Taking the wall apart

I was a big effort guy. I felt like I could out-effort anyone on the soccer field or the ultimate frisbee field or, you know, surfing, any of those places. And I did that by and large by having a wall up between my head and my torso and abdomen. And so when I began to stop running away from God and start running towards God, I had to do a pretty big shift in how I related to my body, my physical body, specifically my chest and abdomen area.

And so for the first three to six months of running towards God, I did a lot of body scans and a lot of paired muscle relaxation. And I, piece by piece, took apart the wall of tension and repression and pain and contractions in my neck and shoulders that was blocking my awareness of my body. And then, once I had removed the wall, I then began to explore and connect with the different parts of my body and begin to hold them in curiosity and spaciousness and begin to relate to them and then eventually begin to bring a certain amount of unconditional love to the different parts of my body.