For a couple of weeks at the end of November 2020, I’ve been looking with the online community at the exhaustion and depletion many of us are feeling along the line of the spine. This is the energetic core of the self and it’s frightening to see how under-resourced it can be. The following are some thoughts from our work.
Obviously, we have a physical spine. We tend to forget it-unless it goes wrong and a vertebra pops out of line, or we pull a muscle down in the lumbar region. But we can conceptually accept that we do have a spine.
You can put your awareness there now. Even very roughly. Running a mental finger along the inside of the space. The line facing the front of the body.
It’s a long curvey lobster of energy, bone, nerve tissue, cartilage running down the middle of our body. We often think it’s at the back but really it’s in the middle. (Only the spiny rear-facing back processes run down the back. The thing we see if we peek at someone from behind.) The front of the spine is actually right through the middle of our body. The core, if you like.
You can put your awareness there now. Even very roughly. Running a mental finger along the inside of the space. The line facing the front of the body.
But one of the things that has fascinated inner voyagers, is the way that our sense of self also seems to cleave to the spine.
If you shift from buttock-to-buttock on your seat or sway from front-to-back, then you’ll have a sense of the coordinated column of bone and muscle at work in movement. You can sense that inside-lining in movement.
In reality, (that is to say in the living biological space of your human body) the spine organises all sorts of things in your body: nerves, bones, muscles. It’s also a major pathway for chemistry up and down.
But one of the things that has fascinated inner voyagers, is the way that our sense of self also seems to cleave to the spine.
It is easier to have a sense of self along the front of the spine. Try it.
Many of us think our self resides just behind our eyes. But even a quick enquiry proves this questionable. Take a moment now and ask yourself: is my sense of self located just behind the eyes? Put your mind there and see.
For most people what happens is the location of self seems to slither just out of reach. It’s not behind the eyes, but perhaps a bit further back? No? then maybe through the whole brain? No? then at the back of the skull? After quick exploration, you come back to the question empty-handed. It’s not easy to locate it in the head.
It is easier to have a sense of self along the front of the spine. Try it.
It’s still not quite there-but it feels somehow easier to grasp. There’s a hovering sense of presence when we try to hold the whole line of the spine in awareness. It feels a bit more like it. A bit more accurate.
There’s a whole Buddhist wormhole we could go down here-exploring the fact that nowhere actually holds the seat of the soul. In fact, the whole of Buddhism can be boiled down to the answer to that enquiry: there is no fixed self to be found…)
If we can’t exactly pin-point our ‘self’ we can at least tune in to a sense of presence, of liveliness, of energy. One way of putting it would be to say: our life force is situated just along the spine.
I’d love to know your thoughts about your energy spine. Drop me a message with any thoughts, comments, questions, queries or insights that pop up while reading the blog. I’d love to hear from you!
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