Activate Your Inner Guidance System
Here are some related materials about light body activation and this episode’s topics:
Download free booklet by Saul Goodman by clicking this link: Light Body Activation - a portal to decentralized spiritual growth
Transcript of Episode
Your Inner Guidance System
It probably sounds like a good idea to connect to your inner guidance, your inner wisdom. But how is this actually done? There’s a part of your own nervous system that is the physiological mechanism behind the inner guide. It is your proprioceptive system. This part of your physiology is composed of specialized nerve fibers in the golgi tendon organs (remember hearing about them in high school biology class?) and muscle spindle fibers. These monitor and maintain alignment while also detecting motion within and around the body.
By linking our consciousness to proprioceptive activity, we notice sensations that formerly did not register in the conscious mind. This awareness can be used to create alignment not just physically, but also emotionally, mentally, psychologically, and spiritually. It functions as a guide, your own inner GPS ready to give you accurate, real-time information about how to navigate through life without getting taking a wrong turn and getting lost and ending up in a place you don’t want to be.
The way to activate the proprioceptive system is through applying our attention in a certain manner. So let’s talk about attention and why it is so valuable.
Where are you paying your attention?
Your attention has great value. No matter who you are, at every moment you have a powerful resource: your attention. It may be your most valuable asset. With it you can direct energy to flow in the direction you choose no matter what is going on around you. With it you can become the conscious director of your life. Where are you paying your attention?
Often our attention is not on our own immediate sensory experience but instead dispersed into thoughts, images and ideas outside of our own intersection with space and time. We tend to spread our consciousness away from the present moment, rotating the beacon of awareness outward to search for information and entertainment. Of course, there are many benefits in connecting to experiences and ideas that we don’t participate in directly. It can stimulate learning, appreciation and creativity. But if the bulk of our attention is focused away from our primary experience, our body, our home base, can become drained of life force. For example, watching 1 or 2 shows of a great TV series can be fun, but notice how it feels in your body if you watch 4 or 5 episodes. You may feel cranky and wiped out and find it difficult to readjust to bringing your attention back into your own life, your own story. Kids who are in school all day long attending class after class full of information that doesn’t necessarily apply to their immediate experience often end up fatigued and emotionally listless. Attention directs energy, and if energy is constantly being directly outside of ourselves, we are left with low reserves of power.
And even focusing attention on emotions and thoughts within our own sphere can drain the physical body. Have you ever ruminated on a situation or memory or behavior and ended up feeling more tired and hopeless about it than you were before? Because when attention is focused outward, energy is flowing outward. It is literally like pouring gasoline on the ground outside of your car rather than into the tank. Your physical body, the vehicle that allows your dreams and ideas to come into manifestation on this plane, is left without adequate fuel. Guiding even a small percentage of our attention towards physical sensations in the body is an effective way to bring life force into the body and keep our home base strong and vibrant.
Using Attention to Activate Proprioception
Staying at home, which most of us are doing more of lately due to the pandemic, is a chance to delve deeper into the home that is your beautiful body. It is with you wherever you are. It is a home that every one of us on the planet has. And no matter how you feel or who you are, every moment that presents itself is another opportunity to explore this inner landscape. In this episode we will be using our attention to guide life force into the body, to come home to ourselves in a primary way. This leads to greater alignment, strength and flexibility. It opens the door to activating our inner guidance system, our proprioception.
Maybe you can’t go on a trip around the world right now, but you can certainly take a trip inside of yourself that you may find even more exciting! And once you guide attention inward and expand the frequencies of your body through some simple and pleasurable exercises, the inner world unfolds into new dimensions of space and time that were previously unavailable.
Find a quiet place to sit on the floor and gather whatever you need to make yourself comfortable. If you need to sit in a chair, keep in mind that you may need to alter some of the positions in order to suit your body. Today we will be going through a series of movements while introducing the practice of listening to our inner guidance system to direct them.
It is important that you always stay within your comfort zone. This is not about pushing through barriers of flexibility or ‘going for the burn.’ If you are uncomfortable or in pain, these exercises will not bring you into the altered states of perception that are necessary in order to activate proprioception. The most important thing is not the positions themselves, but to move slowly and with a floating sensation. As you practice directing your attention to activate proprioceptive awareness, you will develop the ability to listen to your body’s wisdom and trust the information that it gives you.
Now let’s go on another light body activation journey….
[GUIDED PROCESS]
In Conclusion
The process you just did increases proprioceptive activity. Your proprioceptive system governs alignment at the physical and vibrational levels. As your body regains alignment it also recovers its elastic quality. When life force is lost or trapped, the body loses its elasticity. Encouraging an elastic quality at the end range of your motions helps to lessen stiffness in the joints and recirculate previously compressed energy back into your system. Regaining more elasticity on the joints and micro-spaces of the body is one of the most effective ways to recover life force that has been lost through physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual stress.
Introducing some variations in position while you are moving through the proprioceptive exercises is a great way to practice listening to your own body’s innate wisdom about where and how to move. Typically we adopt certain positions during exercise, yoga, tai chi or other movement practices. These positions and movements are based on templates that were discovered hundreds or even thousands of years ago. They may contain keys to unfold certain flows of energy in the body and even connect to various cosmic forces.
But your own body also has information encoded in its cells, accurate information about what is most effective for you in each moment. In fact, the information in your body may be more relative and potent because it is directly connected to your personal intersection in space and time. It can guide your body to unwind compression, activate energy, circulate nutrition and oxygen, distribute life force, release stress…. it can guide you to access deep levels of information…. it can connect you directly to your blueprint in this so-called lifetime - your DNA. And this will occur through spontaneous, natural movement into positions that are often unique and unsymmetrical and that feel very, very good. You may literally feel strength coursing through your physical and bioplasmic body.
Beginning to explore how you want to position yourself during micromovement alterations is a key to accessing your inner guidance. Most of us have been ingrained since an early age to listen to directions from outside of ourselves. And when we try to look inside for guidance, we may not really know how to access it. There is a physiological component to it as well as practical and reliable directions for how to turn it on. Like an inner GPS, it will give you accurate information about small and maybe even large adjustments to make to improve your life. It will become easier to discern what foods are best for you, what information is true, what to say during a tricky conversation with your mother, or countless other lifestyle choices that are constantly presenting themselves.
Until next time, I wish you well!
This material has been developed by Saul Goodman, the founder and former director of the International School of Shiatsu and Shin Tai International. He has taught throughout the U.S. and Europe for the past 35 years and is the author of The Book of Shiatsu, Shiatsu Shin Tai and Light Body Activation. The facilitator of this podcast is me, Lynn Goodman. I have practiced and taught shiatsu shin tai and light body activation along with Saul for over 20 years.