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Body, Mind and Spirit
Our human potential includes a spectrum of bodily, emotional, rational, and spiritual capacities.
As we move through stages of development, our body intelligence, emotional intelligence, rational intelligence, and Spiritual Intelligence are developed and ultimately brought into a beautiful and powerful balance.
In the Egocentric self body intelligence is the primary focus. The infant is all body. The world is one big bodily-felt sense. There is no “other”. There is no world. There is no concept of self. There is only bodily sensation.
A good deal of what is happening in early years, up through and including adolescence, is the growth into bodily intelligence. The emphasis on play, sport, appearance, and sex is evidence that much of the curriculum of early life is about skillfully inhabiting the body we are given.
In adolescence, emotional intelligence begins to emerge. Any of us who have young teens know that relationships and emotions are a significant focus at this time.
The adolescent’s self-concept is located in the body and with the emotions. At this stage of development “I am my ability to meet my bodily needs and emotional desires.”
With the Reactive self, identity shifts to the mind. Of course there is a great deal of mental development going on in earlier stages, but the Reactive self is the first structure of identity that locates the self in the mind. Part of the emotional turbulence of adolescence is the huge shift of moving identity from body to mind. This shift allows for all the accomplishment we see in young adult and adult life (families, careers, etc.).
The downside of this development is a tendency to leave our bodily intelligence and emotional intelligence behind.
We come to rely more and more on rational capacities and less and less on the gut and the heart. This trend is less pronounced in women (who develop with relationship as the primary value). Men tend to focus on achievement. But, in our culture, a bias for rationality in both sexes is the norm.
As we move into rationality and develop a Reactive self, we lose touch with our bodily and emotional intelligence. In fact, from the point of view of rationality, our body and emotions don’t seem to be all that intelligent.
They are non-verbal, ambiguous, and “touchy-feely”.
Cutting off from the body and emotions can be a way of protecting ourselves from being overwhelmed by strong feelings (of pain or pleasure).
As children, when we are centered in body and emotions, we don’t have the rational capability to make sense of the hurts and praises that come our way.
Some of us grew up in harsh environments where these hurts were huge. So what do we do with these hurts? We push them out of consciousness. We repress them. If we have emotions we don’t want to feel, we cut off our bodily and emotional connections. We are safe but also disconnected from body and emotional intelligence.
We operate in the world using only a limited portion of our full potential.
FACING FEARS
“If you want to become whole, let yourself be partial.
If you want to become straight, let yourself be crooked.
If you want to become full, let yourself be empty.
If you want to be reborn, let yourself die.” Tao Te Ching
“The reality is that healing happens between people. The wound in me evokes the healer in you, and the wound in you evokes the healer in me, and then the two healers collaborate.” Rachel Naomi Remen
To develop into higher stages requires that we reclaim our bodily and emotional intelligence.
We face our fears of abandonment and failure. We learn how our current fears are rooted in the past.
We see the ways we defend and protect ourselves from our deeper wounds by successfully living up to the dictates of the culture around us.
As we reintegrate these split-off bodily sensations and emotions, we discover resources of primal strength and passion. It is as though parts of us wounded in childhood stopped growing.
Now, as we bring compassionate awareness to these parts, we heal the wounds, grow-up these parts, and reintegrate the body and emotional intelligence into a mature self-system. Body, mind, and spirit come into balance.