Your body is made up of four bodies – physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual – and these bodies control how mentally and physically whole you are. They each control how complete you feel mentally and physically, which means it’s essential to take care of our entire self’s needs to be happy! So what are the Four Bodies?
Physical Body
What it is: Just as it sounds: Our skin and everything under the skin, the brain, the organs, and everything between the ears. It is the skeletal system, fascia, organs, blood, veins, and ligaments. We are often aware when our physical body is full, not hurt or in pain. We can recognize these signs by sight.
What it represents: Our physical experience in the world, our physiology, our ability to heal.
How the physical body should behave when balanced: When the physical body is in balance, we feel open and free from pain. We feel flexible and healthful, our vitamin and mineral elements are balanced, and we are free of pain, toxicity, and acidity.
How exactly can we bring our physical bodies into balance? Simple movements and slow, balanced repetitive sequences, meditation, walking, massage, yoga, and stretching exercises that let you feel the strength in your own body.
Emotional Body
What it is: AKA the path between the physical and the mental bodies. Our emotional body includes everything from our nervous system to our tears and our hormones! When unbalanced emotionally, we feel disconnected from others, irritable, jealous, stuck, and even stiff. Emotional body language affects not only how we feel but also the people around us. When our emotional selves are supported and fluid, it creates an environment where empathy can thrive; inclusivity brings everyone closer together while a generosity wave spreads love everywhere!
What it represents: Our feelings and relationship to all things. It includes the nervous system, hormones, touch, water release, and absorption. It defines our feelings and connection to all things. Such as how we react, interpret, and respond to situations and outside energies. When balanced, it represents centering and acting from your heart space. You can see that in how you feel when things are going well for yourself – calm yet energized at once!
How to bring the emotional into balance: We must start by allowing ourselves to feel the full depth of our emotions and then cycle those static feelings out. Anything that releases emotion, tension, stress, and anxiety. Something like meditation, cardio, or breathing techniques. Eventually, the emotional body comes into fantastic balance.
Mental Body
What it is: The mental body is where the seed of consciousness is embedded. Our thoughts, attitudes, judgments, and prejudices. It’s how we perceive our worth and value in the world.
What it represents: All things educational, including analytical thought, how we process information, and how we use our words. It also includes focus, clarity, and direction. It is a crucial element in how our thoughts become a reality.
How the mental body should behave when balanced: Assertive problem solving, straightforward communication, innovations coming into realization with clarity and ease. When our mental body is out of alignment, it can be described as foggy, unproductive, and generally just not right.
How to bring the mental into balance: Yoga, moderate cardio, and being in touch with your emotions and spirituality for balance.
Spiritual Body
What it is: Connection to the divine and all things, including earth. It connects us and our heritage from beyond this physical world we live in now. The element of connection can be found throughout life’s creations: people are always connected through their love for one another or themselves but never alone.
What it represents: The connection between human beings and the rest of creation. It’s our soul connecting us spiritually and physically (and emotionally) with everything around us.
How the spiritual body should behave when balanced: Calm, fearless, highly creative, and operating without limits—paired with the grit and support to create action from ideas. The spiritual body represents synthesis and balance- it’s very similar to the idea that we’re more than just physical beings; instead, there’s something far more significant at work here! We are greater than the sum of our parts. We all have the potential to become disconnected from our meta-physical body by not taking time for ritual, quiet, and more extraordinary symbiosis. This disconnect can manifest as loneliness, loss of intuition, inaction, and isolation.
How to bring the spiritual into balance: Meditation, meditation, meditation. Breathwork. Gratitude, humbleness, generosity, and the act of giving—see others as you see (or wish to see) yourself and act accordingly.
We all have the power to heal ourselves. By getting in touch with our four-faceted selves, we can begin to clear blocks we didn’t know we had. Mend past wounds and begin to clear your overall health will improve! While it’s important to take care of our physical bodies through activities like mindful movement and a well-rounded diet… it’s just as important to care for our spiritual bodies through positive affirmations + meditation — and our emotional and mental bodies too!
