There is a reason why spiritual teachers speak about "getting centered". Centering means gathering all of your scattered energies into the core - into the center of your body. This is how we gather energy and concentrate our life force so that we can evolve and grow forward in our life.

When our energies are "out" of your body they are usually trying to "get something" or fulfill a need. We all have many psychological parts of self - of our mind - that need to express themselves, be integrated and accepted and healed.

The center of yourself is who you are. It is where you can feel the unique flavor of your authentic self. You can start to move towards you core by gathering your energy inwards and becoming sensitive and present to the moment. We all have different ways of feeling when we feel all in one piece - when we feel integrated. Getting centered usually involves some way of concentrating your energy. For myself, it would be time in water and nature, engaging in the expressive arts and meditation. What do you do to gather or raise your spiritual energy?

Dissipating Energy Keeps you Small

How do you dissipate your energy? Each day we are either building our energy or dissipating our energy. Dissipating can include any way we try to "discharge" excess spiritual energy because it feels beyond our comfort zone. We can do this by behaviors such as eating too much, or judging and separating from others such as gossiping and talking negatively about other people behind their backs. We can play our emotional patterns of negativity over and over because it feels familiar and comfortable even if it is painful.

Releasing the Defenses to Openness in the Body

We also can literally close up our bodies to spiritual connection and openness. We unconsciously keep ourselves the defended and the same because it feels familiar. We all hold defensive attitudes in our bodies that block our connection to our core, authentic self such as cringing, defiance, hypervigilance ect. Psychotherapist Judith Blackstone author of The Enlightenment Process offers a way of releasing habitual body tension:

"Let your body move into the bound attitude. Really experience yourself in this attitude. You may find that parts of your body that you did not know were involved in the attitude move into the pattern of tension. Because the whole body is connected through the fascia, our bound patterns often involve a line of tension throughout our whole body.

When you feel the whole pattern of tension, try to attune to the consciousness that is holding that tension. Originally all of our binding was volitional, even though unconscious. The same part of your childhood mind that organized the contraction in your body is still preserved in the contraction. Try to experience the childhood mind that is holding the attitude that you experience in your body. You may experience the age that you were when you first formed this pattern. You may also experience the emotional content of the pattern.

As that childhood consciousness, you will be able to feel and discharge the bound emotion. The emotional release may occur as tears, or as the movement of energy through and out of your body. The emotion with have the quality of your age when it was bound in your body. For example the rage of a two year old will have a different quality than the age of the a six year old, or the age of an adult. You will also be able as the childhood consciousness, to let go of the physical tension, as simply as you relax you hand after making a fist.

This is not a method of regression in the usual sense of experiencing oneself entirely as a child. Our present day consciousness remains alert and witnesses the fragmented part of our consciousness, energy and body that is bound in the childhood memory."

Holding More Energy Builds Joy