The spiritual community has an embodiment issue

Somewhere along the way, spirituality became almost entirely disconnected from the body.  We talk about frequency, consciousness and ascendance but we ignore the physical body, this rented meat suit that is carrying us through this experience.  This isn’t just a Southern Alabama problem; this is a problem throughout the majority of the spiritual community.

You open up Facebook, Instagram, TikTok… you are bombarded with ‘witchy influencers’ giving advice on how to raise your vibration or rattling off spells which are ultimately useless.  How many TikTok spells have actually worked for you the way you intended?  Without the mental gymnastics that you would have to go through to rationalize it.  The unpopular opinion pieces are often bullshit for clicks.

Over the last four years I have dove deep into the spiritual community in Southern Alabama; observing, participating.  It was eye opening, and wholly disappointing for the most part.  However, I did learn a metric shit ton about spirituality, reality vs expectation, and myself.  Some people will read this and totally get it; others will hate it - probably because they feel called out, others will not resonate with this at all because it has not been their experience.  Everyone will walk away from this with a different take.

Living here, I have trekked through the very depths of what is wrong with the spiritual community as a whole.

… Guys with zero accountability claiming they’re ‘living in the 5D’ while everyone around them pays their bills, manages their emotions, and cleans up the fallout.

… People with deep religious and family trauma who refuse to work through it “because it’s hard”

… Women post-breakup claiming to be in their ‘Lilith Phase’ when it’s really less empowerment and more avoidance wearing spiritual lipstick. 

… Altars are carefully curated to be magazine perfect without ever being used.

… People claiming warrior archetypes like The Morrigan while remaining deeply attached to victimhood (even after years of therapy).

Spirituality in the South feels more like a bunch of emo kids in the early 2000s who just found a Hot Topic.  All of the southern shock value and none, or at least very little, of the of the discipline to truly have a spiritual practice.

Trauma and dissociation are common in spiritual spaces

Triggers are useful.  They show us the things in our emotional and mental bodies that have created dis-ease and need to be addressed.  Instead, we’ve created a culture where everyone else is expected to manage another person’s emotional landscape for them. Rather than learning emotional regulation, many spaces encourage perpetual avoidance and outsource emotional responsibility onto the community.

Many folks step under the “pagan” umbrella carrying deep religious trauma while still holding a belief in a greater power or Divine Source.  They never fully unpack the fear, shame or hatred that was a result of that religious or authoritarian framework. They change the aesthetic but never address the root cause or the behaviours, thought patterns, beliefs and defense mechanisms that developed as a result of that trauma.  It is spiritual bypassing in one of its purest forms and often without the person realizing it.  Dissociation can feel profoundly spiritual because it mimics many of the phrases repeated endlessly by social media influencers.  Some of my favourites are:

“Everything happens for a reason…”

“If you can’t control it, don’t worry about it…”

“Good vibes only…”

While those sayings are true, in part, they leave out the part about doing the necessary work to grow.  Dissociation is not the same thing as acceptance… apathy is not non-attachment… passivity is not surrender… avoidance is not peace.  Acceptance, peace and non-attachment are things that you achieve from experiencing a situation then picking it apart, learning the lesson from it, the integrating that knowledge.  You can’t always control things, and you solve nothing by worrying about the things you can’t control.  You can however make choices and take steps to change the outcome or to lessen the impact.  Doing nothing is still a choice… you are choosing  to be a victim of life’s current when you do nothing.

Spirituality has become extremely head heavy.

Modern spirituality has a complete disregard for the human experience.  They forget that we chose to come here to experience things we only can fully experience as humans in the physical world.  The five physical senses - touch, smell, taste, sound, sight - are not things that we experience once we return to pure energy.  Emotions are the same.  There is no loss, no grief, no bliss, no love, no excitement or fear as pure energy… at least not in the same visceral, embodied way we experience them here.  We just return. 

But humans look at our humanity as something undesirable.  Instead of learning the full spectrum of our emotions and senses then embracing them, we focus on escapism. We turn to things that take us out of our bodies - we consume alcohol, take mind-altering substances to excesses, attend the cacao ceremonies, and get lost in doomscrolling and endless conversations about various theories. 

