Spiritual Embodiment: The Three Essential Stages Of Integrating Body And Soul
Skip Any One Stage And Healing Is Incomplete
Spiritual embodiment is the integrating of our spiritual selves into our bodies so we can express our soul’s gifts through these bodies and onto the planet.
Also known as spiritual integration, this process happens across three stages or tiers that are nested within each other, like the graphic to the right: Clear, Include and Transcend.
This means that healing is not complete unless all three stages are integrated into a person’s body and being.
The first stage, Clear, is well known in the healing world.
There are many modalities whose intention is to clear stuck energy, for example.
However, people tend to skip over the second stage as it’s often uncomfortable and requires facing our shadow.
They tend to want to skip to the third stage because it’s more expansive and “blissful”—everyone is looking for the bliss.
Unfortunaely, they don’t get to experience the depth of what’s possibe in their bodies and lives if they haven’t given all the stages of the journey their due.
How We Get Fragmented In The First Place
Here’s a video I made about the three stages of our spiritual embodiment journey:
If you prefer audio podcasts, listen to this episode or search for the BioSoul Integration Podcast wherever you listen to your audio podcasts:
When we come into this world, our sensitive, energetic nervous system begins feeling into the people around us.
What we sense is the persistent resistance to life that’s baked into their system.
We assume that that is the way its done because they are our models for how to be human, and so we adopt this persistent conditioned resistance.
This separation goes against the nature of Nature and creates a kind of pressure in our system.
That pressure can show up at any point as back pain, emotional issues, or even other organ systems that may seem not to be working as they’re supposed to.
Through the people and situations we encounter in life, life is pushing the unconsciousness in us to the surface of awareness, and dissolving the separation.
It takes a lot of energy on our part to keep the seperation and unconsciousness in place in the midst of the pressure that life is applying.
An example is the pressure we might feel on our bodies when standing in a river.
Like Standing In A River
If you’ve ever stood in a river with a current, say in waist deep or chest deep water, you know that there’s a significant amount of pressure that that current puts on your body.
It keeps urging you to go down stream with the current.
This is what the persistent, conditioned resistance that we’ve adopted in our body-mind feels like.
So, over time, life starts to wear us down because it takes a lot of resources to maintain this habituated, conditioned resistance.
The resources we use to maintain that resistance are resources we don’t get to use for living, for loving, for adapting to our environment, for recovering from injury, etc.
And so, over time, life starts to wear us down.
But it’s not wearing us down just to mess with us, it’s wearing us down to invite us to go with its plan for our lives.
And every time life dissolves a layer of our resistance we go through three stages.
Clear, Include And Transcend
Based on the work of Donald Epstein, the stages of embodied living are a system through which we evolve on our healing journey, which is really synonymous with the life journey.
- To Clear
- To Include and
- To Transcend
More than a linear progression, the transition through these stages is more three dimensional.
Include includes and transcends Clear, while Trascend includes and transcends both Include and Clear.
Each stage has characteristics unique to itself but each stage is also part of a bigger whole.
That’s why skipping any one stage results in a lack of body/mind wholeness.
The First Level Of Spiritual Embodiment: Clear
The first level healing is to clear, and once life starts to wear us down or we start to do some healing work, then we start to figure out that there’s been this habituated way in which we’re always trying to disconnect from that pressure that’s built up.
We learned again that that’s the way to do it. We’re always trying to not look at it to disconnect from it.
We start to learn a much better strategy that is; to turn towards this pressure and look at it and observe it and get more curious about it.
Just the act of doing that can create a great release into our system. And it can free up a lot of resources.
This is because there are all these resources we’re using to not look at it.
Just the act of looking can be a huge relief.
There a lot of techniques and a lot of modalities that are about clearing things conventional chiropractic on some level, it has deeper uses.
It could be about letting go of tension, clearing energy EFT emotional freedom technique.
There are other techniques like that; lots of energy work, different kinds of energy work, and it is all about releasing energy or clearing stuck energy or clearing energy.
To clear our energy can be very useful, and that’s one level of strategy.
Once our system sees that we’re clearing the same kind of energy that builds up over and over again, it starts to figure out that maybe there’s a more refined or more advanced level of healing.
Which is a more advanced strategy than letting go of the same energy that’s building up.
This brings us to the next level of healing which is to include.
The Second Level Of Spiritual Embodiment: Include
So, on some level, the energy that builds up starts clearing certain parts of our body, and this becomes part of us.
At some point, if there’s enough space in our system, and if we have enough connection to resources, it’s useful to stay present with that energy as opposed to clearing it to let it build.
This will automatically happen when we are ready.
We’ll feel compelled to look more closely and let the tension build.
