 You may believe that relationships are a mirror, you may have even used others as a reflection for change and healing. But what do your relationships really say about your deeper needs? The parts of you that long to be healed, touched, awakened and transformed? From a jyotish perspective, the 7th house of your chart represents relationships. It is the “other” what you are looking at, seeing outside of yourself. You may like what you see, or you may despise it. Depending on the planets and their relationship with your 7th house, you may experience more or less challenges with “the other”. There may be cycles that kick up extra turmoil or pain as a result of the mirrors you are looking at. These external mirrors are reflecting to you what is inside. Whether it feels good, or whether it hurts, what you are experiencing is a piece of your inner landscape. Love or hate, it’s all within you. The 7th house of the jyotish chart is an expression of yoga. Of merging, integrating, uniting- all the parts of ourselves that we feel separate from, that feel outside of ourselves. The house of relationships reminds you how to conjoin and connect, to harmonize and balance your inside world with your outer world. The problem is that most people don’t use relationships as a resource for deep inner healing. Most people are using relationships as another resource for avoidance, resistance or addiction. Relationships become a passive resource for connection, rather than one of deep transformation. Yoga is union. Yoga is life. Relationships are yet another resource for yoga. Yoga is not just a merging of the self with the divine. Yoga in fact is union on all levels of your being. Union of the human self and the spiritual self. Only when these two bodies begin to dance together with more integration, can you find harmony or unity. Your humanness must learn how to co-create, to be in relationship with, to integrate with, your spirit- then yoga is achieved. This dance of integration is in constant fluctuation and change, yet always seeking balance on some level of existence. It's not easy to work with the hard stuff, the darkness, your human qualities, and to use the pain as a resource for transformation. Very few people are able to do the powerful inner work needed to become enlightened while staying in isolation. The mirrors coming to you from relationships are catalysts for deepening your awakening process. They arrive to help you lean in closer. To awaken new pathways within. When a relationship feels good, it can be a welcome resource to ease and support, to nourish and soothe. But what about the difficult relationships that arrive? How can you use these painful experiences to deepen and awaken yourself from unconscious slumber? When a painful or challenging mirror is shown to you, it is a reminder to look closer at yourself. It has arrived to flash a part of your being to you. A part of yourself that you need to look at very acutely. No one wants to admit they have a mean, horrid or deceitful person hidden inside of them. But if you can work with this shadow more consciously, you will be liberated from it. How willing are you to look into the mirror and use the painful parts of yourself that you despise as your biggest teachers? How willing are you to use the outside mirrors, the people that you hate as your biggest guru? The reality is that these mirrors arriving are in fact the parts of yourself that you refuse to look at. They have to intensify and show up in your face, blatantly screaming, just to get your attention. The longer you repress, suppress and avoid the shadow, the more intense and obnoxious it becomes. If you attract a sad and lonely person, this requires you heal the grief within. If a narcissist appears, you must attend to your inner narcissist. If a whiny, complainer arrives, you must attend to the dissatisfied parts of yourself. If an angry, violent person is presented to you, this enraged person must become your resource for healing your inner violence. Everything that you attract is a resource for your healing work. Every mirror is a reflection of your inner being. This includes your family system and the story of your lineage. Often these parts of ourselves can be suppressed, resisted or avoided for generations, but eventually they will emerge stronger and darker than ever. Eventually there will be a potent expression of the pain, grief, shadow and darkness that has been hidden in the family for generations. These mirrors are resources for healing not only yourself, but the darkness and grief that has been suppressed in your family for generations. When a challenging or painful mirror arrives, do you look closer? Do you lean in or do you push it away? Do you walk past it or do you recognize the mirror being shown to you? When a painful mirror arrives, remember that it is a resource. We have choice and freewill that can determine the outcome. Just to be very clear, using the pain as resource for your healing never requires staying in a dysfunctional or abusive relationship. How we choose to use the challenges will determine the awakening that takes place within. This includes using healthy boundaries. When the same mirror returns over and over again, it is vital that you deepen your inner work and