I looked around me, in the sea of 1200 people and I realized everyone here seemed like a perfectly “ordinary” person.
And we were: there was no single demographic, no common identity other than human.
We represented every skin pigmentation, the expanse of educational backgrounds, every point on the monetary spectrum from financially impoverished to incredibly wealthy.
We were aged 7 to 92, and we were from farms and rural outposts, the world’s greatest cities and everything in between. We were male, female and those who identified differently from the binary order.
Some of us had travelled the world over and others, this was one of a few privileged trips beyond the familiar life-long existence in a single place.
We were all sorts of spiritual and not spiritual at all. We were scientists and mystics, the seekers, the finders and the lost.
We had birth defects, were mentally impaired by injury and were brilliant. We were clear-thinking and mentally and emotionally disrupted by anxiety and depression.
Some of us were speed walkers, marathon runners and big mountain hikers, others were bound to wheelchairs and walkers and medical devices I’d never seen before, physically limited by diseases like Multiple Sclerosis, advanced Lyme Disease, the degeneration of age or injury, or impaired by mystery illnesses that had no known origin.
We were anorexic and overweight, chronically stressed and naturally peaceful. We were vegans and meat-eaters, drinkers and smokers and in recovery.
We were from all parts of the world…well, many parts: participants from 121 countries gathering for a week-long healing retreat in Indian Wells, California, in February 2020.
Beyond all our labels we were all ultimately seeking the same things: healing, relief, wholeness, clarity, the mystical. We were unified by the idea of our own personal transformation, the evolution of humanity and the expansion and elevation of human consciousness.
We had the idea that if we could heal our self, we could in turn affect the whole of humanity: heal our part of the whole, and thereby, take part in healing the whole.
It seemed we were united by being more at peace and bringing more peace into the world as individuals and as a collective.
Becoming awareness and entering receiving mode
We laid down in meditation, over a thousand of us, spread shoulder-to-shoulder on the floor of the conference center’s great ballroom, which felt the size of a football field. Our meditation guide—a genius, a master meditator, a mystic, a brilliant scientist, and to me, the greatest global leader of our time—Dr. Joe Dispenza spoke into the heavenly abyss of the low-lit room and we each navigated a journey of our own inner wonderland and simultaneously connected to the energy of the collective in the room.
Toward the end of our meditation something very special and interesting happened. It started slowly at first.
A woman on the other side of the room from me started giggling and then burst out a little laugh. After a pause she chuckled and snickered. But then she just couldn’t contain herself. She started laughing and even sobbing a little the way we do when we laugh so hard we cry.
The people around her started to giggle and a few people in random spots around the room did too.
I thought this unfolding was amusing and kind of cute, but I managed to hold my awareness on the energy within and around my body in the space of the huge ballroom.
At the same time, I just couldn’t help it, the thought of them giggling made me smile.
Then something fascinating and delightful happened.
Know you are greater than your physical body
I sensed and perceived a wave of energy flowing throughout the room: it ebbed and flowed over us, it pulsed with something that magnetic that gripped my interest and curiosity. I paid attention to it more and held my awareness on it, sensing and perceiving into the energy of the space of the room.
As I tuned in to the space—using my whole body and mind (more aptly I should call it “bodymind”) as an instrument of attunement— I engaged in using an ability we can all cultivate that is perceiving beyond the 5 senses. Through some fine-tuned and practiced combination awareness, sensing and perceiving, I felt into that magnetic energy present over and around us.
Simultaneously, I mentally tabbed through possibility.
Was the energy rich? It was pulsing with life.
What was that pushing sensation? It felt like it was prompting me.
Had it stilled? I felt pause over me, like an invitation, but demanding nothing.
What was that tickling feeling in my forearms and legs that made my hair stand on end? Was it…it was fun! It was playful! It was joyful!
As this all dawned on me, as it became conscious and articulated in my mind through words I could understand, I connected fully to the energy.
I “touched” it through my awareness of it and it touched me.
Know that all energy carries information and you are a decoding instrument
I felt the playful, joyful fun nature of the energy within the space of my body and my body giggled, a little laugh escaping from me, my shoulders shaking as the energy pleasantly flooded through me.