This causes us to feel compelled to stay present with it longer.
As that energy builds, some emotions come to the surface that we wouldn’t let ourselves feel those emotions.
They affect our impact; they affect our belief systems and start to involve our mental and emotional bodies.
And if we can stay with it, again, — our nervous systems are a self-organizing self and observing system– if we can stay with it, our system kind of starts to see that oh I’m not going to die.
When that happens, we are reorganizing our relationship to this energy that we were pushing down.
This was the energy we thought was such a threat. And we get to include it, and it becomes included in part of us.
This energy then gets to influence us– the emotion that it contains– We get to include the energy into our body, mind, and it starts to influence us.
It prompts us to take action, and it causes us to take to think and behave differently.
It gives us the strength to sort of like draw new lines in the sand, and stand up for parts of ourselves that we were habitually turning against.
It also gives us the ability to reclaim our power.
At the included stage, we start getting more in contact with our passion, and with what lights us up.
This makes us more aware of these things, and so there’s a way in which that energy can transform you.
As I have described it as going into the ocean, at a certain point the waves are smacking you down, they’re collapsing on top of you; but if you get out of certain ways, and past the breakers then you can come back, and you can ride the waves, and you can surf the waves in.
So, that’s what happens with this. If we include it, it influences us and becomes part of us, and we get to ride in it, and it drives us naturally towards our spiritual healing.
This is the essence of shadow work.
Finally, it drives us towards wholeness, and it drives us towards the part where we are given our gifts.
If we can get to the point where we include it, and that brings us to the next stage of the process which is; transcend.
The Third Level Of Spiritual Embodiment: Transcend
As said earlier, a lot of people skip the include part.
This is because often the second level of healing can be uncomfortable, and so they skip right to the third level of healing which is more of a spiritual level.
With this level, we begin to see ourselves more clearly; we do not see ourselves through the hurts and traumas and accidents.
We do not see ourselves through the lens of the energy that we don’t want to look at.
We’ve cleared that energy, and we begin to see more clearly who we are and why we are here.
We have more access to compassion and love for ourselves and consequently for others.
We get more in touch with our authentic selves, more connected to God, to nature, ourselves, and others.
And so, there is a different kind of level of being that comes out of that.
Also, we have enough space and room connection to our soul to where we start to feel compelled to give our gifts, and we get to know whether we’re going to get anything in return or not.
We just feel compelled to give our gifts, and of course, the world opens up.
And when we live that way, almost as a side effect, we’ll naturally find ourselves living our soul purpose.
We’ve transcended the self and our old identities that were based on lack and survival; we have also transcended those identities, and so, it’s clear to include and to transcend.
The Embodied Path Online Course
Since we’re talking about embodiment, I should tell you about my online course: The Embodied Path Online Course: 8 Steps To Expressing Your Soul’s Essence, Purpose And Calling.
This course is designed to help you connect with each level of your spine and unlock the wisdom of the energy bound there, in order to achieve true embodied healing.
Through engaging video lessons and thought-provoking worksheets, you will gain knowledge and understanding of how pain, problems, and challenges can reveal your unique gifts and encourage you to share them.
But that’s not all.
You will also learn a simple yet powerful set of practices that will help you experience the process of soul embodiment firsthand.
After all, direct experience is the best teacher.
And if you need extra support, the course includes bonus opportunities for live, personal help from me.
Together, we can help you unlock your full potential and express your soul’s essence, purpose, and calling.
Click the link to learn more about The Embodied Path Online Course.
Ultimate Guide To Spiritual Embodiment
My book, If It Didn’t Hurt: How To Resolve Your Pain And Discover Your Life Purpose, is the ultimate guide to spiritual embodiment.
Click the link to buy, or if you’re not ready yet, there’s also an option to get the the first chapter for free, instantly.
I look forward to helping you express more life,
Jay
About the Author Dr. Jay Uecker
Dr. Jay is the founder and owner of BioSoul Integration Center in Louisville, Colorado. He’s a chiropractor, a hands-on healer, an in-person and online soul integration coach and the author of If It Didn't Hurt: How To Resolve Your Pain And Discover Your Life Purpose. For two decades Dr. Jay has been helping people navigate their healing journeys. Over the course of that time he’s worked intimately with thousands of people. Those who are most drawn to Dr. Jay's work are those who are seeking to integrate and embody their soul's essence and their soul's gifts so they can share them with others. Life will keep nudging us in that direction, anyway. BioSoul Integration helps to speed up the process and smooth out the rough spots created by the innocent and unconscious resistance that lives in our primal brain and nervous system. Click the link to get your Personalized BioSoul Integration Guide.
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