The spark of life that ignites and animates our form is reliant on the body for existence and evolution. It’s an always fascinating question to consider that spark of life. We’ve all seen dead things–birds or pets or farm animals or humans–and marveled at the lack of aliveness. Where did their aliveness go? It was just right here and now it’s gone. Something has left the body behind. 

The mystery of the cycle of life and death is usually left for the poets to ponder. And yet even the non-poets among us can sense that there is a partnership here, the yin and the yang of matter and spirit. 

As we contemplate this union, we realize that without the spark of life the body becomes a corpse. And without the body, the spirit exists somewhere else, disconnected from the experience of incarnation. This sacred union, of matter and spirit within us is like the twin flames or the iconic “soul mate” archetype that many of us have longed for outside of ourselves. They are inseparable and mutually reliant on each other for thriving. 

Even though the body is our physical instrument of existence, so many of us are deeply disassociated from our bodies due to trauma. This trauma often started in our earliest days, months, and years of life through attachment wounding, generations of family dysfunction, and under-resourced caregivers. Yet underlying these fraught origins in our family systems are a myriad of societal oppressions and an incoherent and pathological culture stemming from the disconnection from the sacredness of all of life. 

It can be a long slow road for many of us as entering the body can bring up grief, fear, and anger, long buried and unattended to. But as we learn to tolerate embodiment, grow accustomed to sensations of all types, and build capacity for discomfort, we start to become more resourced, more integrated, more resilient. 

In fact, as we inhabit our bodies and befriend all parts of ourselves, our body begins to trust us and our soul descends more fully into this existence. As we deepen in our listening, our sensuality, sexuality and playfulness emerge, our imaginations enliven, our hearts and lives expand, our microbiome and DNA calibrate to a higher octave, and our intuition becomes finely tuned. As we embrace the mystery of the inner landscape, at once familiar, and yet completely strange, the body becomes an expression of our unique genius, an instrument that’s guided by our highest possible Self.

It is at this point that we begin the acknowledgement that spirit and matter are indeed deeply interdependent, as intertwined as life and death. 

This act of trusting the body elicits the most profound expression of prayer: gratitude. Bowing to existence, embracing the vulnerability of being mortal, and saying YES to the life we’ve been given is some of the bravest and riskiest work there is. 

It is definitely high risk and high reward. High risk because we need to face our inner devouring longing, wracking pain, staggering fear, and the oblivion of our own shame. High reward because the more we sit with these dragons, the more treasure is unearthed, which leads us to access more and more bliss. We start to live a deeply aligned life where ease, awe, and amazement are constant companions. 

As we deepen into the sacred union that is the marriage of our body and our spirit we realize that the body is a miraculous ecosystem that not only keeps an array of sophisticated biological systems running but also houses threads of our ancestral lineage, embodies the entirety of our lived experiences, provides a container for our psycho-spiritual-emotional exploration and expression, and best of all exists as a portal to the wisdom of our eternal nature and our own specific soul’s code. 

We slowly begin to realize we have everything we need to navigate life and death. It is inherent: standard operating equipment. As long as we learn to tap into it, the wisdom is programmed into every cell and as we embody, we unlock the endless well of it. As we embrace the certainty of our own death we start to taste the ecstasy of impermanence. Instead of terror we feel grateful. Instead of dread we feel divine intelligence. Instead of resistance, we feel willing participation. Embodied contemplation on the exquisitely rare, unique and temporary nature of our incarnation becomes clear and we delight in every moment.