In my own work and practice, I have come to understand the importance of coherence as the foundation and starting point of right action and alignment. What coherence means in this context is harmony of body, mind and heart that goes beyond nervous system regulation to system integration. We are 3 centered beings, each representing a different way of receiving, processing and expressing energy (or information). They are the mental center, the heart center and the moving/body center. We function optimally when all our centers work in harmony, in a state of coherence.
In our current societal context, the education that we are heir to leans heavily into mental center conditioning and reinforcement. Our mental capacity is brilliant and important of course, but we can easily teeter into imbalance without accessing our heart and body center processing and understanding. Our body center is the nervous system and our capacity to move in harmony with other sentient beings, to labor in this life, to receive and give nourishment and pleasure, to have and to hold. Our heart center qualitatively receives the field of energy in which we are part of, feels and reconciles it, and is our center of meaning, conscience and intuition. All different ways of ‘knowing’, each important to our healthy balance and function.
One of my teachers defines wisdom as ‘knowing with more of yourself’, in other words, a way knowing that arises from receiving and responding to a direct experience of life through all your centers. I like to think of it as our natural wisdom, which we have access to our through our embodied and integrated being. Natural, yes, but we aren’t always tuned into it, and it is not always reinforced by heady and linear cultural training and influences. It takes intention and practice, but we can train ourselves to be more balanced and coherent with simple practices, done consistently and regularly. Body/Mind modalities such as Yoga and TaiChi and Somatic meditations are all practices that can train our 3 centered balance and coherence. In my work, I share pathways to building coherence, and my practice handbook, Energy Intelligence, has lots of audio practices that can help you tune into and build coherence. You can access that on my site, or reach out to me here to find out more about coherence and accessing into your natural wisdom.