The Full Body Yes

Thursday, November 19, 2015

It seems like a lot of my more recent blog posts have been about the last item on my list of what was in and out for 2015:  Out – letting my ego run the show; In-allowing the Divine to take the lead.  Why have I been writing so much about this lately?  Probably because it’s been one of my biggest learning opportunities the past year. Each day I learn something new about how to live this way.

As I was on my writing sabbatical one of my realizations was that the transformational journey I was on since my Dad got sick and passed away last year has been one of tremendous spiritual growth. Because I had the blessing of working with two spiritual mentors at this time, I learned a lot from them about how to actually live from a place of actively allowing the Divine to take the lead.  One of the biggest lessons was related to taking action. Not ego, fear-based action but Divine Self inspired action. How do you know the difference?

Martha Beck describes it perfectly as such:

Fear-based ego driven action “feels bad, motivates grasping, seizes control, insists on certainty, and needs everything”.  Divine-Self inspired action “feels good, motivates liberation, relaxes control, accepts uncertainty, and needs nothing.”

The other thing I’ll add to what Martha says is that Divine-Self inspired action has a foundation of freedom and peace. In the short-term the action might feel uncomfortable but at the base of it, there is freedom and peace.  Another way my mentor Lissa Rankin describes this is the feeling of a “full body yes”.  When its Divinely inspired action, you feel it in your body. Everything in your body comes alive and pulls you toward the action with feelings of passion, energy, and excitement. You can physically feel your heart lift or perhaps you get goose bumps or butterflies in your stomach.  Each of our bodies responds differently with a full body yes response but we all receive the indicators. The question is: are we paying attention?

As I started to practice taking actions that were only inspired by my Divine Self I had trouble identifying them. I was driven by my ego-self and my mind for so long that shifting from that perspective into my heart and body wasn’t easy. I remember Lissa asked me what my full body yes response felt like and I was silent.  “Do I even know what this feels like?” I asked myself. “Have I ever had a full body yes response to any action I’ve taken? In my entire life?”

Yes, I had and I came up with a few examples. Most were from childhood. A few were from the past five years but not too many. I realized that for most of my adult-life I’d done countless things I didn’t want to do. I regularly acted from a “full body no” place instead of a “full body yes” place. Why? Because I feared loss, failure, losing control, being judged… the list goes on… This was quite revealing. I spent so much time living from a place of fear and letting my ego-self run the show. This was not how I wanted to live any longer. I committed to stop dishonoring myself.  I committed to begin to act from a full-body yes place.

Getting comfortable acting from a full-body yes place is a transition and a process. The habit is to do what I’ve always done, to say yes, to suck it up and smile regardless of whether it felt like dread or not. The opportunity for me now is to recognize when those feelings arise and to choose to say no – to NOT act from that place but instead, wait for the full body yes opportunity and then take action; to only say yes because my Divine Self is pulling me to take the action that aligns with my authentic self and my Divine purpose; the one that my heart and body know is THE action to take.

Yes, my ego jumps in and reminds me of all the fearful reasons I should not act on the full body yes.  But that’s when I remind her that she is no longer running the show. And each time I remember that, stand in the truth of what my Divine Self knows, and act from that place, not only are the results beyond what I could’ve imagined but I realize that allowing myself alignment with and action from the heartfelt Divine soul perspective is truly the most fulfilling way to live.