It sounds a little trippy because it is, but I assure you the only chemicals and intoxicants that were making this happen were the natural chemicals within me that my own brain and my own endocrine system produced as it received the information contained in the energy of the room.
I felt the habitual response of social pressure and self-consciousness kick in, that maybe I shouldn’t laugh out loud and disturb the people around me, but I surrendered to the good feeling of laughter instead. It felt too darn good to just let it pass me by. I let myself giggle, snicker, chuck then just laugh out loud, and soon the people around me were laughing too.
The energy grew, interconnecting fields of bio-magnetic energy, gaining coherence and momentum, one person, then the next and the next. Within what I think was probably under a couple minute’s time I was in a sea of a thousand people from all walks of life around the globe and we were all laughing for no reason at all, moved by an energy that could only be the Spirit of Joy itself.
No one was untouched by the feeling of gladness: in the playful common ground of Unconditional Love we were all One.
Feel into the reality that your body is an instrument of attunement
We are attuning to the energy around us all the time, and we either consciously (knowingly) and subconscious (unknowingly) connecting to it.
Whatever we are connecting to we are becoming more like: we embody the energy of our life. So it’s well worth becoming aware of how our energy works, and how we can use the power of our attention and awareness to change our energy and transform our life.
We can tell we are attuning to the energy of our life because it makes us feel a certain way.
Think about how your body feels when:
- You are in an environment or with someone who makes you feel safe and accepted
- You engage in a hobby in which you get lost in for hours at a time
- You alone get to choose what you want to do and where you want to be today; no demands, you feel in command of your life
- You are with a person, watch a movie, listen to a podcast or read a book that inspires you
- You find the perfect, satisfying words to speak your truth; you feel proud of yourself
- You get that crystal clear insight that helps you navigate whatever you’re working through personally, or within a relationship or job
On the other hand, think about how your body feels when:
- You feel scared; you’re overwhelmed by not knowing what to do, feeling threatened, frozen in place physically, emotionally and/or mentally
- You don’t feel accepted by your family, friends, community, boss or employer…or by anyone at all
- You have no say over your time, and you’re being driven from one thing to the next; you feel pushed through life; you’re just surviving right now
- You can’t remember the last time you felt happy or connected to your life and others
- You experience frustration and anger because you can’t seem to find the words to express your understanding of a situation or why you feel the way you do
- Your mind feels cluttered, frazzled, foggy, racing or all over the place; you’re anxious or depressed or oscillating back and forth between those states
The body is always processing the energy of your life
By developing a greater level of conscious awareness around attunement and how energy feels in specific areas of our body, we can learn to use our body in our everyday experience as an instrument of guidance.
We can pick up on the subtle ques our body is offering us in our relationships, in the conditions of our life and in our environment. We can learn to use feedback make better-informed decisions about what we want more in our life and what we want less.
And we can learn to use our body—to entrain ourselves—as an instrument of attunement in meditation to connect with energy that is creative and life-giving, joyful, appreciative, abundant and liberating.
Remember, what we are connecting to we are becoming more like…who doesn’t want to feel more alive, more joyful, more peaceful, more in love?
The body’s nature is to self-regulate and to self-organize into coherence and harmony
Through meditation and energy healing we can get familiar with and memorize the sensations of our own energy so well that we immediately know what’s “ours” and what’s “not ours” in the experience of our everyday life. This ability to attune to the information within your own body—to create and attune to your own inner harmony—helps you to discern which people, places, conditions and things in your life flow helpful, life-giving energy to you, and which ones disrupt your energy or throw you out of your alignment.
In my experience it helps to consciously make these decisions and affirm yourself in them as you explore your inner being, your inner energy. These may be new ideas/beliefs for you, so come back to them and see if their meaning changes for you:
- I want to know myself. I want to take time to get to know who I am, who I say I am. I am just going to push the pause button on what the outer world has taught me about being human while I figure this out. Time is my friend, and I’m here to use time the way that suits my higher purposes in life.
