What is Your Soul?

Your Soul is the spark of fully living. 

I got that description from watching Disney Pixar’s movie Soul. It beautifully lays out the struggle to be fully alive and clearly states that the soul’s purpose is to live.

Your soul just wants to be alive and experience all of life

As a teen, I clearly remember sitting in Catholic Catechism classes and being handed a pamphlet that was titled The Existence of the Soul. The pamphlet said, When someone dies, the obvious difference is that what had been a living person now appears to be a lifeless body. Something seems to have departed the body and that something is the human soul.

From that moment on I became interested in the human soul. I sought explanations as to what the “soul” was. What caused my beautiful grandmother to go from the most alive, loving person I’d ever met to the still, cold body that lay in a casket.

What was it that left her? Where had her spark of life gone?

Along the way, I found some soul descriptions that helped me understand and to create a relationship with the mysterious, unexplainable part of myself, my human soul.  This spark of life I recognized in my beautiful grandmother and missed terribly when that spark disappeared from my life.

To help me live on through the grief of losing my grandmother’s unique, life force in my life… I found these words from Plotinus 205 AD.

Let the soul banish all that disturbs

Let the body that envelops it be still

And all the frettings of the body 

And all that surrounds it.

Let Earth and Sea and air be still

And Heaven itself.

And let the body think 

Of the spirit as streaming, pouring

Rushing and shining into it from 

All sides while it stands quiet.

In honor of my grandmother…

I began to live my life more fully and in doing so, I could feel my connection to her unique life force that I thought was missing but I sensed had transformed into spirit.

As I found that connection to my soul and the greater spirit, I appreciated this quote from psychologist and shamanic teacher, Christa Mackinnon.

It is our soul that provides us with a kind of inner voice, a moral compass and direction. It is our soul that we hear as this ‘little voice inside’ reminding us that there is more we can become, and it is our soul that suffers when we don’t nourish it by integrating a spiritual component into our lives and striving to give our lives meaning and purpose.

I have come to rely on that ‘little voice inside’ to guide me toward fully living and away from a life that feels dull or depressing like I am dying. When I feel fully alive I am connected to spirit. I am living from the spark of life.

My yoga journey led me to the soul description found in the ancient sacred Indian text known as the Bhagavad Gita:

The soul is never touched; it is immutable, all-pervading, calm, unshakable; it’s existence is eternal.

Connecting to that peaceful place inside of me that is always still has saved me when handed life’s challenges. I’ve come to realize that peace is joy in rest. It is my spark relaxing into the stillness of accepting all that life has to offer.

And if its existence is eternal. Then only the body dies, not the soul.

I love, love what George MacDonald said, “You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.”

One of my first yoga teachers, BKS Iyengar said, Your body is your temple, keep it pure and clean for the soul to reside in.

I know it is extremely important to start each day by moving my body to release the stress and tension. To open and connect to my soul and allow it to have a healthy space to live in.

I am happy when I take care of my body and being. Knowing this I have attempted to inspire others to move their bodies first thing every morning before they start their day.

I’ve witnessed the struggle to create the space to do a morning practice and I can relate to this quote by psychiatrist Carl Jung:

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul.

Don’t allow that to be you.

Take the time each day to clear your body/being of all toxicity. Move to release your tension and pain. Breathe that spark back into your life. And choose every day to live. Fully live.

This week’s Ageless Movement Soul Flow Movement Practice is the perfect place to start. Click here to check it out!

Are you choosing to be fully alive? Please share in the comments section below.