Do you want direct access to health & wellness? Want to understand your true being? Want to learn how to establish balance, integration and harmony in all parts of your life? Then you are in for a treat.
In this article, I share the Four Body System Model. It is a foundational model for balancing the four bodies of our energy body. That is, physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. When the four bodies are in balance:
- we have a clear pathway to health & wellness
- we understand our true being
- there is an exponential increase in our self-awareness
- we learn to respect & listen to each body without over-identifying with any one body
As a society, we tend to over-identify with our mental or physical body, at the detriment of other bodies.
The Four Body Model shows us how to balance and integrate all four layers of our energy body. Through the Four Body System, we can understand & experience the multidimensional components of our consciousness.
All humans have 4 separate energy bodies: Physical, Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Body.
Physical Body
The physical body is our most obvious aspect. It is the densest of all the bodies & hence, also visible to the naked eye. When you look in the mirror – it’s the body you see reflected
Our Physical body grows from the moment we are born, and it keeps growing until our very last breath. It needs minimal intervention for its growth because it is preprogrammed in our DNA.
The physical body mirrors the functioning of other bodies. E.g. if a person has a stomach issue, this usually has to do with some emotional imbalance. Headaches have to do with issues of control. Illness/ dysfunction is a sign that there is an imbalance somewhere & we need to pay attention.
In the description below, I have added a link to a book by Louise Hay titled, You Can Heal Your Life. In this book, she discussed different physical ailments and their energetic causes.
Practical ways to increase physical body awareness
- My first suggestion is to commit to things that support your physical body. These could be through nutrition, supplements, foods, cleanses & detox
- You can support your Physical body with exercises such as Yoga, Tai Chi, Running or any movement
- Breath work can be beneficial.
- And so is spending time in nature & getting enough sunlight.
- Non-invasive healing therapies & modalities like acupuncture, massages or chiropractic, can be supportive
- An easy way to bring awareness to the physical body is through sharing love & intimacy with others.
- In general, making your health your #1 priority will draw attention to your physical body.
Perhaps the best advice to increase your physical body awareness is to make your body your friend. Talk to your physical body like you’d talk to your best friend. Your body can communicate. It has innate intelligence. It will tell you exactly what it needs, provided you form that bond of trust with it.
Mental Body
The Mental Body is usually the most developed of all bodies. And this body helps us acquire new knowledge through intellectual pursuits & explorations. The 21st century education primarily focuses on the development of the mental body.
In today’s society, development of this body is encouraged & well compensated.
The Mental Body works best when we have a healthy physical body, a mature emotional body and a wise spiritual body. On its own, the mental body has no strength.
Our Mental body grows as long as we are learning new things. For example, a new graduate who is learning and upgrading his skill set will have a robust mental body.
A developed mental body is not necessarily better. What matters is how well it is integrated with other bodies.
Practical ways to develop mental body awareness
- My first recommendation is increasing your “witness” conscious awareness. In other words, becoming a Neutral Observer in your life. Being able to observe external events in your life without emotional shutting down.
- Actively working towards increasing mental focus. Getting rid of distractions. Reducing scattered thoughts & tendencies
- Identifying triggers & thoughts that take you off course.
- Make a list of things/situations/people that almost always bring you down. You start doubting yourself when you interact with them. Identifying them is half the work because when you can see something – then you can heal it.
- Staying connected & present in your physical body awareness as much as possible.
- Creating a set of tools that help you refocus mentally. Especially when feeling weak or frustrated or even depressed. This could be mantras or affirmations that you have at hand to gain rebalance & focus
- Training your brain to turn off at will is also a potent technique. That’s how we tap into the non-linear mind – which is the source of genius ideas, thoughts & even healing.
Emotional Body
The emotional body makes us sensitive to music, arts & dance. It is also the least developed of the four bodies. Especially in people who are mentally overactive.
