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Understanding The Five Messengers

by | Sep 1, 2022 | Nurturing Your Practice

Have you ever felt disconnected, flawed, incomplete, less than, or bound by time and space? These are the five messengers that come up for us all from time to time. Richard Miller, who’s pioneer work with PTSD and iRest is highlighted in various online yoga teacher training programs, describes the messengers as “natural processes within your body and mind that include your gut feelings, emotions, thoughts, and mental images. They supply you with internal feedback so that you can experience your wholeness.” Let’s have a look at how understanding the five messengers can facilitate a balanced experience.

Recognizing these messengers and welcoming them is the first step to moving forward and maybe experiencing the negative aspects of these thoughts, feelings, or emotions less frequently over time.  Acknowledging where they came from is another important step and helps us to untether from old belief systems that we may have perceived to be true because we were led to that belief. These messengers are universal and show up for everyone in some degree or form. Meditation training or 200-hour online yoga teacher training are beneficial ways to identify and work through these beliefs which are misunderstandings and reframe our reality. while working toward understanding the messengers. 

The messengers in Mindfulness Coaching can show in a positive or negative way. When they show up in a negative way, we can try to arrive at a state of simply being through practice and ask ourselves if the message is true. This can create space to reframe the understanding of the five messengers and explore without attaching any story to the process.  

  1. Bound by time and space can be reframed as spacious and timeless.
  2. Incomplete can be reframed as whole and complete just as I am.
  3. Less than can be reframed as I have everything I need. 
  4. Disconnection can be reframed as connected and whole.
  5. Flawed can be reframed as I feel perfect and whole.

When trying to understand the five messengers, your ego can also become involved in the process and interpret these messages sent out by the body in an attempt to protect you and like the rest of us, it is doing the best it can. The ego is the part of the mind that mediates between the conscious and the unconscious and is responsible for reality testing and a sense of personal identity. It has been with us for a lifetime and knows the situations that make us vulnerable using these past experiences as a basis for our reality. It has listened to our parents, media, world norms, bullies, etc. to determine how to keep us safe. These self-limiting beliefs have been projected and internalized. Michelle Young teaches us in her Mindfulness Coaching Certification that along the journey of understanding the five messengers, it benefits us to befriend the ego and welcome the aspect it shows up as when a situation arises as a step in understanding the truth about ourselves and the rest of the world regardless of past experiences giving us the ability to release our limiting beliefs and recognize our full potential. The ego may show up as an inner critic, and we can listen to what it has to say, reframe the message, and promote the inner critic aspect of the ego to inner counsel. 

What is really true? The only thing that is true is that you, and every other being, are a divine being in an experience. Everything else is a perception or a story. When we are ready to receive this message we are ready to let go of the limiting beliefs and judgments holding us back. We can even forgive ourselves for buying into the idea of the many limiting beliefs that try to define us. We are connected, complete and perfect just as we are. Identifying, recognizing, and understanding the messengers when they show up, reframing the message, and befriending the ego can help us remember and come back to our truth time and again. Check out your local yoga studio for free community events that foster mindfulness and uplift the collective consciousness. If you would like to book a 1:1 Mindfulness Coaching Session, book a free appointment with MVP!