Move Your Spirituality: Transforming Symbols into Embodied Knowing

A question I’ve been exploring for most of my life is: what changes when we move our spirituality, or let movement become our spiritual practice? In this essay I offer some characteristics of a moving spirituality that I explored in my PhD and later in my book Dancing in the Muddy Temple: A Moving Spirituality of Land and Body.

Movement is about Connection & Transformation

First of all, movement adds a different language for encountering the sacred. It’s not just ‘sitting still and emptying the mind’, or ‘dancing ecstatically’ (did you know that ecstasy means something like ‘having the god within’?).

Instead, it is a way of searching for and communicating with the layers of the seen and unseen world.… Recently I even start to see it as a way of encountering the mystery in the space between, between objects, emotions and thoughts.

Movement strengthens an immanent (instead of transcendent) spirituality that is expressed in our living, breathing body. Instead of still form mediation while the mind travels, movement mobilises our spine, (called the ‘Hollow Bone’ in some traditions), to enable receiving divine wisdom. Instead of consciousness travelling outward, beyond the corporeality of the body, we draw it in, and ‘wake up’ inside this interior reality where we are a spirit in a body. That way, we can experience the divine with literally just a movement away.

Movement also offers a way of ‘transforming’ states on the plains of the body, heart, mind and consciousness. A simple breathing exercise or repetitive gesture can help to transform different emotions. It’s like we are giving clear ‘direction’ to meditation in this way, by gently swaying from side to side, or calming our mental activity with a grounding movement from up to down. The combination of moving the spine in conjunction with conscious breathing seems to reset the nervous system more effectively than anything I know. 

Movement as a Way of Knowing

Movement also gives us access to different ways of knowing. Rather than working with a dual awareness of consciousness as being either online or offline, awake or asleep, consciousness spans a wide spectrum of states.

This includes states we naturally experience a few times every day, such as the different sleep states of deep and REM sleep, as well as the states just before falling asleep and waking up. But unless you’re a lucid dreamer, in which you can actively perform your movement practice in your sleep, let’s focus on the waking states with different brain waves throughout the day.

Apha waves allow for relaxed wakefulness, receptive awareness, meditative and imaginary perception. Beta waves are associated with focused, task oriented attention and analytical thinking, while Gamma is an even further intensified and highlight integrated state of perception.

Movement seems to be able to create a fluidity in our range of consciousness, in both ways, to up and calm the energy. In terms of spirituality, consciously entering an alpha state enables easier access to intuition, inner knowing, and the language of symbols.

Inviting Symbols Into the Body

Let’s have a closer look at how movement can turn symbols into embodied experience. I am still ‘in awe’ of what happened last week, when watching Janet Rudolphs’s event with the SheSpeaks! Ensemble. This project gives empowered voice to the women of the bible, including Eve, Naamah, Miriam and Zipporah. Janet’s symbolic language always strikes a deep chord inside me. As I watched the various power women being enacted through story, voice and props, the symbolic language started to speak through my body.

I felt Eve’s snake friends moving with their belly close to the earth, sensitive to vibration and temperature through their skin and forked tongue. As they slithered up the tree of life, a sinuous movement unfurled through my spine. The Tree of Life whispered to me of roots deep down in the earth, from my torso-trunk, while branches were extending high into the cosmos. Primordial waters became ebb and flow, and the unique drop dissolving back into the ocean of Qi, becoming one again. Seeds held their potent magic in my reproductive centre, even if I no longer have a womb. My heart became the drum, and a way to hear the voice of god…

Right after Janet’s session I taught my regular Qi Gong class, and the symbols just flowed over from SheSpeaks! into SheMoves (with a wink and tongue in cheek!). With permission from Janet, I’ve opened this class to you in my Qi Studio membership.

Watch and Practise: Eve, The Snake & The Tree of Life (also about Namaah, Miriam and Zipporah)

You can also access it on YouTube if you prefer. This is a spontaneous, lived example of what I mean with moving your spirituality, and I would love to hear in the comments if this resonates with you too!

Move the Cosmic Egg, Move the Snake, Move the Mother…

Texts, words, emotions, symbols, existential questions, they awaken something different when we invite them into the body. Instead of reading about, or listening to the snake as a symbol of transformation, let your spine become the snake as the kundalini energy that is coiled up at the base of the spine. Discover the inside of the cosmic egg shell that holds all the nutrients for your growth and keeps you safe, in movement. Nurture the Tree of Life in your body with your roots going deep down into the life-giving soil, your torso as flexible trunk that sways on the wind, and your arms connecting to the wisdom of the universe.

Qi Gong is an excellent practice for exploring simple movements that invite imagination and contemplation, and I’m sure you’ll be surprised at the responsiveness of your body, and the deep wisdom you carry within. Let your body become both the wave and the ocean…

If this speaks to you at all, I’d love to invite you to the next Goddess Qi Gong course that is starting on October 13th (registration closes October 10th). You’ll explore the symbols, transitions, powers of 9 different archetypes through posture, movement and conscious direction of energy. Call on the power of the Warrior in your legs, to set clear and firm boundaries. Let the Queen lead from a centred heart-space, and ask the Crone help you with discernment at moments of choice.

Here is a short trailer video – with 3 Crone movement examples at the end! This way, archetypes and the divine feminine grow beyond ideas and beliefs, into something we recognise in our cells. That somehow makes it so much ‘easier’ to implement intentions into action (but that’s another part of my PhD thesis!)…

Invitations

As usual, I have a few invitations for you for different connections and communities…

If transformation is an ongoing process of coming home to who we truly are, these magical places help us to reveal and see with different eyes! If you are Ritual Curious, let me know via this free sign up, and I’ll keep you posted of coming events! In the meantime, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this essay…

Small print & further inspiration

Janet Rudolph SheSpeaks Eve’s Script

Janet Rudolph’s YouTube Collection of SheSpeaks

Eline’s Related Substack posts:

• Nine Women Within You
• Archetypes in the Body
• Goddess Qi Gong
• Crone at the Crossroads (with link to 90 minute masterclass with a 30-minute crone movement routine!)

Bio

Her book Dancing in the Muddy Temple blends theory and practice in service of land, body, and spirit. Now leading Wild Soul Centre for Embodied Consciousness, she offers coaching and courses to support deep transformation and inner strength through movement and the body. Try out her Qi Gong Membership for free! You can also find her on LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram and Substack.