Pushing Boundaries


Firstly I’m not talking about “The Ashes” when I talk about pushing boundaries. I’m referring to our personal boundaries.  I’ve been doing a few things recently that have been challenging on an emotional level.

When I started this shamanic journey I sort of excepted that change was going to be part of it.  Indeed I was desperate for change. I had tried a mixture of coaching and hypnotherapy which hadn’t fundamentally met changed the deeper me, just given me a structure to look at the superficial stuff. Now I find there is so much change that I sometimes struggle to feel grounded and know where I am (physically and emotionally). I have been allowing myself to be led much more by Spirit.  I have fought against this – or at least my ego has. But when I finally let go and do what I’m asked to do the results are profound. Here is just one story about this.

On Monday I started a process of getting tattooed that has affected me deeply.  The tattoos will change how others see me but what i didn’t expect was how much it was going to change how I see myself.  I have never been particularly confident in how I look. This comes from being bullied at school for being fat. I have always felt that my body wasn’t perfect and dissociated from it. As I started the shamanic work, I found that i wanted to spend more time outside in nature and going running was a good way for me to do this.  This has led to some fat loss. The next step was to cut out sugar which was becoming an addiction, this has led to more fat loss.  So i felt better about myself but would never call myself “beautiful”.

Now the concept of getting tattooed has fascinated me for over a year. It first came up when I started the practitioner course.  I have journeyed on it many times, it came up again in response to soul retrieval work. I have spent a lot of time on google looking at shamanic aspects of tattooing.  One of the things that has come out of this is tattoo medicine – the concept that the shaman would place a tattoo to make the healing stick. For me the main issue has been fear.  It is something that is permanent but also an expression of self. I have always been scared of expressing fully who I am – an aspect of surprising my sexuality for many, many years. Following a soul retrieval, about 6 months ago, I got a clear message to get a tattoo for the purpose of making the release of fear stick. My response was more fear but the feelings would not go away so over time I’ve pursued it more.

When looking for a tattoo artist, I wanted to find someone whose tattoos moved me.  It’s a bit difficult to explain but to me many tattoos just sit there and don’t engage with the observer.  I was looking for something that was a work of art in itself. Eventually I found one (artist website here). I left it for a while, came back and again felt very different about these tattoos than any others that I saw. The challenge was / is that these tattoos are not for the faint hearted, they are immense beautiful creations.

So I had my first session. It was an emotional roller coaster. Firstly standing in front of a mirror for a couple of hours whilst being drawn on was weird. It is the longest time I have ever stood in front of a mirror. Yet during that period of time I began to accept how I looked and appreciate my own beauty. Once the drawing was done I had the opportunity to just be with it, look in the mirror and to move with it.  I was struck by how much it moved with me, indeed I was in awe of the interplay between the way I moved and it moved. Then came the pain – wow did it hurt. I thought I was OK with pain but no. I can only describe it as feeling like a drawing pin is stuck deep in to you and being pulled over your skin. Once that part was done, came the euphoria. Partly from the relief that the pain had stopped but also from how it now looked.  Here was this beauty, this awesomeness that was now part of me.

Now a few days later I am still struck my how fantastic it looks. I look at myself and see beauty. Interestingly not just where the tattoo is but the whole of me. Part of me wonders if I am dismorphic in the way I needed to change the way i look to feel better about myself. But this has been a revelation rather than a small adjustment.  I’m also struck by how this has been led by Spirit – I, on my own would never have done this. For me, this is about accepting the journey that I am on and letting go of judgement. To some extent letting go of ego so that I may become more of who I am.  I am so glad that I followed where I was led, where my heart was leading. Now I feel more able to accept my own beauty and how the shamanic path is integral to this beauty. The integration of nature with in is now both metaphorical and literal.

Pushing boundaries, for me is letting go of the boundary. It’s me / my ego that has set the limit.  I’m very grateful that working with Spirit has enabled me to start letting go of my own limits. Who knows where this will go?

 

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