Modern spirituality priorities concepts and theory over practice, aesthetics over practicality, group identity over individuality and intellectual enlightenment.  At the same time, it neglects movement, strength, nourishment, sleep, nervous system regulation and physical & emotional resilience.  What we are left with are people who are exhausted, sedentary, inflamed, habitually triggered with overstimulated nervous systems.  The body has truly become an afterthought, and spirituality feels more like dissociation.  Many people are trying to spiritually ascend while being completely disconnected from the body experiencing the journey they signed up to come here for.

Your body is a part of your spiritual practice, not separate from it

I think a lot of modern spirituality suffers from a lack of embodiment. We’ve become obsessed with ascension, raising our frequency and transcendence while neglecting the actual physical vessel carrying us through the experience. While it’s not found in some of the more reconstructionist traditions, many pagans, spiritualists and witchy-adjacent folks believe in concepts like reincarnation, soul evolution, soul contracts and ancestral return; that we intentionally return here to learn, evolve and experience humanity and help further the growth of something… bigger. 

However somewhere along the way, we started treating the body like an inconvenient side quest instead of part of the practice itself.  As if it were some dense, primitive obstacle we need to transcend rather than something sacred that deserves love and respect. 

Our bodies are exhausted, inflamed, undernourished, overstimulated and deeply disconnected from the natural rhythms they evolved within. We spend hours sitting still, endlessly scrolling, absorbing outrage, fear and emotional noise while rarely allowing the nervous system genuine rest. Then, when we feel anxious, emotionally flooded or spiritually heavy, we label it “negative energy,” psychic attack or being an empath instead of acknowledging how profoundly dysregulated we have become.  I hate to break it to you, but you’re most likely not an empath.  Whenever someone came into the shop and started on how they don’t go outside because they are an empath and pick up everything from everyone, I just took a deep breath and let it go.  I’d wager it more likely a case of social anxiety due to being connected to their phone 24 hours a day.

Our bodies are not separate from spirituality… they are the foundation of it.  Like the very foundation.  When we talk about our intuition - we trust our gut; we feel our intuition.  It’s in our heart center that we feel unity and love and connection to others the feeling of brotherhood or sisterhood… it’s not something in the cosmos.  When your nervous system is regulated, you don’t react to things that happen as often… you respond.  You don’t get stuck in narrow minding thinking, you are able to see that there is more than one path, one answer that can be correct at the same time. 

You don’t need to smudge yourself.  You need to ground… and I don’t mean going outside and touching a tree or standing in the grass.  While those are helpful, I mean more along the lines of moving your body with intention.  Hydrating.  Sleeping.  Eliminating stimulants… try disconnecting from your phone for a week and see how you feel.  I would almost guarantee your stress levels would reduce significantly… and those ‘psychic attacks’?  They’ll stop.  Keep that screen time reduced for two or three weeks, and you will find that you are able to sink into some form of meditation.  Especially a moving meditation, like walking. 

Overstimulation and a lack of boundaries are often mistaken for being energetically sensitive.  When we stop looking at every uncomfortable feeling or emotion as spiritual warfare and start focusing on making sure that we are focusing on our physical and mental health, the spirituality comes more naturally.

For me, adding regular reiki, having a dedicated workout schedule, being sure I sleep enough and intentional disconnection from my phone have done more for my spiritual practice than full moon circles, sabbat rituals and tarot readings.  I got to know my body… now my intuition is not trying to yell over other inputs to get my attention.  When I get a feeling… I know it can be trusted because for the most part, I went from everything feeling like a ‘warning’ or a muddled message to knowing my energetic baseline so when there is a ‘yes!’ or a ‘hell no’ that comes through, I know that I can trust it.  With my nervous system quieted, my tarot readings became clearer, messages from guides in reiki became more distinct and revelations came through effortlessly with no heavy emotional backlash.

Working out reconnects me to myself.  It requires dedication, patience, and builds resilience physically and mentally.  Dedication is a form of devotion, and it brings a type of confidence in yourself which leads into releasing your ego and living from your own authentic place.  That honesty of embracing you will find your releasing parts of your identity that you see was more performative than authentic, to fit into a community you feared being rejected from because you don’t feel like you belonged anywhere else.

Ironically, after years of searching outside of me for a spiritual experience, chasing transcendence and escapism, I found a deeper and more honest connection to my spiritual self the more embodied and present I became in the physical.