Meeting the magic of your legs, relieving them from old burdens.

There is magic in our existence. In the way, our bodies and perception live and breathe.

Often, we look at our bodies as a burden. We see them as something, we need to carry along and maintain, and something sooner than later will be painful and full of discomfort.

We feel trapped in it, but we are actually expressed through and with it.

Engaging with what we sense and feel is an expression of freedom.

Freedom from control and oppression to meet social expectations.

Freedom from limiting beliefs and ideas.

A Freedom to be in the now and freedom to heal and grow.

Freedom from feeling dependent and daring to stand on our own when we need to.

Freedom to change.

Freedom to move on.

Freedom to let go and give away.

Freedom to step away from how we needed to be and into how we truly are.

Each discomfort or pain we have is not “bad”. It is the way we are trying to get rid of restrictive, self-comprising, and damaging old inner choices we keep, without our conscious awareness and attention.

Each part of our body stores our life story and the burdens we carry.

Each pain or discomfort, asks us to make a new choice within ourselves. It yields to be freed from whatever burden it carries.

There is a constant wish in us to gain back the fullness of who we are. To re-include all we had to cut off and fight within ourselves. There is the life flowing in us, that constantly wants to be in the now, and freedom from being trapped in the past.

It wants to be freed of old fearfulness/trauma.

Our body is how we perceive life around us beyond what our minds can tell and our eyes can see. The sensation we have is the way we engage with life around us. It is how life expresses itself through and with us.

Throughout our lives, there were always moments we had to reduce and compromise that ability of perception, as we could not act freely upon it. We had to numb it, fight it, fear it as it asked us to do, see or feel things that seemed overwhelming, impossible, or dangerous for our survival at the time.

Today we are met with the constant request to reconnect to it and the parts we had to twist and cut off. That wish to reconnect and expand is embodied in our physical sensations. The discomfort, disease, pain, stress, and the like - We actually cannot escape the physical expression of our being.

It is in our hands to choose if we want to answer that calling or not.

If we want to feel, sense and perceive fully with all of ourselves, or try and correct, numb, cut away and distance ourselves.

If you choose to reconnect, I would be happy to give you a door for it. A door with which you can identify what burdens and which old choices you still carry.

With this exercise I have written for you described below, you can re-chose, let go and free yourself from all those burdens and old choices, and increase the experience of ease, confidence, and clarity in your life.

In this first chapter, let us start with the legs.

(You can do it with each part of your body)

Your legs have walked a lot. They carried you to wherever you went. Held you in whatever you did. They were always there to support and take part.

Start by acknowledging the strength, and loyalty of your legs.

Your legs hold memories and knowledge of what you have experienced.

They hold the good moments as well as moments in which you had to compromise or were trapped.

Your legs learn how to walk and be from others. From other “legs” around you.

Acknowledge that. In that acknowledgment, thank them and the other legs for trying to learn and teach you, how to best survive (no matter if it was not always fitting)

You had learned and absorbed not only how to practically / physically walk, but also the way others walked through their lives. The way they held themselves in their lives.

The way they stored trauma in their legs and shaped themselves around it. The way they trusted or mistrusted themselves. The way they believed they need to stand in order to best survive.

Now we want to listen to what there is in our legs and undo the unnecessary ties and choices.

Start by breathing deeply. Include the lower part of your belly as well.

Keep on breathing and moving your attention toward your legs, pelvis, and your feet.

Take your time.

Let the oxygen work its magic, letting it bring flow and movement to your body, and your head.

Our breathing is often limited by old fear-based choices where we needed to control and reduce how much and how we breathe in order to manage sensations and intensities that seemed to overwhelm us.

You can pay attention to the control you may hold in your mind, in observing yourself, in trying to anticipate what will happen. In fearing and distancing yourself from a possible sensation, pain, or movement.

Keep on breathing and remembering that whatever you would meet, will not destroy you. Whatever you sense is you.

Whatever you sense is part of the power you have within you, that could not be expressed. A power, a capacity, that is striving to be expressed, lovingly felt, held, and freed. A power/capacity that when you meet it, will naturally transform, heal, and become stronger, clearer, and freer. It had no other choice, but to flow into health and expansion when not blocked, like every stream of water that is naturally flowing to join the great ocean, and knows how to meet it.

