' needs. In fact, the more mindful we are, the more skillful we can be in compassionate action.
It's Still Such a Wonderful World
It's easy to lose sight of the beauty of the world in the midst of tragedy, political upheaval, injustice and suffering. While we continue with our practice, working to ease the suffering of others and living a life of compassion and Love, we also need to be mindful and grateful for the beauty of the world that still surrounds us when we choose Love. Like Pops says, "Love baby. Love. That's the secret."
"What a Wonderful World" [1970 Spoken Introduction Version] along with Oliver Nelson's Orchestra is a song written by Bob Thiele (as George Douglas) and George David Weiss. It was first recorded by Louis Armstrong and released as a single in 1968. Thiele and Weiss were both prominent in the music world (Thiele as a producer and Weiss as a composer/performer). Armstrong's recording was inducted in the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999. Intended as an antidote for the increasingly racially and politically charged climate of everyday life in the United States, the song also has a hopeful, optimistic tone with regard to the future, with reference to babies being born into the world and having much to look forward to.
From Yama to Samyama
However, the ultimate goal of practicing yoga is to achieve transcendence and to break this cyclic existence. Dharana, dhyana, and samadhi are the three states that prepare one toward this transcendental goal. These three together is called Samyama (sam meaning total and yama meaning to control). “So Samyama means complete mastery over the psychic process or complete control of mental concentration.”