Dictionaries often define the soul as an intangible quality within, an essence of your life force energy. It is a highly critical component of your being, without which, if not properly nourished, understood, or responded to, can create mental or physical illness and possibly even death.
In 1907 in an effort to prove a material existence of the soul in the body, Dr. Duncan MacDougall of Haverville, Massachusetts, USA, did an experiment and weighed 6 patients during the various stages of their terminal illness. He weighed each body before, during & immediately at the point of death. He reported a measurement about three quarter’s of an ounce or 21.3 grams, as the consciousness, the soul essence, left the body.
The soul has a direct inter-relationship with thought, words, will, emotions, feelings and action. We can’t see it or touch it as by its very nature, it is invisible. It is the glue that holds us together and also fuels the life force energy of our aliveness & vitality. It is reflected in our being as an emotional, animating & passionate aspect. Music, art, poetry all capture the emotional, right brain, more feminine aspect AND our soul nature.
For instance, ‘soul’ music, cries out in a deep longing, that has a common, underlying emotional moan of suffering with an enormous range of expression of sounds to capture a melancholic, universal, collective feeling of love or the loss of love. This inner moaning is our soul, calling us home, stirred, aching deeply in the cracked, broken and wounded recesses within all of us.
Soul [Music] for example is based on certain musical techniques including – Soul Shouting, Call & Response and Melissma (the ability to bend a word over several notes)
“King James (Cleveland) is master of all the vocal devices of black singing – syllables stretched over many, many notes, falsetto glisses, bent notes, torn notes, excited shouts, and the changing sonorities and textures manipulated by blues and jazz singers” (The World of Soul, by Arnold Shaw, P.244)
I call my work, Building Soul, as I believe that working to integrate the messages of wisdom of your body with your mind awareness can teach you how to interpret your true life force soul essence. The range of all that you are can be seen as a beautiful symphony of expressions from the dark, melancholic or places of pain, grief or loss to the expansive and joyful places of celebrating all that you can be in your fullest expressions of vitality.
Working gently with courage to be attentive to these darker places allows you to make space for the light to enter into those cracks of the soul and become embodied into the soul life source of your being. Our soul wounds are our teachers and can be transformed into golden nuggets of deep body wisdom. What cracks have you discovered that have shown you a new light into your own soul essence?
Let’s talk Soul Talk!! To learn more about Soul Wound Wisdom, come and try out my Saturday afternoon $10 seminars on Body Wisdom this Sat Oct 12, 2013, Calming Chaos Sat Nov 2, 2013 or Soul Talk Sat Nov 23, 2013.
I’d love your feedback. Feel free to leave a link back to your own blog too.
Ingrid
“If we fail to nourish our souls, they wither, and without soul, life ceases to have meaning…. The creative process shrivels in the absence of continual dialogue with the soul. And creativity is what makes life worth living.”
Marion Woodman