Rebirth of the Body-Mind: Aligning with the Soul

Thanks to J. Guillermo Robayo Gómez for this wonderful photo.

In the process of caring for Geeti over the past weeks, something quiet but fundamental has been shifting in me. My inner compass is gently turning towards a more deeply peaceful way of being in the world.

In truth, this turning has been many years in the making. For a long time now, my life has been oriented toward the heart, service, love, devotion, and sincerity. And yet, I can feel something refining further — becoming simpler, more embodied, more inclusive of the nervous system and the rhythms of life.

My mind seems to have embraced this quite quickly. My body, emotions, and energy are still playing catch up.

So I’ve been sick this last week. A cold, deep fatigue, and a strong sense that something is shedding and reorienting. The intensity of the processing feels high at times — sometimes uncomfortable — but also purposeful.

What I’m noticing is that wherever there is pain or tension in the body, there are also thoughts. And many of those thoughts carry a familiar tone: you’re not good enough, you’re not ready, you don’t deserve this.

I started asking my body what belief is sitting underneath a sensation when it appears. Again and again, some version of that same message comes back.

It recently struck me that from around the age of twelve, I probably told my system tens of thousands of times that I’m not good enough, that I have to try harder, that I have to prove myself. Of course that leaves a mark. Of course that shapes a nervous system and a posture toward life.

I can trace much of this to my all-boys private high school — highly competitive, results pinned to walls, comparison everywhere, and a quiet atmosphere of: don’t get it wrong, or you’ll be humiliated. I learned to be quiet, to work very hard, to try to be “the best”, and to avoid giving anyone a reason to point or mock.

It worked, in a way. I became a “high achiever.” But it also wired stress, pressure, and self-doubt deeply into my system.

That pattern followed me into adult life as a musician. I compared myself constantly to others and usually came up short in my own eyes. Listening to great music was both a joy and a quiet torment: inspired and moved, and at the same time saying to myself I could never be that good.

My ambition was not just to make beautiful music, but to make the best music, because only then, somewhere in my unconscious logic, would I finally be safe, worthy, and beyond ridicule.

When I awakened in my late twenties, and bhakti and yoga entered my life, something genuinely profound shifted. My orientation turned toward love, truth, and service. And for the last decade, I’ve largely lived from that place.

Still, I can see now that the old “proving” pattern never fully disappeared. It lived alongside the new orientation — no longer running my life, but still shaping parts of my nervous system.

I can also see how that inner tension sometimes showed up as disharmony and dis-ease.

Now something feels like it is completing.

Not in a dramatic way — more like a long exhale. A gradual turning toward a way of living and creating that includes the body more fully, that listens more, that trusts life more, and that is less driven by comparison or the need to justify existence.

The fire to create is still here. The love for music, for teaching, and for offering something meaningful to the world is still here. But it is arising less from fear and deficiency, and more from love and listening.

An old operating system is slowly moving into obsolescence. Because it was installed through so many years of repetition, it is shutting down in its own time. The difference now is that these beliefs don’t really have anywhere to land anymore. The mind no longer agrees with them.

So when these beliefs arise in the body, they are allowed, felt, and they dissolve.

What’s been emerging is a way of living that includes the body instead of overriding it, a way of creating that listens instead of forces, and a way of moving in the world that trusts rather than competes.

It feels, in a very real sense, like a rebirth of the body-mind in service of the soul.