The Relationship of Soul and Ease
Do you know what it is like to feel ease in your body? If so, when is the last time you felt ease? We can unlock ease through a combination of somatics and the power of imagination. First, let’s briefly dive in to the relationship between ease and safety, because ease and safety can happen simultaneously, but also ease often is not available without safety.
While we are inextricable from our environments – and here I am using “environments” as a catchall to refer to macro and mezzo factors including but not limited to ecosystem, weather, politics, historical moment, and relationships – we also can elicit a feeling of ease even amidst constraint, oppression, and stress when the timing and space is appropriate.
You’re allowed to feel safe in your body.
I want to take this poignant reframe of safety — no matter what is going on, you’re allowed to feel safe in your body — one step further. I have found that, while there can be many spiraling steps and golden breakthroughs on the way to experiencing safety, feeling safe also is a doorway. Not an arrival.
Too often I observe therapy stopping at safety. Safety as the only orientation neglects the exponential growth available not only in the phenomenon of post-traumatic growth, but also in the worlds and creative forces available to all of us once we are resourced enough and familiar with a sense of safety. If safety is all you are seeking through your journey in self-discovery and wholeness, then there can be an underlying assumption of a need for hypervigilance, a presence of threat, and constraints around growth potential.
Now, with that being said – yes here comes the dichotomy, for without it we would be farther both from truth and honoring an individual’s necessarily unique journey – much of therapy work for many people today needs to prioritize safety as a main goal. Without a sense of safety, exploring the depths of the body and memories held there can be re-traumatizing. Without a sense of safety, asking someone to be brave and bold can actually be asking them to endure – to white-knuckle it through what could have been an expansive experience if safety had been established. This is part of the power of working one-on-one with a great practitioner — they can meet you where you are and follow the flow of your nuanced experience in your journey of self-discovery.
Cultivating a Feeling of Ease has the potential to simultaneously open the doorway to a sense of safety as well as the doorway that swings open before us when we have entered safety. Through this doorway you can feel and experience curiosity, the secrets in silence, truly seeing and hearing as well as feeling seen and heard, your soul’s callings to you, pure desires, and so much more.
I now invite you to explore – or save for later – a practice in Ease:
I invite you to imagine a place that automatically brings a sense of smile to your face. A beautiful, peaceful setting. Get specific. What is the temperature? Colors? Textures? See if you can notice how your body responds to seeing and sensing this place. Does your breathing shift? What happens in your eyes? Around your mouth? How do your shoulders and pelvis respond? If your eyes have been closed, you are welcome to gently allow the eyelids to float open, seeing if you can continue to tune into what you have noticed within your body.
You are welcome to move around the room with this feeling, like you are tuned into the radio station of this frequency. As you move around the space, you might explore staying connected in your mind’s eye – in your imaginal space – to this peaceful place. See if you can allow your body to be effected by what you are noticing through your imagination.
When you feel complete, you can reflect out loud, through writing, or drawing. What did you notice? I recommend noting in particular what may have been new, fresh, or surprising.
I will share some of what has come up in me through this exercise in Feeling of Ease:
I don’t have to effort so much in daily tasks. I can hold more tension than is necessary, and this tension greatly informs my perspective of the world, myself and my capabilities, and my experience of my daily tasks.
The goal will not collapse if I journey with ease on the way there. In fact, the goal is more fully realized when approached with and in ease.
I can better communicate what is on the inside, as well as better take in what is communicated to me, when I am in this feeling of ease
The world is brighter, more fascinating, and less threatening when I am in a feeling of ease
The other day, I was walking through a gallery of paintings, being inspired by portraits and scenes of human figures. The ones that were most believable, that elicited a feeling of honesty, and that drew me in were the ones that had ease. Ease in the shapes of the body and postures. Ease in the brushstrokes and use of paint – even if the human figures were blurred and less anatomically correct, when the brushstrokes had ease, the figures looked and felt more real.
Ease allows life and life force to flow. Ease allows soul and truth to be communicated from the center of our beings out into the world.
Soul begs for Ease in order to express the “shape in the center of you,” a saying from poet David Whyte.
Sometimes, we have to brace, and the body will do so of its own accord when it is necessary for survival. However, living in a braced-state blocks life and movement. One of my dear yoga teachers once said, in the middle of a heated, dynamic yoga asana class, “If you’re not moving and you’re stagnant, what are you doing?” The whole room, full of elders, responded in chorus: “Dying.”
The possibilities of life open to us when we cultivate ease via the potent combination of somatics + imagination; through relationships that are loving and understanding; and when our environments are validating, resourcing, and also loving. You’re allowed to feel safe in your body, so it follows that you’re allowed to feel ease in your body. Sometimes it takes planning and work to get into an environment where being in ease is safe, which I would argue also is a type of somatic practice. There is a lot more I could say here about environments, but I want to leave the scope of this post to in-body somatics and imagination.
One last thing I will share with you about Ease that I noticed through the painted portraits. I got to see artists’ work over the course of their lives and practices. Brushstrokes that were once strict and hands that looked unrealistic transformed into confidence and comfortability. I could see the ease with craft (and life) that is only available through time and practice. Safety, bravery and boldness, and ease through it all are not talents that some have and others miss out on. They are a result of time and practice (please remember the scope of this post, because there are different socioeconomic and political factors that influence practice over time and access).
So my invitation to you is: Commit. Trust in the process. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Try cultivating a Feeling of Ease daily, through the combination of somatics + imagination. Give yourself the gift of the doorway that rises to meet you when you access safety and ease – a whole world and experience of yourself — the center of you begging to be expressed and communicated — is waiting through that door.