Episode 7: - How to Listen Deeply to your Body to Create Healing Magic

with Charlie merton

On the Secret Witch Show today, we have the wonderful Charlie Merton. Charlie began teaching yoga in 2011 after a decade of self-practice. Since then, her style has evolved into a slow, creative hatha and breath-based flow practice. She offers a unique combination of integral practices in which people chant, breath, move and relax deeply into their bodies. She has a Masters in Music Psychotherapy and is certified in various yogic disciplines such as Sivananda, Yin, Restorative yoga, Yoga nidra, pranayama, Kundalini and Tantra, as well as being a certified crystal and sound therapist. She runs her own yoga practice in London and also enjoys playing her many gongs.

We dived into a *lot* in this show - from how we can be so disconnected from our bodies via trauma that we can’t create healing magic, to how our bodies are a beautiful guidance system to be nurtured, that are simply inviting us to listen in. Enjoy!

What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

We can become very disconnected from our bodies in our trauma, and this leads us to dissociate and go away to some other planet. It’s a defense mechanism - a way of checking out - and it’s common, often, especially when we feel *everything* so very deeply.

We can tell what’s *for us* and what’s *not* from the sensations in our body - often we ignore these, but even still, we *know* on a deep Soul level - we just often ignore it. This might show up as us “asking for permission” for what’s really aligned for us - e.g. Charlie shared her own unique experience of wanting permission from her parents to not get married - because we are so used to people pleasing - and often don’t have enough faith in our own power.
If we don’t listen to our bodies, we will pay the price through the manifestation of dis-ease in the body - for example, being unable to breathe, suffering panic attacks and unpleasant sensations and illness - and even accidents that may “wake us up” - and crack us open
At any point, though, we can begin again to learn to tune in and listen with our Body Guidance System - our heart compass - and trust our Soul’s instincts to be able to feel into different things in life.
The way to listening in is really unique and individual, but we can begin to openly, lovingly and curiously listen to sensation as a messenger about the mystery of ourselves! A good question to ask is: “how is my body responding to this?” - and we can ask this question of everything - including whether we are following our Soul’s path.
We need to create safety for ourselves to feel everything - digesting our emotions is a practice - and emotional intelligence is a skill for life! Bringing our awareness to basic level sensation is a powerful practice to create autonomy with our nervous system, and we get better at feeling - and welcoming all feelings - and working to our edge.

Resources and things that we spoke about: