When asking the question: "What does it mean to be alive?" Our response may be to experience the world, or to breathe, or to fulfill our desires, but I have come to learn that the most important aspect of being alive is this body. This may seem simple, probably obvious that the body is what keeps us alive, but our body is alive-- our body is life. Without this body, there is no world to experience, no breath, no desires to fulfill. Our body has a function to heal and restore so that we have the capacity to live our daily lives to our highest potential. The limit of that potential differs from person to person depending on their individual circumstances. I remember once leaving an acupuncture appointment reminded that the body’s natural state is calm, relaxed, and at ease. I remember a feeling of awe wash over me as I thought about how we have normalized being accustomed to feeling unsafe or in constant fight or flight, to the point that I couldn’t realize my body’s way of trying to communicate to me about the state of my health, whether that be physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual. Our body is always communicating with us, it shakes while doing difficult exercises, shivers when it’s cold, backs away from someone or a situation that makes us uncomfortable before we can even realize we are. These subtle notions are our body’s will to survive and its response to being alive. Our body remembers our past and responds to situations in accordance to those memories. Our body may not be able to recall the events of a particular situation but it will respond based on the emotions we’ve associated with them. When we're up at 3am embarrassed or ashamed about something that happened in middle school, what we're experiencing is our mind's ability to manipulate a situation to match the emotions we associate with that memory. Oftentimes, our memory is faulty. We’re not actually recalling what occurred at that event, but what supports our feelings about it. We continue to carry that event with us because we continue to carry the emotions associated with it. If the same thing that happened in middle school were to happen now, it most likely wouldn’t lead to a shameful or embarrassing memory. This is because we grow, learn, and mature. So what seemed like the most difficult lesson for us at one point of our lives, a few years down the line probably won’t hold the same difficulty. What does not change, is the feelings we associate with it and the only way to release those feelings is to face them and release them. So, if we change the feeling associated with that memory, the memory itself has the potential to change. Our body is what stores our emotions or "energy in emotion" and when those emotions are suppressed or not felt through, when that energy is not longer in motion, they become stagnant and can manifest into physical problems or repeated cycles because our body can’t differentiate that the feeling it’s experiencing isn’t happening in reality, but simply a memory of a feeling that hasn’t been released. A key to understanding ourselves is understanding our body. Grounding into our experience and tuning into the language of our body allows us to access parts of ourselves that cannot be manipulated through thought alone. This is why when we slow our body down enough that our emotional baggage becomes obvious, a response may be to find a distraction, at least until our body has some form of a breakdown and cannot be ignored any longer. Addressing our body’s desire to heal through learning its communication patterns, supports our needs on a physical and emotional level, aiding our ability to address our trauma. Our body, the vessel that supports us on a biological, emotional level may need healing, but we are simply experiencing life through ways of growth. The body may heal, but the human grows. To need healing means that we have wounds that require our care and attention. To identify with healing can become an attachment to our wounds, subconsciously making it difficult to actually find supportive ways to let go of what no longer supports us. We may have wounds, but to be attached to associating as a wounded individual can be halt to the process of healing itself. Our journey with understanding our health and wellness is about figuring out our personal relationship to balance and what that looks like for us. Our environment, diet, the social circles we surround ourselves in, our focus on our basic needs: rest, care, nutrition, shelter are always teetering on a scale. We are constantly evolving and changing, and our body adapts to those changes. What resonates with us now, may not in a matter of time so adjusting to what restoration and balance looks like at the time is how we can properly care for the life we are living.