You Are The Alchemy You Seek

Magic is somatic! 

We are embodied beings. We’re body parts – cells in a planet that is a body. It is physical. It is tangible. And it is ever changing. We’re a part of a universe that is a woven together, intricate entity of matter. We live in a material world, and we all are material girls, women, non-binary people, boys, men, and all the other options and possibilities bodies can experience themselves as. We are material beings!

We are matter, and our matter matters. It doesn’t mean we’re not spiritual! The universe is material, and matter isn’t not spirit. 

Some think of spirit as the source of creation, and matter as that which is born out of spirit. Some think the body is a channel for the soul, or that matter houses spirit. Some think spirit becomes embodied. Others think that spirit enters a body and animates it. 

I don’t think spirit lives outside or beyond matter. I think matter itself is spirit. One isn’t birthing the other, or giving expression to the other. One isn’t the other’s vehicle. There’s no one without the other. The physicality of existence is soulful. It’s alive. It’s ever becoming, unbecoming, spinning and unfurling, spiraling out of this form into another, formulating and reformulating itself through a boundless, repeating, and never the same eternality. 

Isn’t life itself, nature and all that it is, all that it does, all of the creative force in the cosmos that bursts into existence, and cycles and recycles, and dissolves and coalesce and burns through itself and breaks down and reconfigures – isn’t it awe inspiring?!

You are here, on this planet, in this moment, during these intense times, with struggles and sophistication and resistance and a breaking down of systems, and plenty of injustices, and truth being challenged in every direction, and facts and opinions being confused, and an environmental catastrophe looming over our heads… And still, stunning beauty unfolding as trees and bees and babies being born, still deep conversations unwinding into the wee hours of the night, still sex and food are life’s greatest pleasures because life is fucking smart and it knows what needs to happen for it to keep on going. Isn’t that amazing!? YOU are life! YOU are magic!

Embodiment is fucking magical! It is unbelievable that we exist! We are here! Right now! And that is mind blowing! It’s epic! 

Magic happens in the body. It happens AS the body. It happens through the body. We are expressions of possibilities entangled into form. And we are a continuous process of reformation. We are a vessel that carries different energies, a conduit of ever transfiguring, evolutionary, metamorphosing energy. And we are also that very energy itself. We are carried by forces greater than us, we move within them, through them, around them, as them, and we work with the powers of life’s enormity. We ARE the powers of life. We are the transformation that we are engaged in. 

Emotional, intellectual, and spiritual experiences are aspects of embodied life. Feelings and thoughts are somatic. 

When we say that something is going on in our minds, is it not in our body? Is our mind really separate from this skin, from this gorgeous brain, from this intelligent nervous system?

Where do you experience your emotions if not in your physicality? Emotions beat in our chest, roar in our bellies, shake in our knees, and stand as the hair on our skin. 

When we tune into the heart, is the heart not an organ? A heartbreak is a physical experience. So is open heartedness. Love is a somatic space. And so is anger. And so is fear. And so is every feeling that moves through our system – vast, contracted, deep, revolutionary – the heart’s spiritual role is an embodied, pulsing presence. Our whole system is somatic. 

Magic happens in our bodies. It happens through mindset, through emotional repatterning, through new neural pathways, through the way that we weave our breath into a conversation with our feelings, and the way that our breath is inseparable from the plants, from the planet, from the atmosphere, from the solar system… 

We enchant the world by taking physical actions, through decisions that come to life as steps that we take, and moves that we make, and habits that we break. We create meaningful experiences and life changing moments through our relationships to our own body and to other bodies. 

Alchemy happens in our bones, in our marrow, in the brain, with the nervous system, through the fascia, within the bloodstream, in the digestive system, on cellular level, and through relationships with the environment and with the microbiome within our own system. 

Moving our bodies with intentionality is a spell. Breathing with a sense of sacredness is a healing potion. How we speak to our bodies is an incantation. What we say to ourselves and to this gift of an imperfect, generous form can change the way we hold ourselves, can change the way we interact with others, can change our experience, our expression, and even our income. 

What we feed our bodies is a brew we stir in our cauldron; the pot on the stove, the salad bowl, the tray in the oven, and the womb of our creativity. The ingredients we use in our cooking – literally and metaphorically both, in the kitchen and in the inner as well as outer conversations – are life changing. Nourishment is magic! It’s real! And it’s not metaphysical. 

Magic is somatic! It’s not some romantic notion of wizards and fairies in a world beyond the veils. It’s right here in the relationship between your lungs and the trees on the street you live on. It’s the way you speak to yourself after you’ve disappointed yourself. It’s the choice of words and tone, it’s the little changes that you make as you notice the tightness in your belly in reaction to a certain thought. It’s the way you move your spine meticulously or freely, lying on the floor or dancing in the desert. It’s the way you cook the meal and take your time to eat it with gentle awareness, and a soft palate. 

The mundane, day to day activities that we must engage in are not separate from the transformation we seek in our grand, cosmic vision of life. The poetic heart of a witch beats in the moments when she grabs her broom and sweeps the floor. The soul of the sorceress spins across the galaxy as she drives to pick up her kids from school. Magic isn’t far away, in the unseen. It’s right here, in this very moment, as you receive the next breath, and offer your wholeness on this next step on these dirty floors that you are finally inspired to clean. 

Magic is a physical move, an intentional groove, a decision you have to make again, and an embodied expression of your inner most complex, whole, and broken, wild, and domestic sensation. 

Magic is somatic! YOU are magic!