I have been reading and thinking about horizontal and vertical balance and how it applies in my life and the lives of my friends and clients. On a CD my sister gave me, there is a song saying we are all angels with only one wing and we need each other to fly. I thought about how this could be an image to look at horizontal and vertical balance. Angels and flying represent the vertical movement in our lives and the horizontal could be represented by our connection with our bodies and each other.
Without a horizontal base to work from, there is a limit to how far up we can reach. I have only recently begun to understand the importance of how this triangle works in our lives. For many years there has been a movement toward the “spiritual” and remembering our true “being”. Much of the information about this portrays the body and emotions as “in the way” of our ability to experience our true selves. Now I realize more about the importance of experiencing who we really are through our bodies and emotions. We don’t leave them behind to become more “spiritual”, we bring who we are into our bodies and fully feel our emotions.
Often, when I work with clients, they know the words of what needs to occur as well as I do, but they still struggle to apply what they know in their lives. This is true for me as well. What I find is that we throw around the words, without an understanding of what it means to live these things in a day to day, minute to minute way. What we are thinking and talking about is in our heads, not in our bodies yet, so we remain out of balance, and unable to make the changes in our lives that we want to.
Being in our body is something that comes naturally when we are born. During childhood we constantly experience things that give us information. Our body (including the brain) works to integrate this information, and we learn and grow. When we have experiences with people who are functioning out of balance, our body tells us this by feeling uncomfortable. When we are children, we are usually powerless to do anything about what is uncomfortable, so we learn to disconnect from our body as a way to deal with the painful situation. Our body is still in the environment that is not in balance and it holds the energetic patterns of this experience.
In order to have a solid horizontal foundation and be able to move upward as we want, we must go back into our bodies and feel the experiences they have been holding for us. This is not an easy process, but it is extremely rewarding and gives us the ability to change things in our lives that have been stuck for years. The amount of freedom this work has given me in my own life is huge! And it keeps growing. What I have gained is worth all the effort! As I walk through the process myself, I can hold another person’s hand while they go through the same thing. I love doing this, because each time I do, another piece of my own healing is completed.