Your Greatest Gift

Finding Presence and calm in our bodies. Being in the here and now and a time of reflection

Now that Christmas is officially over, how are you left feeling?

Contented and Satiated?

Relieved?

Perhaps anti-climatic, or maybe sad as we are reminded of loved ones who are no longer on this plane. It is all there because it is all a part of life.…..

Why is Christmas such a HUGE event for so many of us? It is generally the one time of year (in the Western calendar) when family members will come together to relax, eat and make merry. It can be triggering because it cuts to the heart of what we all yearn for. A place we can call home, a place of belonging and acceptance.

Incredulous as it may sound, one year on Christmas Day me and my then partner were moving house! We were in Japan, and it was really just a practical day to do it. And yet looking back it makes sense, because we were moving into our home.

Yet our home is not something external to us, because we all have a place that we can call home deep within us. When we can really connect into it, it can give us a sense of stability and keep us calm. We can access it at all times, and no one can take this away from us.

I am talking about the solidity of our body.

Your body is there for you, it is the home of you. But do you accept your body?

It’s skin colour, its shape, tone or lack of, it’s ability or not to get you from A to B.

The moment we start to accept and receive our bodies as they are, we may start to feel a subtle settling within.

Whether you consider it a blessing or a burden, it is what we have, it is a part of us.

If we feel love for our bodies, unconditionally, it means that we accept and love ourselves unconditionally, and that in itself is a homecoming. I would not try to diminish the suffering of anyone in deep physical or emotional pain, but acceptance can perhaps soften its grip around us.

And the other home we have is that of our breath, but that’s for another time.

So if we think of now as a time to slow down and stop our normal activites, to be still and reflect, then whether we have a ‘family’ unit to celebrate with or not, we can think of this period as a GIFT. A gift to ourselves

And the best gift we can give ourselves is the one of ‘presence’ (excuse the pun). When we are truly present we are not worrying about the past, or getting anxious or fearful of the future.

We are fully in the Here and Now.

And when we can be fully present in the here the now, we are rewarded with an even more precious gift – the gift of Freedom.

If we can experience this Gift we can truly choose how we want to be and what we want to do.

Can you imagine experiencing this kind of power?

People have fought tooth and nail, and lost their lives for freedom. Yet many of us confine ourselves in our own prisons of doubt, fear and worries and our self-limiting beliefs (who can plead not guilty?).

Dance can give us this Presence and this Freedom.

And when we lose ourselves in this dance, as the controversial guru Osho said ‘Be Total.’

Whether you are staying quiet or fluttering around at social gatherings this season, the invitation is to be present and fully in the moment, and yes to dance!

Christmas is past, and the New Year is yet to come.

Consider this a liminal space where anything is possible for 2023.

I will be holding a Free 3 part series of the Power of Dance to Heal and Transform soon. In the meantime, you can join my FREE mini course Embody : Find Your Centre, Get Ready to Dance