recognize that you are resisting some shadows, parts of yourself that are still hidden. A relationship with another person, is a concentrated relationship with yourself. This is yoga in action. This integration with self and other, with human and spirit, with light and dark, is the path of yoga. The 7th house of the jyotish chart reiterates this expression of yoga, reminding us that everything that arrives on our path is a resource for awakening, transformation and healing. Use the Tapping Meditation below to move, transform and release mental and emotional blockages with relationships. If the words I use don't work for you, change them to align with your own story more closely. Tapping Meditation Use this Tapping Meditation to work through challenging relationships- when you feel stuck, afraid or resistant to change. Remember that we always start with "truth tapping" by expressing feelings and experiences that feel challenging. This is a vital part of the process and paves the way for transformation and healing. In the podcast below, I share a tapping (EFT) sequence with you that will guide you through transforming and releasing the old stories and invite in more receptivity. Remember, we start with identifying the challenges, then moving into possibility and desires in order to transform our shadow into light. Use this podcast as you tap through these points: Karate chop point (side of the hand). Crown of the head. Eyebrow point (above the eye). Side of the eye. Under the eye. Under the nose. Chin point (crease of the chin). Throat point (collar bone/throat chakra). Heart point (center of chest). Stomach point (above the navel). Side body (nipple line at side of chest). Tap six to ten times on each point and just keep cycling through the points. Repeat the phrases I use aloud. Notice any thoughts, stories, memories or emotions that emerge as you tap. These are important pieces to return to, do more tapping on, as a way to clear blockages. As always, if the words I use don't work for you, change them to support your process more fully. Share your experiences below! What emerged for you in this process? Excited to hear from you! 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 I used to be the yogi who hit the mat every day. Yoga was my life. I understood the purpose of yoga and used the brilliance of proper sequencing in my practice. I incorporated pranayama, asanas and sivasana as an ideal three part system of wholeness, or yoga, and as preparation for my meditation practice. Yoga wasn't the only part of my movement story though. Dance has been a staple of my life since I started ballet at the age of four. Later I moved on to modern dance, various styles of African dance and Afro Brazilian dance as well. My love of dance, moving the body, and my passion for understanding the arts as a necessary language of culture, led me to an undergrad in Ethnodanceology. Since I come from a yogic family, creating a life for myself that embraces daily and regular practices of awakening, have seemed normal, healthy and even necessary for me and my evolution. My upbringing also helped me understand that the body is a vital resource for one's awakening, evolution and ultimately enlightenment. These values hold true for me still. But five years ago, I stumbled upon Body-centered Expressive Art Therapy, and my spiritual views, my body practices, and my movement exploration began to radically shift. My practice of awakening is still centered around my body and my practice is still daily. But the rest of my process is entirely different. In the Body-centered approach to art therapy that I work with, we understand that we have more than one body. We have the physical body yes, and we of course have the mental body, but we also have an emotional body. These three bodies are upheld by the spiritual body. (This corroborates with the Vedic understanding as well). Each body in fact has the ability to communicate with us and has a language all its own. In order to be fully embodied, we must learn how to speak with each of these bodies and to harvest their unique wisdom and messages. The fact is that most of us are working entirely with the mental body- day in and day out. And this is where we get stuck. We let the mental body tell us what to do. What it needs. What it wants. We let it tell us how to behave, what is acceptable, what isn't. We let it tell us all kinds of stories, and we listen to it! We even let the mental body tell us how to move our body. This is vital to understand. When we do yoga asanas, dance techniques, and other mechanical movement practices, we are letting the mental body tell our physical body what to do. This can strengthen the mind/body connection, but it doesn't guarantee nor imply embodiment. What is embodiment and why does it matter? Embodiment implies that we are working with the wisdom and knowledge of the physical body, not separate from it, outside of it or against it. That we are in direct dialogue with the language of the body and therefor harvesting from its immense wisdom. It's about resourcing from the messages of the body and letting your body speak to you very intimately. Most importantly, it implies the capacity to deeply listen to its messages. This is why I love somatic and body-centered approaches to movement and therapy. Through a body-centered approach to movement, we are creating a special dialogue with our body and its messages. We have an opportunity to build a relationship with it in very intimate ways. We can resource from the body and the innate and vast wisdom of the body. We are then able to let these impulses of the physical body inform our movements in order for deeper awareness. This is a very big distinction between most yoga and dance practices, and embodied movement practices. In an embodied practice, the body informs the movements, not the mental body, not the mind. It's true, a yoga asana practice and even some dance practices, might make you feel more in touch with your body and its messages as a result of moving it into certain shapes and forms. This is the gift of working with what is known as the "mind body", but I invite you to take this a step further. In this place of deep listening that may arrive during or after your yoga or dance practice, spend time with your body's wisdom. Hang out here and harvest. Listen. Inquire. Ask questions. Get really good at asking your physical body what it needs and wants. Use these tips for greater embodiment during your movement practices: - Start with a four level check-in. Embodiment begins when we can clearly identify what each level of awareness is offering and sharing with us in any given moment. Check in daily with what is arriving on your mental body level, physical body level and emotional body level and spiritual body level. This will get you started. - Instead of doing a set sequence of asanas, postures or movements, start your practice by listening to your physical body's messages. Is there tightness in a certain part of the body? Can you sense openness and space in another part of your body? Go into these sensations and inquire about them. What message do your tight shoulder or hamstrings have for you? Ask and ye shall receive! - Notice when you are pushing yourself to achieve an objective or outcome. Do you "push through" your practice even when you are tired or worn out? Do you force yourself into a posture just to arrive into a desired shape or form? Do you notice inner dialogue about what is "right" in your yoga practice and what is "wrong"? Notice where your practice includes "shoulds" and "have to's" as well as "supposed to's." What happens when you release these? - Build your movements based on deeply listening to your body's impulses. Let the impulses that are present in your body, be the catalyst for your movements. This is a profound step towards embodiment and it will allow you to deepen your relationship with the messages coming from your physical body. This is very different than imposing postures onto the physical body. Embodiment is intrinsically connected to the now. It doesn't actually require long, arduous physical body movement practices, but it does require willingness to let the physical body speak to you. Use these four steps to help you become more adept at listening to your physical body's messages: 1) Sitting, standing or laying down, begin to notice your breathing. Notice the quality of your breathing. Get intimate with the sensation of how the breath feels moving within your body. Feel the breath as you inhale and the chest expands. Feel the breath as you exhale and feel the chest collapse. 2) Notice any sensations in the body that are arriving for you. Is there a certain body part that feels tight? Cold? Energized? Painful? Throbbing? Seek out any sensations that are present for you and let your attention go to this part of the body. 3) Use this sensation for greater inquiry. Does this sensation have a color? Maybe it has a shape or brings with it an image? Perhaps it has a sound? Be curious and ask the sensation to give you some deeper information. 4) Harvest this information. As you gather these pieces of information from your body ask the sensation to answer these three questions: I am, I want and I need. Based on the answers you receive, you may wish to begin moving with the sensation and let it inform your physical body movement exploration. You may also wish to do a drawing in order to harvest your findings more intimately. I suggest exploring both of these processes in order to awaken your dialogue and start deepening your relationship with your physical body. I am passionate about embodiment! This is why I offer my clients a very unique synergy of modalities to help them get embodied. Using jyotish insights from your own karmic life map, I am able to prescribe individualized and specialized body part work, in order to maximize healing and transformation. My embodiment prescriptions are ideal for overcoming obstacles and blockages that may be hindering health and wholeness. The body is our biggest resource for awakening, and I'm here to help you awaken through the messages of your body wisdom! Want to learn more about transforming your life through jyotish and embodiment work? Schedule a session with me. Plan your week in tune with nature. Never miss a planetary update. Sign up for my weekly newsletter. Was this post helpful? Please share it with a friend! Thank you Don't Miss My *free* Embodied Chakra Class!
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