- I trust myself. I’m going to take whatever I discover within me as my truth, as my personal authority and law. I trust that what I encounter will be the best thing for me, and that whatever I might feel is my body educating me on what I need to know. If at times it feels overwhelming or weird, I’ll just remind myself that’s because I’m having a new experience of the energy of my inner being. I’m learning about my own energy and feeling into the part of me that’s pure energy, including but beyond matter. If I experience something and don’t understand it, I’ll remind myself that it’s only weird because it’s new and unfamiliar. I’m going to get my bearings in this work and soon I’ll be better at decoding what my body is trying to tell me.
- I love myself enough to do this. You know, it’s possible that nobody has taught me the most important things or the full picture about the nature of my inner being. I’m going to have to teach myself…no! I’m going to ENJOY teaching myself. I want to know myself and heal myself more than anything. So I’ll be patient. I’ll trust that everything is going to come into my awareness at the right time that I’m ready to integrate it into my life’s wisdom.
- I am willing to accept help. If I encounter something that seems too hard, too big, to confusing, etc., I’ll get help. I’ll think about what resources I have available to me in the form of people, medical professionals, therapeutic modalities, massage, energy healing, the internet, books, podcasts, and the like and I’ll stay true to myself, getting the help I need to get to the next level or dig through the next layer. I believe I’m surrounded by a world of wisdom, and I’ll be supported in my journey, I just know it!
The Anatomy of Self Love: Know your energy anatomy, follow its guidance and fall in love with your wholeness
Your physical body is surrounded by an intelligent field of life-force energy, light and information. Science calls this your biofield, and it is electromagnetic in nature. Within the disciplines of energy medicine, it is often called the Human Energy Field or (HEF.) In energy healing terms, your biofield or HEF has spiritual, mental and emotional energy aspects and manifests/affects the state wellness and order within your physical body.
For now, just hold that as holistic (whole, holy) information, and look at the basic and practical starting point of how your energy anatomy is organized within and around your body.
Not only is a good practice to cultivate self-awareness, but it can be helpful to your healing to take time to feel into each of your primary energy centers whose epicenters are within the brain and at particular points on the spine where nerve plexuses emerge from the spinal cord.
These nerve plexuses transmit energy and information from the world around you and from the tissues in their corresponding areas to your brain. And your brain sends energy and information through the spinal cord and these nerve plexuses to the tissues of your body in the areas that correspond with the nerve plexuses.
Your nervous system engages with the energy and information of your life and converts that information to chemistry through your endocrine system. The hormones and chemical regulators move through the circulatory system to the organs, creating a state-of-being in the chemical, physical flesh.
For many people this is a novel view of the body—it sure was to me when I came into this work 9 years ago. And it’s even more incredible to know that our perception of the energy around us—our thoughts and feelings about it—affect this whole process dramatically.
I don’t believe that anyone makes themselves sick. But we certainly can learn to use our awareness, our consciousness to help ourselves heal.
The Eastern wisdom traditions have for thousands of years known, discussed and taught energy anatomy. Volumes have been written about this system, called the Chakra system.
Chakra means “spinning wheel of light,” and indicates that the life-force energy that sustains and animates us has a spiraling nature. This is replicated in the natural world around us and can be seen in things like pinecones, sunflowers and nautilus shells, and it’s illustrated in our spinning Earth and spiraling galaxy.
Here’s my table of basic information regarding the 7 primary energy centers and the basic information about them.
Spend time in meditation, sensing and perceiving into the space these centers occupy in your physical body.
Try not to judge the sensations or even assign meaning to the words that come to mind, but gently assess. You’re just information gathering, so be the mind of an objective observer, what in meditation is called “the silent witness.”
Hold on to the idea that your body is naturally powerful self-regulating and self-organizing. As you feel into your energy centers, invite flow, life, grace, abundance, freedom and empowerment into your life.
Does the idea of transformational wellness interest you? Please sign up for future blogs at this bottom of my blog home, or book an in-person or remote/distance appointment with me by calling 207-249-2261 or emailing me at dianamariachapin@gmail.com.
Diana Maria Chapin -- Come Home to Your Heart 