Our Western, patriarchal and colonial value systems have conditioned us to look outside of ourselves for authority, education, connection, pleasure, purpose and meaning.
This programming has exalted the mind, intellect and external orientation over the intelligence of the body and our own internal relationship with our visceral, powerful, sensual, heartful selves. We have normalised the constant and dissatisfying reaching and searching for fullness, nourishment and connection outside of our own skin.
Through this, our culture has become painfully disembodied, operating primarily from unprocessed personal and collective trauma.
As well as seeing our intellect as separate from our body-self, we also perceive and experience ourselves as separate from each other and the world around us. This perception exists as part of one of the strongest ruptures that we see in society and the collective soma-psyche: a split not only between humans and their own bodies, but also between body and earth; between us and the natural world.
The separation, tension, disconnection, harm, dysfunction, conflict and tyranny that we see today towards our earth, ourselves, and each other, echoes our inability to deeply feel and listen to the wisdom of our somatic intelligence, and to live life from an embodied space of safety, presence, purpose and freedom.
To meet ourselves through our bodies and to live our lives in harmony with their ancient knowing, is to come into deep relationship with our innate WHOLENESS. This in itself is an act of resistance, as we subvert the cultural narrative of needing to consume more, do more and be more, and instead rest back into that which we already have and are.
-Maanee Chrystal
Founder of the Somatic Institute For Women.