When I left the church and Christianity, I turned my back on it all and was an atheist for years. I wanted nothing to do with religion or spirituality. But then something unexpected happened—I found my way to a newly emerging spirituality after reading Brian Swimme’s The Universe Story, a beautifully mythologized version of the Big Bang and the unfolding of the cosmos. It wasn’t just a story of the universe; it was my story. The elements in my body, the very substance of my being, had originated from that first explosion of creation. This wasn’t just an intellectual realization—it was something I felt. For the first time, spirituality became embodied. It wasn’t about doctrines or beliefs—it was about the truth of my physical connection to all that is.

My spirituality grew deeper when I started practicing yoga. As my body opened, my heart followed, and I remember it feeling like a gift. Moving through poses, breathing deeply, and feeling into the spaces where tension and resistance lived, I experienced a kind of knowing that had nothing to do with my mind. It was the gift of myself. Around the same time, I began gardening. Digging my hands into the soil, tuning into to the rhythms of and seasons of the earth, I began tuning into my own natural rhythm. I realized I was communing with something sacred. These were not abstract experiences—they were felt, lived, and embodied.

So much of spirituality is imagined as something ethereal, supernatural, or transcendent—something out there. But true spirituality is not found beyond us; it is found within. It is not an escape from the body, but a deeper inhabiting of it. We are divinity incarnate. Back then, that was a radical idea for me to accept, coming from a religious background where divinity belonged only to God. I remember how wrong it seemed—even blasphemous—to claim my own divinity. But leaving the structure of organized religion meant beginning the journey of discovering truth for myself. And yes, some of that truth arrived in the form of new beliefs and understandings, but those realizations did not come through logic alone. They arrived through my body first.

When you encounter a new spiritual teacher, idea, or wisdom tradition, it’s not just your mind that evaluates it—it’s your body. Have you ever felt an inexplicable resonance with certain teachings? Or a deep unease when something felt misaligned, even if you couldn’t explain why? That’s your body speaking. The body knows what the mind cannot always articulate. But most of us have been trained to live in our heads, disconnected from this inner guidance system. We override our instincts, rationalize away our discomfort, and dismiss bodily knowing as irrational. Yet, it is the most direct path to truth.

To walk a spiritual path is to get in touch with your body, to listen to its subtle wisdom. It means tuning in to the tension in your chest when something is off, the lightness in your heart when something is right, the gut feeling that tells you when to stay or go. It means being present with physical sensation, with breath, with the rhythms of expansion and contraction that mirror the universe itself.

Beyond the physical, there is an alchemical process that happens when we engage in deep inner work. The spiritual path is not just about belief—it is a transformation at the level of our energy, our DNA, our nervous system. The conditioned thoughts that run our lives in the background, the subconscious patterns we inherited from childhood, these are not who we truly are. They are responses to our environment, layers of programming that can be unraveled. And when we do the work of unlayering, of remembering our true nature, something profound happens: our bodies shift. As energetic beings, our frequency changes. This is not metaphorical—it is felt. It is real.

Spiritual growth is not just an expansion of the mind; it is an evolution of the whole being. It is something lived through the breath, through the heart, through the bones. It is not found in ideas alone, but in the way we move, in the way we hold ourselves, in the way we feel in our own skin. And as we change, the world around us changes too. When we become more embodied, more present, and more attuned to the wisdom within, we show up differently. We interact with others from a place of deeper truth. Our choices, our actions, and our very presence become a force of transformation—not just for ourselves, but for the collective. The more we heal and integrate within, the more we create space for healing and integration in the world around us.

So, if you are seeking spirituality, don’t look beyond yourself. Don’t seek transcendence at the expense of presence. Come back to your body. Breathe. Move. Feel. Let your body lead the way—because it already knows the way home.