We know how to grow.

On remembering how to trust ourselves.

We knew how to grow.

We came into the world knowing how to grow — it’s in our DNA. Babies don’t need instructions on how to crawl and walk and chew and talk. Their bodies are designed to learn and develop, with the proper love and nutrients, in their own time. Small children don’t think about their bodies, they live in them and let them lead.

Somewhere along the way from then to now, many of us forgot how to fully trust our bodies. Many of us were taught, by someone or something, that it was normal to criticize our bodies, deprive them of food and pleasure, and work past exhaustion. We learned that we are supposed to say yes to what we do not want, because it is ‘healthy’ or ‘nice’.

So many of us severed the tie between our bodies and our hearts because we did not know what to do with all of the feelings that do not fit nicely into the outside world. Whatever our littler selves deemed necessary to do/be to receive love and acceptance from the outside world, they did it, even if it meant stifling their authenticity.

The limiting beliefs that were stored in your early years now live in the body and block you from trusting yourself. I’m too much of xyz. I’m not enough of xyz. I don’t know what I want. My body is wrong in this way, I don’t look right, my body hates me, If only I were more like them, etc.

Honestly, heartbreaking to think that children start to believe these things and never stop. Unless we consciously work to remember and rebuild self-love and body-trust, these natural functions will remain lost throughout adulthood.

We still know how to grow.

As it turns out, all of the instructions for how to be and love and trust ourselves is still in us. The wisdom is (still) in the body.

Your body can lead you everywhere you want to go, toward everything you are meant for. That’s its job! Regardless of whether you’re stuck in old conditioning or rooted in your true self, your body is always guiding you.

When you approach your body with the intention of building a trusting relationship, your body will work with you. It wants to — it’s been waiting for you to want to work with it. Your body loves you so much that it has held onto all of the pain you didn’t yet have the capacity to feel. Now, it is so ready for you to let go of everything in the way of living from your genuine self.

Remembering how to listen to your body is an experimental process. When you’re physically agitated, it is easy to ascribe incorrect meaning to the feeling, or think that something must really be wrong. It takes patience to discern when your body is reliving a past experience — and patience to work to heal.

It is very hard to sense your body’s wisdom in a dysregulated state. Sometimes, (usually) what you need is to sit your body down and breathe with it. Often, all it takes is a moment or two of presence, of breath, to come back to yourself and listen for what is true.

We will always know how to grow.

Whenever you are lost, remember that all of the answers you need for right now is in this moment. The way out of the forest starts with the next step, and the next step lies in the wisdom of your body.

I have to come home to myself every day. It feels too critical to disconnect — forgetting who I am is too high a price that I do not want to pay. It excites me to think of what could happen when more and more people are living from a place of embodiment, more of the time. This is the kind of attainable magic that the whole damn world is in need of.

However you remember your wholeness, feel your breath, see your beauty — do it. Be willing to practice believing that you can love this self and trust this body. 

You are closer to yourself than you think. All you have to do is listen, and know that you can always come home.

xx, maggie