Why is Somatic Intelligence Important?
In today's world we are seeing crumbling values and a loss of our core as human beings. As we look around, many world leaders, but not all, don't set a good example anymore. They have stopped being role models we care to live up to. The problem is that seeing and feeling this change causes many to lose hope. We need hope to be happy and to feel a certain magic. Life is meant to be lived with a little 'je ne sais quoi.'
On top of this, we chase careers, fulfillment, owning a house, cars, raising kids and giving them a comfortable future, we want more and more, but with that more comes a sacrifice. We get addicted to the race, to the stress, to doing without knowing anymore how to stop. Does it really make us happy? Are we really satisfied with life? Do we know how to really enjoy the journey and not just the end goal?
In the consumer world of today we are focused on achieving, owning, immediate response and gratification. Enjoyment and pleasure are things reserved for times when we can stop and relax. We buy consume and discard our joy, satisfaction, leisure and pleasures. The bar keeps going higher and higher. The overload, the nonstop activities and tasks, the technological and media saturation and clutter, the ability to reach people immediately, all add up. As a result, all the indicators show that the dissatisfaction in life and at work are on a constant rise. But what happens when we cannot buy, when happiness depends a 100% on the emotional and social?
Cuba didn't follow society's trajectory, model of the Western World and capitalism. As such it became a case study and a human laboratory for alternative living, connecting and enjoying life. Due to the lack of material things for decades they evolved more on the emotional intelligence side. They hold social and emotional secrets that we crave in the Western World that they are connected to naturally through their bodies.
We live life like we are surviving it, yet there is a whole other way that we can live it, that we don't even know that exists right now. It's about passing on to people this unique knowledge before it disappears from this world, helping cultivate change agents in every culture, in families and in societies.
So what is this magic? What are its components? And can they be learned and can work anywhere?
There are 5 somatic elements that change the patterns of how we live life, giving it a unique flavor and giving us a solid core. Thinking of life as having a flavor helps us understand why when we lose our purpose we feel like life has gone tasteless.
In the past these elements used to just exist in us and were released naturally through our body movements, as we walked, talked, cooked etc. Due to technology's overload, chasing fulfillment and the fear of sexual harassment we have disconnected from these body movements. Today we need to bring awareness to them and relearn what we used to know but have somehow forgotten or perhaps never been taught.
On top of this, it was discovered in a research that only 4% of women feel beautiful nowadays. The self-worth and body-image have been injured by the media. Young girls see their moms chase Botox, surgery and constant diets. Most women cannot look themselves in the mirror in the eyes and love what they see. They mostly see flaws or signs of age which they reject. But if young girls are learning from their moms' body image and even from their grandmas', and they are not complete and satisfied with their own, then what are they learning? Role models chase staying younger and younger, avoiding aging. What happened to aging gracefully? Only the brave ones, like Alicia Keys, challenge the status quo of what makes us feel NOT beautiful and perfect just the way we are.
Looking closer at another issue, in the male business world, a wrong equation was formed over the years, where a woman that wants to succeed must be tough and competitive. If not, she would not be taken seriously and she would not reach the desired success. As a result, this kind of a hard shell was formed on top, and a talk about femininity as a weakness. Consequently many women started operating out of male energy which is tiring. Nowadays there are many women in business that don't know how to soften up and show their vulnerable intimate side anymore. But we must not lose touch with this part because we were always the balancing force in the equation. We have lost our roles a bit in today's world. We can absolutely be very feminine and at the same time super powerful and strong. But it requires of us to lead from a complete different place and to change our perception.
When we want to go for the next step in our success, we need to step up, to have more confidence than usual and to take a risk. This kind of confidence is not just an attitude but a body language that generates sturdiness. It can be super powerful and yet warm and soft. Which seems like an enigma to most at first. But it is not.
The 5 elements work on developing our somatic intelligence - teaching us the kind of skills we need to succeed in all areas of our lives. They calibrate back to our natural flow, getting us to use parts of ourselves that we don't know how to tap into anymore. This knowledge will meet each person at a different place based on their life stage, cultural identity and self-identity. If you were to take the same program twice, it's possible you'd get something completely different out of it each time. There are great benefits to studying the 5 elements.
As a final note, we can say that we stand no chance against the existing system but this system is made of us – individuals. So instead of caving to the pressures of society, let's change the status quo. We are born with the very tools we need in order to feel incredible. Owning our own power puts us in charge and gives us hope. These tools are physically innate in our bodies we just need to learn how to tap into them. This incredible knowledge will soon disappear from this world, and this will be the legacy we'll leave behind for future generations. Let's make sure we leave them something worth fighting for. Let me show you how to come back home to your body, to a magical place that you don't even know exists – dare to be uniquely you, and the magic will happen!