How to Use Body Work in Self-Realization

So I got a great question and it's about body work in healing and the question is why is the body so important in self-realization? So I've heard that to identify with my body is a problem and I've been doing a lot of body work but ultimately if I'm not my body then why is body work important? So the ultimate self-realization is to know the true self, is to know who you are and there's a lot of ways you can conceptualize that. It's the ultimate capital S true self. Who is that? There's also what is the authentic personality that I have which is another way to think about it but the the big capital S self that people talk about is this awareness, this sense of what is observing and what is aware of all these changes, maybe changes in the body over time, changes in the rules that I occupy in my life that maybe I identify with falsely. So why is the body so important in self-realization? If we're not a body ultimately why is it so important? Well the way I would say this is answer this is if we don't go through the body which is to go in and start doing body work and to feel into the body and all that entails the whole process of if it is a it's not really a process even but self-realization becomes a very intellectual endeavor you could say and you can't achieve self-realization or self-actualization in a book. You can't read about it. It's not conceptual. It has to be experienced. Directly it has to be known. So the body is particularly important in this because okay ultimately maybe I'm not a body that's what we have to find out for ourselves but in self-realization there has to be a point where we become less focused on the external world and all our roles and things we identify with and doing and being busy and all these external things and we start to look inward more to the source of all these experiences and it's in this going in that we will encounter the body. So you could say the body is important because the body is the passageway through which we do find the self capital S self and the healing in that is important because you know it's hard to come to be in that observer or to to rest in that awareness when the body screams at us you know traumas or any kind of emotion I've talked about many almost did the process that we go through there there's numbness there's fear there's there's guilt there's sense of abandonment all those emotions we will encounter those and those can be very active and of course another thing that we discover when we turn our external our focus from the external to the internal is how busy this can be how busy the mind can be preoccupied planning past future to-do lists everything else so those are really two of the things you could say that we we we start to watch the thinking mind more also when we turn inward but one of the things is to bring our awareness back in here it's to become aware of what's more intimate what's closer to home and the body is very close to home so really what we're talking about here is the message for for today is if it's not through the body that we're going to find self-realization or find the self it can only be true the mind and the mind can only conceptualize it can't experience it firsthand it can't really know anything it can think about it it can have opinions about it it can theorize about it it can even think it knows what the self is but until the self is contacted directly which only happens through the body that's all it'll ever be it'll only ever be intellectual now that's not to say that the mind isn't very important in healing the mind to to question the mind to observe and watch the mind is a very very important part of this very important part i typically think of working with the mind as more of a masculine modality and working with the body is more of a feminine modality that's not male and female now that's masculine and feminine so both of those modalities are very very important and have a place very important place and not one is not more important than the other but ultimately the body is something that has to be taken into consideration so it is through the body i'm working with the body and feeling into the body feeling the sensations feeling the emotions all those things and i mean all the bad ones we we like you know we're looking with we're looking at our fears we're looking at our there's something wrong with me the defective story coming into contact with those feeling them fully that's one of the ways that we will actually let them pass and go deeper and then we rest in a place where there is no conflict emotionally and what dawns on us is this stillness or this presence that is watching everything and has always been watching everything and been aware of everything and it's true that peace that we actually come peace in the body that we become aware of the real self so i guess what i'm advocating for here is work on the mind work on the body because it's true doing this that there are big goal of self realization finding the self experiencing the self knowing the self will be achieved so i hope that answers that question and uh you know keep looking inward engage with life fully step into a role that's necessary but take that time to step back into self-intimacy to look into me into the self and you will find the self but it's found through the body not by denial of the body