Spring: The Season of New Beginnings

Spring.  Fabulous Spring.  Spring brings life back into balance.  The gray of winter transformed into green abundance.  Tender new leaves popping and full of life.  

 

It can be helpful to remember at the beginning of each new season  what is it's opposite.  Spring turns into summer, turns into fall,  turns into winter again.  

 

Grounding ourselves in the awareness of cycles helps place ourselves within the cycle.  We become part of the process of life as it moves through and around us.  Embracing this awareness keeps us soft.  We can enjoy the moment for just what it is.  We must enjoy the moment, as it too shall pass.

 

Our bodies also function in rhythm with this truth.  Our bodies relax when given the opportunity.  Our bodies know and can teach us that wholeness includes the whole cycle.  Wholeness is made up of parts.  When we embrace our parts, we facilitate balance.

 

Connecting with our bodies allows Spring to happen everyday.  New things emerge: new thoughts, new ideas new growth.  Spring, the season of new beginnings.

The Art of Receiving

Life is nice.  It is especially nice on the day of a bodywork session.   As a bodywork practitioner this has a double meaning - giving a bodywork session truly is always a good day.  However, being on the receiving end of a bodywork treatment has its own teachings.  It is a lesson in the workings of the human body, and by extension the human being.

 

Lessons learned:  the body has to learn to receive.  Receiving doesn't always come naturally, but receiving does build on itself.   What does this mean?  The first bodywork session actually prepares you to receive the next one better.  Rule of thumb is to allow three to four sessions to allow your body the opportunity to integrate the treatment. 

 

As the body comes to understand what is being asked of it - to relax and receive - the body recognizes the cues and cooperates without effort.  The natural mechanism of the body take precedent:  the breath deepens, the mind calms, the blood circulates.  Life flows.  

 

The purpose of getting bodywork?  So that we can function better as human beings.  When our body gets overloaded, our ability to move through our lives with ease and freedom goes down drastically.  Bodywork can teach our body how to receive.   And it facilitates the release of what we don't need to hang on to any longer. 

 

Our bodies are magnets for stress.  This is why we must manage our lives to respect our limitations.  The mechanism of stress, is just that - a way to hold on to the pressures we are experienceing.  When we learn how to receive through gentleness, we teach our body how to facilitate the release of stress automatically.  It is simple, joyful and joy-filled for the giver and the receiver.