Your body knows
Do you believe that your body is talking to you?
A few years before I started SoYoung, I studied shiatsu with a Zen Buddhist teacher for a year.
I was stuck in my financial software analyst position and had no idea what I really wanted to do, but I just knew that the job was slowly sucking away at my soul and I had to do something. My now husband encouraged me to start by just pursuing something - anything - that interested me. The only thing I could come up with was the vague notion that energy healing had always intrigued me.
A series of events led me to experience a shiatsu treatment at a dojo run by this Buddhist teacher, and before I knew it, I had signed up for his one year part time course. Little did I know how much this course would change my life.
The commitment was full on. Our teacher wanted us to live, eat, and breathe shiatsu, as well as practice chanting, journaling, yoga, meditation, and of course, bodywork. Twelve of us had signed up for the year, and each of us brought to the table the big thing in their life that they wanted clarity or healing on.
Mine was how to resolve the fact that I hated my job but didn’t feel that I had any other skills of value.
I’d always wondered whether there was any truth to the theory that traumatic emotions are stored in the body. It became really clear, really fast, that something was going on, because as we practiced bodywork on each other, people were breaking down emotionally left, right and centre, including myself. It got so that no one batted an eyelash when someone was wailing across the room.
At about 7 months into the course, I finally found the courage to quit my analyst position at the software company I worked for - without having the safety net of another option to catch me. The day I handed in my resignation, I felt a freedom in my body, heart, and soul that I had never felt before, and never once did I have any doubt that I did the right thing.
Of course it was still a few years before the inspiration came to me to start SoYoung, but this was the first time I experienced the knowing of my body telling me what was right for me.
Over the years I have learned to tune in more and more - and although I’m certainly no master, I have come to accept and respect the wisdom that’s in my body.