When our emotional body is unstable, it’s as if being tossed around by our emotions. Or feel we can’t get off the emotional roller coaster rides
Not having emotions does not indicate a developed motional body. Neither is being uncontrollably emotional. We don’t want to be void of emotions, but rather feel deeply without letting our emotions rule us.
We need to feel to have empathy, love and care for ourselves and people around us. The Emotional body grows when you learn how to manage & master your emotions.
Practical steps to develop emotional body awareness
- Learn how to connect your emotional feelings. To be able to feel your emotions inside your body & connect them with your cognitive process.
- Learn to integrate your emotional self to connect into your physical and mental self.
- Learning to express what you are feeling in the now moment. For example, being able to identify & name the feelings as they are arising within you. When you can say, I am feeling angry, or sad, frustrated as you are experiencing them.
- Learning to express your emotions without becoming stuck or over identifying with them. A lot of time we get stuck in anger or guilt. What we need to learn is to be able to see the emotion, name it, acknowledge it & let it be. Being able to say, I am feeling shame vs I am shame.
- Identify the source of your negative thoughts & emotions. Being able to identify the source of causation is half the work.
- Committing to removing and clearing all unproductive or damaging thought patterns. For this, you’ll need to clear your fears, limitations, insecurities.
- Identifying all emotional conflicts, bring them to surface awareness and resolve them. When people repress their emotional conflicts, it creates emotional blocks. When the emotional blocks go unaddressed, they start weighing down the emotional body.
- Eliminating dross, such as guilt, obligation and emotional vampires from your life. Eliminating all emotional drama or any person who feeds into this type of relating.
A signpost of having a developed emotional body is: when you feel deeply and only respond from a position of calmness, with a balanced core and wisdom.
Spiritual Body
It is through our spiritual body that we connect to God, the divine & our higher self. Through this body, we can experience we are inter-connectedness of all things. The spiritual body encompasses all other bodies. If our other three bodies are not developed, our spiritual body will suffer.
This layer has little to do with religion or culture – but rather it’s about your connection with the spirit. When you tap into your intuition & trust it, you are strengthening your spiritual body. Active imagination is a by-product of a robust spiritual body.
The spiritual body grows to the extent you spend time connecting with God and your Higher Power. And the health of this layer will depend on your initial conditioning and the culture you grew up in.
The hallmark of a developed spiritual body is wisdom.
Practical ways to develop spiritual body awareness
- A good place to start is studying the law of one practice. I will put some links in the description for you to explore.
- Using mediation as a tool to quiet your mind so that you experience inner peace with all things.
Resolving conflicts in your relationship to self & God/Source/Universe. Making a spiritual commitment that you will be a knower of god source. That you will know god as a direct experience rather than through any intermediary.
The four bodies are interconnected
The four bodies are interconnected, and they help & support one another. As an example, if our mental and physical bodies are developed, but our emotional body is not developed, then our spiritual body will be held back. Because it is our wisdom that guides our other bodies into further development. Without wisdom, the mental body will go astray.
Without wisdom, the emotional body will not know when to restrain itself from explosive outbursts. The knowledge of what food to eat to better our physical health is an example of our mental body supporting the physical body. Likewise, our physical body helps the mental body deal with stress through exercise.
All four bodies are interconnected. So if you want to improve your EQ, we can’t focus on the emotional body in isolation.
Use the Four Bodies Model as a foundation for healing
Once you start working with the four body model, you will start embodying your innate wisdom. Disease results when there is an imbalance between the four bodies.
Anytime you feel unwell, start discerning which layer your pain is stemming from. And you need to do to heal it. That’s the gift in this knowledge.
Summary
- We have four separate energy bodies, Physical, Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Body.
- The mental body is usually the most developed body and the Emotional body, least developed.
- The four bodies are interconnected. If you want to develop your Emotional Intelligence, then work with all four bodies.
Video
If you are a visual learner, then you’ll enjoy the following video on the Four Bodies. Scroll down on the page to watch the video on the Four Bodies.