There is an inherent intention of expansion and healing within us, which we have to remember in those moments, one that works its magic. Magic that our controlling minds kind not perceive.

When you have found that way of breathing and can feel your legs more pay attention to what and how you feel them.

What is stored in them?

What did you let them be, feel or express, and what was restricted, or unwanted?

Take the time to sense it all.

Even if it seems as if you feel “nothing”, stay with it. This “nothing” is the way your mind called all that is not scary, painful, or intense. You always sense and feel something.

You may be meeting the effort and layer of needing to numb and control.

A layer of trapped old fear you carry, that might be not yours.

If there is pain- continue to breathe and feel the protective effort you hold above or below the area of the pain, as well as in other parts of your body.

Then start to move those areas that were holding in protection. Move gently, to free them from the freezing effort they held, while holding the choice or intention that you are OK with feeling the pain and all that it wants to reveal to you.

Sometimes it may help to use your hands, and gently stroke or massage those areas that feel tight, or full so that they can release.

Then ask that pain- be curious -why is it there?

If you have no pain but any other sensation, do the same.

When you open the space to feel and discover what is held in your legs, make sure that you are not doing it from your mind, from observing. Not holding your eyes and trying to see or know. These mind efforts are the efforts that will not let you feel and discover, but would actually keep you trapped in the same way.

It always helps to make sure you are breathing, moving, and not freezing. By that you are opening the path for the old fearfulness to, tell its story, increase your awareness, and be released from your body.

Once it is felt and “heard”, it dissolves.

In between, you can contract and relax your legs a few times, just to bring more attention and flow, as well as to create a new possibility for your muscle to move beyond the limitations they were needing to hold and commit to, because of that old choice frozen in them.

Return to those deep breaths and the attention to your legs.

Hold the intention of I am ready to listen. Am ready to hear…

While directing your attention to your legs, make sure that you are breathing and not resisting, fearing, or fighting whatever you feel.

With being ready to listen, you have to be ready to let your legs be felt as they are.

When you do, and you manage to slowly and continuously let go of any effort you feel that is needed to control and judge what you sense, then you will quickly feel how the sensation in your legs shifts and changes. Like telling an interactive story.

You might have clear “answers”, realizations, or memories. And you might have none.

In both cases, the key is, is to agree to sense what your legs were trying to fight with.

It may be something outside of you, or/and it might be what was happening within yourself.

The efforts or freeze in your legs is the way they are/were tied to those old fear-based choices.

Freeing yourself/your legs free means being ready to feel and meet what is then being shifted and changed- have the whole experience.

Start the new choice by telling “them” (but is actually to yourself- your legs are you):

“I know I had to do that. I know I was told to do that. But there is no need anymore. I do not need to ….. anymore” … can fight it, avoid it, take it, fear it, be part of it….

It might be that you sense that you carry some belief, experience, or restriction which is not yours so say “It is not mine. I give it back. They can handle it. And I have my own experience” and when you do so, breathe and let go of any effort you feel in your legs.

Breathe through the sensations that arise, and emotions that might flow.

Make sure that you let every movement be expressed- seen or unseen.

Pay attention to the movements in your legs and the whole body. Movements that ask you to open up and expand. Movements of stretching. Movements that want to connect to the world around you. Movements that lead you to go beyond that memory of difficulty. Nourish that movement with your attention and agreement to move and be led by it.

Feel once more your legs and choose to trust them to lead you. Trust them to move you in life and into your life. Into what you want and into your fulfillment.

To finish this chapter: stand and feel your legs. Breathe deeply and try with eyes closed to slowly move in the room. Walk slowly and let your legs learn how to walk and move anew. Don’t fight any sensation of so-called “weakness” that can be simply a new softness. Or when there is excitement and maybe a flush of old fear flowing and tingling in your legs. Trust your legs to transform those sensations into new ease, flexibility, and confidence.

I am curious about where and how your legs will carry you now, and how much more ease and confidence you may experience.

Yours,

Anna

Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash