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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.

Lately my three-year-old son Isaac has been talking about a little boy he calls Jugger. He says the boy comes to visit him at night when he's sleeping. Isaac says Jugger always wants him to come and play, but Isaac tells him he can't because he's sleeping. Yesterday I was putting Isaac's shoes on him when suddenly he said, I can't, Boy! I asked him who he was talking to, and he said, That boy who just ran outside. He wants me to play with him, but I told him we're going to a different park. It's kind of scary. I'm wondering if this is a spirit guide for Isaac, or just a spirit who likes him. Do you think it's anything to be alarmed about? I don't discourage or alarm Isaac - I simply ask questions about what he's experiencing. I just want to make sure he's safe, and I'm hoping you can ease my worries. Thanks so much! Isaac's date of birth is 2/11/04.

- Karen

Dreamchaser:

You can rest assured that your son is safe; Jugger is not a threat to him in any way. Isaac can see all kinds of beings from the Otherworld, and Jugger is just a spirit who has befriended him. They like to play together. Jugger is also protective of Isaac, and would probably tell him not do things that could hurt him.

I know first hand how strange it feels to have a child who can see beings that you can't see. I have often written about my son's imaginary friend named Joseph. My son is now sixteen years old, and sometimes he still sees Joseph. Further, he always FEELS his presence.

To get more information from your son, you might try playing games with him. For example, I would hand my son a piece of paper and some crayons and ask him to draw what he saw, and he would draw the same figure over and over. It was a man in a long brown robe-like garment with lots of colors around his head and upper body.

I would also point to myself and then to him and say, I see me and I see you. Who do you see? He would point to me and to him and also to other beings that I couldn't see.

Please be aware that your son can't choose what he sees and what he doesn't see at this time. At some point, he will probably see beings that scare him, but that doesn't mean they are out to harm him in any way. Don't let this confuse you. Not all spiritual beings are pretty ñ in fact, some do look really scary. Sometimes ugly but benevolent beings might scare your boy, and beings that are not from The Light may also come near him to check him out.

When this happens, his guardians will protect him. If he should talk to you about his fears, just remind him that he is very special, that he is always protected, and NOTHING from the Otherworld can physically hurt him.

I used to have this little song I wrote about chasing away the bad guys and how nothing bad could come into in my son's room. I would spin in circles like I was shooting magical protection out of my fingertips. It seemed to work for him. If you're creative, you'll find what works for you and Isaac.

The most important thing you can do for your son is what you have already been doing: You need to treat him like he's a normal child. You need to always believe what he says, no matter how crazy it sounds. He needs to know that throughout his life, he can come to you with whatever he needs to talk about.

Sometimes you are going to be the only person he can confide in, and since he is so incredibly psychically gifted, he is definitely going to need a good confidante. Continue to treat this sort of thing as normal.

I wish you both wonder-full interactions with ALL beings.

*****

Astrea:

It's wonderful that you can allow your son to explore his psychic abilities at this early age. That takes a good deal of courage and faith on a mama's part. Of course, you did this too as a little girl - he gets his ability from you.

I went through the same doubts and worries with my own son, but he grew up to be able to use a knife and fork like everyone else, and can communicate with living people as well as those who have crossed over.

Lots of good things come from being psychically aware, so it's great you're not discouraging him. It's an advantage he'll have all his life if you can keep the faith and an open mind. Being able to see Beyond the Veil is a skill that comes in handy for me every day.

One of the reasons I'm sure your boy is in no danger is because the children who come to him are young like he is. It's difficult for children who die at an early age to accept that they're no longer here with their loving families, so they often latch on to living children who are close to them in age.

It's easy for these spirits to be with him because he treats them like he would anyone else. It makes them happy in the time they have before they move on to Heaven. Your family triggers good feelings and reminds these children of their own loving families.

Since your son is so open to everything, he accepts Jugger to be just as real as the little boy living down the street. He can't tell the difference, and at this point, he doesn't really need to. When I was little, sometimes there were so many young spirits around that I felt like I was in some kind of psychic orphanage.

There is no reason for you to worry about your kiddo, because the Universe protects small fry from bad entities. If we ever do deal with evil entities, it usually happens during adolescence, when our physical bodies are going through so many intense changes.

Evil Doers sometimes hone in on hormonal imbalances, and they can create neuroses and psychoses that plague some people for the rest of their lives. Of course, most of the time, evil doesn't make a dent in our psyches because we are naturally given over to the Good. As we get older, however, all sorts of things can influence us. Most people just block out ALL psychic awareness instead of trying to make sense of it.

I'm so happy that you're encouraging your son to keep in touch with his natural psychic gifts. Perhaps he'll choose to help those little spirits cross over into the Light, and will be able to keep doing so all his life. It can be a burden and an awesome responsibility for a little kid, but he seems to be handling things so far. Of course, it can be a joy, a pleasure and a blessing too.

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.