the body was the doorway the whole time

Hola everyone,

So this week, thanks to my friend Ece, I was introduced to Judith Blackstone and her approach to spirituality, healing and awakening.

I watched a video where Judith speaks about how much of healing and awakening comes through being completely in the body—through inhabiting the body, and becoming fully aware of it.

I know this sounds obvious, but it also felt strangely and deeply revealing for me.

I think for a long time, and I see this in many spiritual spaces and approaches as well, I held this belief that the deepest, most grand spiritual experiences happen somewhere outside of the body. We even use language like out-of-body experience, as if the more profound, expanded, mystical states are the ones that take us away from our physicality.

And as I was listening to Judith, I realized I have been carrying this belief too.

Not consciously maybe, but underneath a lot of my own practice, there has been this sense that the body is something dense, something limited, almost something to move beyond in order to reach what is deeper, truer, more spiritual.

Now I keep remembering how many spiritual teachings actually speak of the body in a completely different way: not as an obstacle, but as a portal. As a temple. As a gateway.

And I feel like this is finally starting to click for me. Not only on the level of my mind, but deep within my core, within my body as well. I see the path into healing, transformation, and even awakening does not have to be through leaving the body. It can be through entering it more fully. Through inhabiting the body so deeply that something begins to open from within.

One of the things Judith described in her video that really stayed with me was this idea that when we go deeply enough into the body, we begin to experience it as something less solid and defended, and more as something permeable. More open. More unified with the environment and life all around us.

As if the borders or limits of our bodies start to disappear, and the experience of oneness becomes possible. As if we enter a luminous space where anything is possible. Where things are not so obsolete anymore. Where life can flow and move through us. So can our traumas and wounds, the ones we have been holding on to for so long. They can finally start to move.

This made so much sense to me.

She describes how, so often, trauma gets held in our bodies through constriction. Something painful happens, and naturally we tighten. We brace ourselves. We contract in order to lessen the impact. We put up walls, we numb, we shut down, we harden. It is how we try to protect ourselves.

But in protecting ourselves that way, we can also end up holding the pain inside.

And what feels so meaningful to me in this approach is that healing is not being framed as fixing ourselves, or getting rid of pain, or conquering trauma. It is more about creating the space for it to move again. For old patterns—patterns that maybe served us in the past in some way—to no longer stay frozen inside us. They can move now because life is different now. We are different now. So we don’t need to hold on in the same way anymore.

This is something I have known, but I guess I never quite understood what it means to “not hold on.”

We keep hearing phrases like “letting go of the old patterns” but we don’t hear enough about how. Because when I hear “let go” or “stop holding on,” it can sound so active, as if I should be able to command myself or my body to release these patterns with the power of my mind. This approach then overrides the power of the body. In my personal experience I don’t think I could ever just tell my body, from my mind, to let go.

Because the body remembers. The body keeps the score.

From Judith’s approach, I am beginning to understand that “letting go” is not necessarily something we do. We let go through entering, inhabiting, and fully feeling the body. When we do this, we begin creating space within our bodies. We become more permeable. And then the trauma, the old patterns, and the wounds can start moving and flowing on their own. Because this is how life works. Everything in life, in nature, moves. Everything flows.

Another beautiful thing she said was how when we go deeply into the body, we begin to realize that the core of us can never be damaged in the way we fear. And from there, what has been held can start to loosen. The pain doesn’t need to be rejected or fought or “healed” in this aggressive sense. It can simply be allowed to move. This feels like such a profound way of understanding healing. And honestly, it also made me reflect on my own habits.

Because I noticed how often, in the face of painful interactions, my instinct has been to protect myself by creating some kind of energetic wall. If I know I’m entering a triggering environment, or if someone is angry, critical, or hurtful, my tendency is to guard. To shield. To imagine something around me so that their energy cannot get in and hurt me.

But I’m starting to wonder if sometimes what I thought was spiritual or energetic protection was also another form of contraction. Another way of bracing and leaving the body. Because when I guard in that way, I can feel how I tighten. I become less open, less alive, less breathable somehow.

And what I’m seeing now is there is a deeper way.

Instead of building a wall, I can come further into my body.

When something painful comes towards me—someone’s anger, harsh words or a life event—instead of bracing myself and putting up walls, I can become present in my body. I can let the energy come toward me. Fully feeling whatever is arising at the moment within my body, knowing that it cannot break me. Then let it pass through me.

That way, it doesn’t stay stuck in me. And that way, my own response of bracing, hardening, or tightening doesn’t get stuck within my body either.

I can feel it, and let it move through.

Not deny it, pretend it doesn’t hurt, spiritually bypass it, or collapse under it either.

Just feel it, and let it pass.

This feels both softer and stronger to me. It feels more alive and more attuned to life, to our true nature.

Because I don’t actually want to become someone who is untouched by life. I don’t think that is the goal. I don’t want to be so protected that I stop feeling. What I want is to be here enough, rooted enough, alive enough in my body, that I can feel deeply without becoming imprisoned by what I feel.

I believe this is what true resilience is: Not becoming impenetrable, but becoming permeable.

And when I really sit with that, it feels like nature itself teaches this all the time. Life is movement. Breath moves. Water moves. Emotions move. Energy moves. Everything in a healthy living system is flowing. It is when things become stuck, shut down, frozen, or over-controlled that suffering deepens.

But of course, this is only possible when we remember that our essence, can never truly be damaged. Because if we carry the belief that we are going to be permanently harmed, damaged, or destined to pain and suffering because of our experiences then it becomes hard, almost impossible, not to brace. Doesn’t it?

If we change our perspective and remember that our core can never be damaged, something shifts. Yes, people can hurt us. Yes our hearts can get broken. Yes, we can feel pain, sadness, grief, rage. But if we remember who we are beneath all of these—our eternity—then we can fully feel these emotions without the fear that they will forever damage us.

And through fully feeling them, they can move through us. Like clouds passing in the sky.

We need to remember that we are the Sky.

So we can finally start living fully and openly.

Trusting that if we stay present, embodied and open, life can move through us without destroying us.

And so, after all, the body was never in the way.

It was the doorway the whole time.