“Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?” 1 Cor 6:19 (NRSV)
“The way we relate to our bodily selves profoundly influences the way we relate to God, to one another, to prayer, to all of life” (Flora Slosson Wuellner: 1987).
Slosson Wuellner, F. (1987). Prayer and Our Bodies. Nashville, TN. The Upper Room.
A seminar on the classical division of body, soul, and spirit, which leads to an alienation from one’s own body and to an overly intellectual faith, and returning back to a unified, biblical image of humanity.
Body awareness exercises make us sensitive to our “gut feeling”, to the sensations of our visceral nervous system, which can be experienced as the center of our own intuition and inspiration.
Insights from Interpersonal Neurobiology (for example, Daniel Goleman, Daniel Siegel) and attention exercises from the Focusing approach of Eugene Gendlin expand our understanding of faith as a sensory/sensual experience of “being in relationship” with a loving God and God’s creation.
For spiritual directors: A seminar on “Body-informed Spiritual Direction” provides the above content in reference to the special dynamics of spiritual direction conversations. On this topic, I am happy to provide my research paper “How Body Awareness Informs the Practice of Spiritual Direction”.