There is a spiritual evolution that is only available when we embrace our inner truth with honesty and bravery. And yet that inner truth is often buried, compartmentalized and stored into our bodies — our bones, cells, organs and tissues — where we won't have to face its potency at an inconvenient time. When it's stored away in the body, we can ignore it, disconnect from it, numb it down. Get on with our lives.
Our inner truth can be very inconvenient, when it whispers to us that things need to change. It's a powerful note that can shake us to our very roots if we avoid it for too long. It invites us to be who we know we truly are, to stand in the power of our wholeness, to shed outmoded habits and coping mechanisms. It invites us to witness ourselves with clarity, and to stand for what we value.
The voice of our inner truth is deeply coded into the language of sensation, proprioception and emotion, waiting for us to become fluent in its subtle dialect. This voice whispers to us through our bodies, and often through the portal of unexpected experiences: from our darkest valleys and our highest peaks; our grief and pain, our joy and ecstasy; from that peculiar middle ground of numbness and ennui; and from the familiar landscape of chronic stress and anxiety we've inhabited for years.
When we are brave enough, and resourced enough, to listen to our inner truth speaking through the voice of our body, to meet these experiences and feel them fully, then we are guided into a transformational portal. We die and are reborn. We shed our skin and emerge renewed, with a deeper embodiment of our wholeness than before.
Let me tell you a little story as an example.
I have an interesting relationship to heartbreak. I almost love it, actually! There's an exquisite, visceral sharpness to the pain of heartbreak that feels grounding to me. A harsh reminder of my aliveness; somehow clearing and healing at the same time.
For some reason these days, I have been thinking back to 2019. My first real, true heartbreak. You always remember your first. At the time, it felt world ending. And in a way it was. My world as it had been was coming to an end; the foundations of what I had built up to that point were crumbling underneath me. I was destabilized and grieving. That year, I cried harder than I had ever cried in my life. My heart felt like it was splitting apart.
What happens when our heart breaks? While it was happening to me, I almost felt like a scientist. One part of me was crumbling under the worst pain I'd felt up to that point in my life. Another part of me was observing with fascination. Everything I knew about transformation and the body was running through my mind, and I watched as my body began to move through a shedding process.
As my breath (and sobs) blasted through my diaphragm, I noticed the mobility of my ribcage beginning to return. My intercostals warmed, stretched and expanded beyond the range of motion I usually made use of. As my breath flowed into places it hadn't touched in years, a decade of unprocessed emotion began to unfurl within me like a fever.
I suddenly became aware of layers and layers of frozen fascia around my heart. That responsive and dynamic web of living tissue that connects and interweaves everything in my body had become adhered and glued together around my sternum, solar plexus and heart. There was a deep, frozen numbness there, and I was afraid to know what was underneath it. Instinctually, I pulled away from the sensation, but it was already opening itself to me. All I could do was surrender to it, allowing myself to feel what I hadn't been willing to feel before. As my heart broke, it felt like an icy glacier cracking open, crumbling and melting; like my fascia was suddenly fed up with rigidity and restriction and was making an executive decision to return to its natural fluidity.
It hurt, the way ripping off a band-aid hurts, but within that pain was pleasure, joy and spaciousness. Liberation. I don't think I've ever felt closer to Spirit than I did in that moment, and I find that fascinating. As my heart broke apart, I witnessed blood flow and lymph flow return to an area that had been locked down for years.
My melodramatic mind told me "I think I'm dying," and I actually felt a truth in that.
"Yeah, I kind of am," a deeper voice within me responded. "But, death is nothing to fear. As cliché as it sounds, death is only the beginning. On the other side of death is birth. I'm sure I'll die many times in this one life. Each death will be a transformational portal. I wonder who the next Maryn will be?"
I cried my eyes dry, took a healing nap, watched Pride and Prejudice and then went to bed early. The best medicine.
And the next morning, I felt reborn. A little bruised and tender, perhaps, but renewed. A Maryn I had never previously known had landed within my bones. A strong Maryn, willing to admit certain life shaking truths to herself that she'd been too scared to touch on.
There hadn't been room for her before — literally, physically, viscerally, there hadn't been room. The layers of scar tissue had to be broken down to make some more room. My tissues had to be wrung out to rediscover their natural flow. My breath had to find pathways into long restricted spaces. Through the alchemy of heartbreak, I had made space for more of my soul to land. I wasn't broken apart — I was broken open.
Lately, this experience has taken on new resonance. It's nearly impossible to look at our world with clear eyes — to truly witness what's unfolding both personally and globally — without feeling something like heartbreak. Yet I'm remembering that this heartbreak isn't something to resist or fear. Instead, it's an invitation back into my body to hear the whispers of inner truth inviting me to transform. Inviting me to surrender into the wisdom of the snake who sheds its skin, or the caterpillar that metamorphoses into a butterfly.
I trust my body's innate wisdom to guide the way forward. My body knows what is needed. My body knows truth. In each moment of pain or despair, I look for signs of "breaking open" rather than "breaking apart." With tender anticipation, I'm making space for whatever version of myself is about to be born.
This era calls for unprecedented courage — the bravery to feel the truth within us and let it reshape our selves and our world. Let's walk this path of transformation together, guided by the profound wisdom of our sacred bodies.
This week, I am preparing to teach "Our Sacred Body," one of Lorian's core classes. I invite you to join me. This class contains all of the wisdom, tools and practices that I have learned over the years in navigating and surrendering into our body's transformational wisdom, and more than ever I believe these are the tools we need to navigate the changes taking place in our world.
Together, we'll navigate the alchemical process of our present moment, learning to hear the voice of inner truth that ripples through our wise, soft, feeling, animal bodies, and allowing ourselves to be gently transformed by it. The journey will be potent, in the best way possible!