Awakening to Wholeness is a series of prompts, reflections, and teachings about how holding the tension of opposites can help us to heal division and experience wholeness. If you feel moved to share your own reflections, we invite you to email us with the subject line “Wisdom of Opposites.”
Years ago, in a class on energy work, our teacher informed us that “our issues are in our tissues.” Recently on an Embodied Spirit retreat, a similar phrase emerged: “our strictures are in our structures.” Both phrases point to the reality that the body remembers, and it remembers everything. Feelings, thoughts, experiences are all stored in the amazing data base of our bodies.
Often enough, stuff gets stuck, and we can end up with strictures in our structures. Eventually, this can cause blockage in all levels of our being—physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual—and lead to unwellness.
Fortunately, we can also work with our bodies and structures in order to heal. This kind of work, while physical and energetic, is also spiritual practice. Precisely through our natural and ordinary structures—bones, muscles, energy channels—we can tend to the fullness of wholeness by opening up these structures and allowing for the free flow of abundant, life-giving energy.
The healing pattern in this work, whether at the physical, emotional, mental, energetic, or spiritual level, is to bump up to, face, or name the stricture; honor it; and then let it go. We neither avoid, nor cling to the strictures. We can free up what is stuck by tending to the natural and ordinary functions of our structures. The modalities, methods, and techniques are many, yet the healing pattern remains.
Contemplative Questions
We offer the following questions as prompts to help you reflect on the presence of opposites in your spiritual practice and your life.
- Can you think of a time you’ve noticed your “issues in your tissues” or your “strictures in your structures”? How would you describe the experience physically, mentally, spiritually?
- Have you managed to move through the blockage, or are you still working on opening up your structures? What modalities, methods, or techniques helped you?
- What role do your “structures”—bones, muscles, energy channels, or others—play in your spirituality? How do you tend to them?
Join the conversation! If you feel moved to share your reflections, we invite you to email us with the subject line “Wisdom of Opposites.”
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Christine Luna Munger
Christine Luna Munger, PhD currently serves as the director of the Episcopal House of Prayer. She previously served as Coordinator of the Spiritual Direction Certificate and Professor of Theology at St. Catherine University. She regularly writes, teaches, and leads group prayer sits at EHoP.
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