A Year Alone: How Self-Intimacy Can Heal Your Soul

A Year Alone

The human body is at once marvelously complex and straightforwardly simple. Most of how it functions we can only hope to grasp intellectually yet a lot of how it functions, in a general way, is simple to grasp and that’s a blessing when it comes to understanding and working with the healing process, especially at an emotional and psychological level. Bodies, in all their magnificent inherent intelligence are essentially animals. Bodies do not trouble themselves with even a fraction of the sort of issues that distract us from really enjoying life. They breathe, they eat, they digest, they do many things, none of which you have to think about for even a moment because bodies do what they are designed to do and their natural tendency is to do that easily and effortlessly though disease and trauma of all sorts can interfere with that natural function, often for years, sometimes for a lifetime.

Picture Taken From: New Mexico State University

Abuse stays with a body. Oh to be sure, it stays with the mind and often with the heart, and certainly with the soul, but most powerfully and potently, it stays with the body because the body remembers everything that it sees, hears, tastes, touches and feels…everything. Your entire history, every part of it, right down to details you have no conscious memory of whatsoever, lives in the cellular consciousness of your body. If you’ve ever read up on hypnotism, you know this is true. Most of what your body knows, you don’t know. You only ‘know’ what you can consciously recall. That’s one reason why healing from abuse can be such a challenge, because if you are acting on what you think you know, therapizing around things you can ‘remember,’ you may be missing a lot. But time is on your side.

The body, in its functional simplicity and like any other animal, is keyed to the passage of time as experienced via the amount of light in a day, in other words, it is keyed to the passage of the seasons. Temperature changes and visual clues such as leaf growth on trees also play into the internal clock of the body but the most effectual factor is the light/dark cycle. It’s one reason why jet lag hits you so hard; it’s not just that you lose track of your sleep cycle, your body loses its place in solar time and becomes confused. Anniversaries take your body to a day where the light/dark cycle is just as it was when a given event occurred allowing the energy of that event to resonate deeply with your cellular consciousness. If the event was a traumatic one, you’ll feel it just as much – or more – than a celebratory event.

Now here’s the thing about most sexual abuse. It doesn’t usually happen just once. So for your body, anniversaries happen a lot. Even though you may have come to a blessed state of not constantly re-living the trauma, your body, at some level, does simply because it cannot do otherwise. Add to that the possibility that you are in an intimate relationship, one in which sex plays a role. Sex = sex to the body. The same places in the body are being stimulated by sex that is desired as by sex that was never wanted. Consequently your body, through no fault of your own, rather than releasing the trauma, tends to hold onto it.

As a massage therapist, (Ressurrection Graves), I have supported others in their journey to become comfortable with touch again. Muscles have memory, and often carry trauma in its memory.

You’ve no doubt heard about the law of attraction; it works. But what most people who talk about the law of attraction say about it, doesn’t work. One doesn’t attract to oneself what one thinks about…not consciously. You attract from the level of the cellular consciousness of your body. In other words, your body – not your mind – attracts to you that which comes into your life. Your mind, after all, is generated by your brain which is a part of your body. What comes into your mind consciously begins in your body, in your brain…but you cannot filter out the bad parts, they come along for the ride, even though you may not be aware of them and they can get in the way.

And that is why a year spent without intimate contact, a year spent ministering to your body, brings a healing that nothing else can match. A year off from intimate physical contact brings your body the opportunity to live 365 days, 52 weeks, 4 seasons knowing only its own essential integrity. And if during that time you treat it especially well you can begin to change its consciousness about what it can expect from life, thus your life can begin to change as you attract to you even more integrity.

Giving your body a year on its own allows therapy to gain a strong foothold, allows any healing in which you take part – spiritual, energetic or physical – to go deep, to truly cleanse. Giving your body a year on its own allows your soul a vacation like it’s never had and you will feel the difference. One year alone, one year of pure personal integrity, can change your life and bring to you a strong foundation on which you can then erect a temple of joy that is you.

Victoria Pendragon is providing a guest contribution to Love, Life and Relationships: Overcoming Emotional and Child Sexual Abuse. Her story first appeared in April 2012 when she was interviewed to teach us how she overcame child sexual abuse at the hands of family. She has a powerful story of personal transformation and family restoration, and I invite you to click here to read it.