Muse of Somatic Belonging

champion of your freedom & earthly boundaries

DOMAIN: Structures & Actions
QUESTION: How do you experience freedom?
INVITATION: Sense your body and connect to the natural world.

Role of the Muse

Each of us has a relationship (conscious or not) with benevolent forces that inspire us toward wholeness. I’m naming these benevolent forces Muse. I’m calling the wholeness they inspire us toward belonging. Belonging, in my view, is fundamental to human creativity.

Whenever we’re disconnected from a felt sense of belonging—our wholeness—we have diminished access to our source of creativity. Consequently, our ability to creatively respond to life’s challenges is likewise diminished.

Since ancient times it’s been thought that a muse inspires or connects artists to their source of creativity. Try on the idea that you have at least three muses at work within you, connecting you to the creativity inherent in your belonging. The Somatic Muse coaxes you to sense your physical belonging. The Intimate Muse beckons you to feel your emotional belonging. The Social Muse helps you perceive your place in the world—what we will call mental belonging.

These Muses of Belonging speak to you most clearly through a triad of feelings that beseech you to create a renewed connection to the source of your creativity, your belonging. When you feel your belonging, your experience of life and your responses to life’s circumstances are more generative, compassionate, and inspired.

I’ll be introducing these Muses in three posts. This is the first of the trilogy…

Muse of Somatic Belonging

Your physical body, like Earth itself, feels solid and stable. This gives rise to your experience of being independent and autonomous—even though your body is a fluctuating network of interdependence.

Somatic Belonging is intrinsic to your biological existence. It’s experienced by fully inhabiting your body and exercising your freedom to act within the bounds of physical reality. Feelings of anger and irritation are somatic (bodily) protests, indicating a boundary is too tight, too loose, or needs to be honored.

Through a range of angry feelings, the Muse of Somatic Belonging urges you to attune to your body, to other bodies, and to the natural world you are woven into. This muse entices you to get in sync with physical reality, to fully experience your sensuous nature and to heed your body’s intelligence—which continually transmits information about your inner and outer worlds. When your physical channel is open, it enables you to adaptively and creatively respond to your inner and outer environment.

Things to consider when you feel angry:

• What boundary or limit is asking to be acknowledged, honored, or expanded?

• What happens when you focus on your breathing or pay attention to the rhythm of your pulse?

My Experience of the Muse of Somatic Belonging

In the low timbre of a big cat—part purr, part warning—she presents herself as the Muse of Somatic Belonging. Her telepathic messages vibrate my bones and belly:

“When you feel pleasure, you do so in resonance with me. When you honor your own boundaries, and those of others, you do so in solidarity with me. When mutual freedom is dishonored and limitations are disrespected, your body lets you know. Rumbles of anger, frustration, and irritation call you home, reminding you to sense your sacred body, to honor the sanctity of all bodies.

“Sense the life-force flowing through you. Notice how your body resonates with Earth. When you sense your kinship with all life, then do you feel related and free. This is belonging.”

As one who has suffered from debilitating self-reliance, countless initiatory experiences have persuaded me to relinquish the delusion that I must do everything myself. Necessity has been my instructor—repeatedly showing me that I’m not an island, and that true strength is shared strength.

Life has shown me the generative power and emancipation of embracing interdependence. This is the sweet relief in Somatic Belonging.

I’ve come to view anger, irritation, resentment, and feelings of indignation as messengers from the Muse of Somatic Belonging, reminding me to check in with my body and the bodies around me for unacknowledged or dishonored truths. It may be that I’m not admitting my own limits. It could be that a known or unknown boundary has been crossed. These “feeling-messengers” aren’t moralistic. They simply convey information. I am free to choose my response to that information.

As I see it, anger’s underlying message is always the same: Come home to your body. Wise action requires embodied presence. Your power and freedom exist in interdependence.

Suggested Exploration

Cultivate your own practice of connecting with Earth as a Sacred Element. You might try holding a stone, or digging your hands into soil, or caressing a tree. Try closing your eyes when you do these things and focus on your sensuous, tactile experience. Give yourself to the experience and notice what happens within and around you when you intentionally commune with Earth consciousness.

You might find that walking barefoot or lying on soft ground transmutes feelings of anger and rebalances your energy. The Earth element is stabilizing and nourishing. Let it redirect your attention to the simple pleasure of being in your body, and to the abundant beauty in all bodies of the natural world.

Next: Meet the Muse of Intimate Belonging