If you want to learn how you handle boundaries, your body has the answers.
This is part of a series exploring the seven lower Sephirot (spheres) of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. These spheres are the seven core emotions that drive human interaction.
This week we have been exploring the sephirah of Gevurah, the strength of restraint, boundaries, and restrictions.
life lives through body
integrate and ground concepts
through daily practice
Life is an embodied experience.
All the theory and information “out there” does nothing for us if we can’t apply it in our day-to-day experience.
What you know is not what’s in your notebooks or digital repositories. Its not what you read in a book or heard on a podcast or learned in an online course. It’s what you do without reference to your notes.
Turning Concepts Into Practical Action
The sphere of Yesod is where information turns into knowledge, where we implement to integrate, where we turn esoteric theory into grounded practice.
Yesod is the realm of manifestation, putting ideas into form.
At Yesod, we take the esoteric ideas and make them practical, by translating concepts into actions that can be practiced.
This is the sphere of embodiment, of turning what we’ve learned into what we know, what we do, and who we are.
It is the sphere of integration, which is the foundation for integrity.
- How are you integrating the concepts into your life?
- How are you taking the concepts from above and funneling them into your being?
- How are you turning this conceptual information into embodied knowledge?
- How are you walking your talk, practicing what you preach, or at least what you learn?
From this angle, Yesod of Gevurah is about looking at how you are putting the nuances of Gevurah into practice.
Your Embodied Experience
The embodied experience isn’t only about turning concepts into practical actions. It’s also about how these concepts show up in your body — the vehicle of your lived experience.
All emotions and experiences live in the body. Even if we no longer recall events, our bodies remember.
Each sphere shows up in the body in some way, creating an embodied experience.
The Posture and Movement of Gevurah
Gevurah is perhaps the easiest to feel in the body because its manifestation is often not subtle.
A rigid and stiff body indicates a rigid approach to creating space and setting boundaries. A body that is hyper flexible often indicates challenges with boundaries.
When we are holding back in some way we can feel it in the body. Feeling “stuck” or “paralyzed” are descriptions of physical conditions.
- Where are you feeling stiff or fluid?
- Where is your body rigid and where is it hyper mobile?
These are clues to which aspects of Gevurah need attunement.
Mastery Requires Embodiment
This concept of embodiment ties directly to the next sphere of Malchut — mastery or sovereignty.
The information you learn is of no value unless you are able to incorporate it and use it in your life.
The only way to achieve mastery of any concept is to embody it; to put it into practice.
Without the embodiment step of yesod, there is no hope of malchut.
[…] Pisces takes the shape of its surroundings, absorbing the emotions of its environment. Its lack of boundaries can make it particularly susceptible to being infected by other peoples’ energies, which can […]