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Walk Your Way into the Qualities You Desire, by Pat Samples

(Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal.)

Is there some quality you'd like to have more of? Patience? Confidence? Focus? That quality may seem elusive—an unreachable ideal, especially if you've tried repeatedly to develop it over time without much success.

But what if you tried it on in your body? Qualities have a physical feel to them. Think back to moments of confidence you've experienced and recall the sensation of your head held high, your torso erect, and your definitive stride. Remember the calm, regular breathing and soft smile you've had when experiencing moments of unforced patience. Your body knows what these qualities feel like, and it can be a great teacher for you when you're trying to develop these or any of the qualities you want to adopt more fully. Practice embodying your desired qualities, and your mind and emotions may well follow suit.

What Quality Do You Want?
A good place to start this practice is to identify the quality you yearn to—well, embody. Is it one of the ones I mentioned? Or is it creativity? Decisiveness? Sensitivity? I recently offered this question to an improvisational movement group that I lead, Free Motion, and some of the qualities named were love, looseness, fluidity, and potency. What is your desired quality? If you're not sure which one to pick, simply notice which one seems most on your mind today, and start with that one.

Prepare Your Body to Learn From It
To begin learning from your body, put on some instrumental music, such as New Age (but not the super-relaxing kind). Choose music that has some energy and variety to it. Then, in a standing position, take a few clear breaths and connect with your body as much as possible. Spend a few moments noticing what it feels like to be in your body in the present moment. Be aware of both pleasant and unpleasant sensations. Starting with your feet and moving up to your head, shake each part of your body loose, taking several minutes so you can shake the entire body until you feel a nice buzz of energy everywhere. Then do some easy stretching, like a cat might do, preparing your body to have the freedom to move as it wants to. Now you're ready to enter the experiment with your desired quality.

Walk Your Desired Quality into Being
Start walking. Let yourself experience the feeling of walking for a few minutes. Vary the walking any way you like. Allow yourself to be playful and creative. Eventually, let the walking begin to take on the quality you desire. If your desire is to be loose, let looseness show up in your walking. Let your legs and arms exhibit a lot of flexibility—your torso too. Your hips will probably drop and sway. Your shoulders and arms may become noodle-like. Your head may bob as your neck flops about. Exaggerate the feeling of being loose. Play it big. Walk as if you're the loosest person on the planet!

When I did this exercise with my Free Motion group, I explored the embodiment of potency for myself. I wasn't sure exactly what that might feel like, so I tried on different postures and movements. I stuck out my chest—no, that felt too aloof and pushy. I moved more from my hips—yes, I felt more solid and substantial doing that. I soon found that visually scanning the room to take in all of my surroundings felt "potent." So did opening my arms wide and extending myself outward in big swoops.

In the group, we also practiced playing out our quality with partners, as a way to observe how we might feel having this quality in our relationships. If you're doing this activity alone, you can imagine doing this with people you know.

After practicing your quality in an embodied way for a time, pause briefly to rest and observe how it feels to live in a body that is patient or focused or loose—whatever quality you chose. Notice if your attitudes and emotions have taken on this quality to any degree. Most likely they have. When we're willing to let our bodies lead us, our inner experience tends to follow.

The usual reason we're attracted to a certain quality is that we're feeling stuck in the opposite quality. The discomfort of feeling impatient makes us long for patience. Our inability to get things done because we feel so scattered makes us crave focus. So, in turning to our body to guide us, it's helpful not only to try on the embodied quality we want but to allow the currently embodied quality to also have some room to express itself. The next part of the exercise will let you do just that.

Continue with your walking, and this time let your body take on the quality you're hoping to exhibit less often. The postures and movements this time will seem quite familiar. Exaggerate them to the extreme. Allow yourself to feel fully how your body wants to carry itself when this quality is prominent. When I walked "impotently," I was hunched over, with eyes cast down and arms crossed over my chest. I felt a tight-skinned, worried expression on my face. I moved slowly, shifting directions often in a nervous way. It felt very uncomfortable and confining.

Again, take a brief pause to observe what your attitude and feelings are when you're in this body position. Do they match what your body is expressing? Also, pay attention to how you're feeling in response to having exhibited this uncomfortable quality. I remember feeling compassion for my impotent self along with a pressing desire to move out of this way of being. The next part of the exercise benefits from both of these feelings.

Continue walking, this time shifting your postures and movements from expressing the disliked quality to the desired quality. Take plenty of time with this transition. Let the shifting process itself teach you a little about what it might take to move from, say, being tense and tight to being loose and carefree. Remember to be compassionate with yourself as you follow the urge to embrace the new quality.

Enjoy displaying the desired quality as it emerges. Notice if it seems any more accessible than it did in the early part of the exercise. Are you expressing it any differently? You may find that having explored more deeply the quality that you dislike—by giving it expression, you're more able to free yourself from it and move on. Having already practiced the desired quality, you may also find it easier to take that on.

In the days and weeks ahead, you can draw upon these remembered body experience to help you as you embrace the new quality more and more. When I think about wanting to be more potent, my whole body now takes on that quality. I can feel the sensations of being potent, making it easier for my mind and emotions to settle into a more potent way of being. If necessary, to reinforce the message, you can exaggerate the bodily sensations repeatedly until this quality starts to become the familiar one.

What's so transformative about learning from our bodies is that the learning is deeply experiential and more lasting. We're often encouraged to change our thinking, but unless our whole being gets in the act, the change may dissipate with the next thought that comes along. Enjoy your body-as-teacher. Let it help you ease into and feel at home with the qualities you have long desired.

Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal. Copyright Llewellyn Worldwide, 2008. All rights reserved.

How do we get the spirit guides we have? I have a strong connection to one particular spirit guide, and believe that it was her choice to accompany me throughout this life. Is it the same for all our guides? Is an agreement made between us and our guides before we incarnate? If not, how do we end up with the guides we have? Thanks!

- L.

Dreamchaser:

I'm glad you asked this question, for it's something I've wanted to address in this forum for a while now. First, for those who aren't familiar, spirit guides are beings who were at one time human, who have learned all the human life lessons and don't have to incarnate on Earth anymore.

Instead of chilling on the beach or climbing a mountain, they decide to go to work on the Otherside and become spirit guides. We all have one main guide that is human and one main guide that is animal. Sometimes we will dream of an animal, and that animal will then come into our actual physical experience. Other times we are just drawn to a certain animal.

We all have a few different kinds of guides. The first is the kind that we choose. We have this pack of souls that we go from life to life with, and they come in all sorts of forms, from lovers to enemies. As with everyone in our soul family, we sat down before we incarnated on Earth and decided our paths. Sometimes members of our soul family will become our guides when they ascend, so we get these guides via mutual agreement prior to our birth.

The second is the kind that chooses us. At various times in our lives, we will come upon situations where we become blocked or just need an extra hand, so to speak. We may be ill or dealing with some kind of addiction, or have some kind of issue with something that is life-threatening or otherwise really challenging. At those times, sometimes Spirit/ God/ The Universe (whatever term you prefer) will step in to help us, and a temporary spirit guide is often the one to deliver that help.

The third kind of guide is a teaching guide. Much like the helping guides that are assigned to us, teaching guides come on a temporary basis and are very specific in terms of their roles in our lives. For example, a cat can teach us about concentration, and a squirrel can teach us about storing up resources for the future.

When we face a big spiritual lesson, an appropriate guide, be it human or animal, will come into our lives to help us with that specific lesson. When we learn that lesson, those guides leave. We may never encounter them again - at least not until we get to the Otherside.

As far as the guide you feel this connection with, she is your main guide, so you will feel her throughout this life. When a teaching guide comes in, sometimes she will step back and let that guide take the lead. She is always there though. Ask her how she came to be your guide, and you will hear her voice in the form of your own thoughts.

I wish you open communication with all of your guides!

*****

Astrea:

While I believe we are born with spirit guides who look out for us during our lives, I feel that some of our guides are acquired according to our needs as we go along.

I also believe we have guardian angels. I've had two throughout my life who have seemed to come and go, but I realize that they are always available if I need them. While those two seem to be female, I know that angels don't really have a gender - it was just comfortable for me to think of them as female when I was little.

I'm open to all sorts of wonderful ideas, so I never limited the number of guides, saints, angels, gods, goddesses, fairies, gnomes or elves I believed I could call upon as needed. As I grew older, I began to rely more on the One Almighty God than the angels, but they assure me that doesn't make them feel left out - it's just laziness on my part.

At different times in my life, other entities have come forward to help out. When I lost my great-grandmother's vase, I called on St. Anthony. (When it first cannot be found, St. Anthony, take a look around!). When I travel, I invoke the Goddess of the Blue Star to watch over me. When I'm in trouble, I ask the Archangel Michael to come to my aid.

Angels come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and since we are free to use them, why not keep a few personal favorites around? With personal angels or guides, we feel comfortable asking for favors and protection for ourselves and our loved ones. After all, if they are indeed assigned to us, then they don't have any choice but to help out when they can.

Of course, they don't have to do what we ask if it will prove bad for us. At those times, they are required to point out our own poor judgment. (Fortunately, angels have greater discernment than we humans do!) So while we're told that they're here to fulfill our hearts' desires, that's not always the way things turn out.

We fall in love with the wrong people, take bad jobs, and do our worst to others, all through our own free will. It seems to me if we listened to our guides and angels better, we would know how to live a life of perfection. Of course, human nature won't allow us to do that either. Trial and error, choices and consequences rain down on us, and sometimes it's hard to hear what anyone else is saying whether they're a spirit guide or an ordinary human.

It's human nature to reach past what we can see and hear to touch to a place where all is well. We can always access our guides through prayer and ritual. Also, by believing that there is someone watching over us, I think we're more likely to cooperate with the Universe and take good care of ourselves.

Astrea:

Many times in life we hear, "You will always have what you NEED, but not necessarily what you WANT." Your spirit must have needed to experience the feeling of leaving your human body, and the suggestion in the next chapter of Sylvia Brown's book was all it took to get you there.

Even though you hadn't read it yet, your SOUL recognized the title of that chapter as something it had been seeking, and your soul, knowing that you had that reference to read after your experience, got with it and out you went!

While I don't usually recommend her books, Sylvia Brown has a wide reaching and powerful effect on lots of people. A Gemini like you would be able to relate easily to her writing and put it to good use. Synchronicity - you gotta love it!

I like your description of "getting caught." That's exactly what it feels like, isn't it? One minute you're free and hovering above the room, and the next minute, ZAP! back down into your corporeal form you go!

As a little kid, I loved that "feeling of return." With practice, most of the time we can control that event, but sometimes, when our physical ears hear a distracting noise or something else occurs to knock us back into reality, back we go. With practice you will be able to control your return better.

I find it interesting that you were visiting your mother-in-law and not someone in your own genetic family. Evidently, you and your husband got married for reasons that are even deeper than love. His family's interest in "psychic stuff" will nurture your children in such matters and help them to grow into their own abilities.

You'll never have to be concerned that when your daughter visits them, she'll be discouraged from exploring her own psychic life and power. My parents encouraged me to develop my psychic senses in a time when it wasn't nice to even discuss such things in public. Heck, it's STILL not considered a great topic at the dinner table in some families!

Your kids will get to talk about it ALL and ask questions and read and study. This is going to give them such an edge in life! Talk with your husband about how you want to present this to your kiddos, so that you are united in your approach and ready to tell them their experiences are all natural and okay.

A word or two of warning: Geminis often have difficulty staying grounded in REAL LIFE. Don't get so strung out on your ASTRAL life that you neglect what you're doing here on Earth.

You are at the beginning of a long journey to learn where your power really lies. Try to be patient with this process and take your time.