The Body Is A Portal
“My INTENTION is to connect with my intuitive knowing, to support my mind, body and soul. I give myself the time and space to listen within, I focus on self-care and balance, and if needed, get outside support”
The Portal to Good Health, created by Keri Goldsmid of Bali Mama. Throughout July, this portal was chosen more than any other by visitors to The Portal Place.
Hiya Traveller,
Throughout July, one portal kept choosing us back.
Of all the Intention Portals selected by people visiting The Portal Place, Good Health appeared more than any other.
When a pattern repeats, I pay attention. Although each of us walks a unique path, we are often moving through similar seasons beneath the surface. Sharing what we are learning reminds us that we are rarely as alone as we sometimes feel.
Good Health appearing again and again felt like an invitation—not to chase perfect health or treat the body as another problem requiring a solution, but to return to the relationship we have with it.
Good health is not a destination we reach once and keep forever. It is a relationship—built through curiosity, care and learning to listen to the incredible body we already have.
Last month, I wrote about A Return to the Heart. This month, we follow that same thread into the body—the vessel through which we experience, sense and respond to life.
The Body Is Always Communicating
For many years, I searched for answers outside myself. Books, workshops, psychology, spirituality, meditation, breathwork, dance, Ayurveda, tarot and archetypes, astrology, and nervous-system research backed by the scientific methods… and I keep learning and exploring more. They have all offered something valuable. Yet no matter where I began, each path eventually led me back to the same place: The body.
This one body, the vessel that contains our essence, our spirit. The vehicle that I am that connects me to all that is.
I have come to believe that the body is not simply carrying us through life. It is communicating with us every day through energy, tension, fatigue, discomfort, appetite, movement, sensation, emotion and intuition. Sometimes it whispers. Sometimes it interrupts. Sometimes it refuses to keep following the pace or direction the mind has chosen.
Learning to listen does not mean interpreting every sensation as a spiritual message or attempting to diagnose ourselves. It means developing a more curious and compassionate relationship with our physical experience. Instead of immediately asking, How do I fix this?, we might begin with:
What am I noticing? What might my body need? Is there a small, supportive response available to me today?
This is also where my current study is meeting my personal journey. In my Bachelor of Psychological Sciences, I am studying the biology of the brain, behaviour, sensation, perception and the nervous system. I find it fascinating that we do not simply receive the world exactly as it is. The brain interprets incoming information through our biology, previous experiences, attention, expectations and values.
Our perceptions are real experiences, but they are also constructed experiences. This helps me approach the body with more curiosity and less judgement.
The Four Domains of Resilience
One of the central frameworks in my work comes from HeartMath’s four interconnected domains of resilience:
Physical: flexibility, endurance and strength
Emotional: self-regulation, emotional flexibility, outlook and supportive relationships
Mental: attention, focus, flexibility and the ability to consider different perspectives
Spiritual: connection with intuition, values, meaning and respect for the beliefs of others
HeartMath describes resilience as our capacity to prepare for, recover from and adapt to stress, adversity, trauma or challenge. It also teaches that resilience can be strengthened by using our energy more effectively across these four domains.
The Four Domains of Resilience—physical, emotional, mental and spiritual—with coherence at the centre. Adapted with acknowledgement from the HeartMath Institute. Explore the research and Science of the Heart resource.
Although the Portal to Good Health brings our attention to the physical domain, none of these domains exists in isolation.
In my own experience, the emotional domain often speaks first. When emotions remain unacknowledged or our inner resources become depleted, the effects can spill into the body, our thinking and our connection to meaning and purpose. Equally, when the body is exhausted, undernourished or in pain, it can become much harder to regulate emotion, think clearly or remain connected to what matters.
This is why everything I teach eventually returns to the heart.
Heart-focused breathing gives us a place to pause and begin creating greater coherence between the heart, brain, body and emotions. It is not a way of bypassing difficult feelings. It creates enough space to meet our experience with greater care and to choose the next supportive response.
We do not need to transform every domain at once. We can begin with one small act that helps replenish rather than further deplete our available energy.
Over the coming months, I will explore these domains individually before returning once again to the emotional domain and the heart at the centre.
The nervous system, gut and our inner senses
The body is not separate from the mind. The gut–brain axis is one example of this two-way communication, connecting the gastrointestinal and central nervous systems.
Most of the body’s serotonin is produced or stored in the gastrointestinal system, where it performs important digestive and physiological roles. This does not mean gut serotonin simply travels into the brain and creates happiness, but it does remind us that mood, sleep, vitality and cognition do not occur in isolation from the body.
For me, this growing understanding adds another layer to the practice of listening.
What happens when we notice how particular foods, environments, relationships, rhythms and routines affect our energy? What changes when we become curious about hunger, rest, digestion, overstimulation and movement without turning that curiosity into shame or rigid control?
Listening to the body is not the same as obeying every craving or sensation without reflection. It is about including physical information in the conversation.
I sometimes call this intuitive information part of our soul senses. There are eleven that I currently recognise and work with, and I will explore those more deeply next month. For now, it is enough to notice that intuitive knowing does not always arrive as a clear thought. It may first appear as a feeling, image, physical response, internal sound, sudden recognition or subtle shift in energy.
The more present we become in the body, the more clearly we may recognise our own signals—and distinguish them from fear, habit, conditioning or someone else’s expectations.
Where I Turn To Return To My Body
This is not intended to be a complete wellness prescription. It is a living collection of practitioners, creators and practices that have supported me at different points in my journey—and which I often find myself recommending to clients.
Some are people whose wider work I follow. Others are particular free practices that I return to when I need help becoming present in my body again. This is also a resource for my future self: a place I can revisit when I forget what has supported me before.
Somatic relaxation and nervous-system support
The Workout Witch — 21-Minute Full Body Relaxation
A gentle somatic relaxation practice I return to when my body is holding tension and I need support to slow down and reconnect. All of the short form videos on this channel will reiterate the importance of somatic practises, find what resonates, commit, and allow the emotional release when it arrives, because trust me, it will.
Jules Horn - Mindful Movemend
One of the practitioners and creators whose work I follow and regularly recommend as part of exploring embodiment, presence and a deeper relationship with the body. I highly recommend practising “The Silent Scream” to release resentment and anger in the jaw.
Self-Love EFT Tapping — Rewire Your Mind
The Emotional Freedom Technique is a self guided somatic tapping and can offer a structured way to acknowledge thoughts and feelings while engaging the body through rhythmic tapping. This self-love practice is a useful place to begin. I have written my own personal scripts that speak to the situations or thoughts I am working on rewriting and highly recommend you do the same if this works for you.
Movement, yoga and Qigong
Yoga with Adrienne - Morning Yoga Playlist
Adriennes mission is to connect as many people as possible through high-quality free yoga videos. She welcome all levels, all bodies, all genders, all souls! This is a collection of accessible morning practices for gently bringing movement, breath and awareness into the beginning of the day, and you can find a free class for almost anything and any part of your body you want to work on.
Morning Qigong — Stretching and Strengthening the Back and Spine
A short whole-body Qigong routine that can support gentle movement and reconnection without requiring an intense workout. While I am currently working with a local practitioner I have returned to this recording many times.
Dance Meditation
Sometimes returning to the body does not need instructions or analysis. For nearly 2 decades I practices choreographed latin ballroom dancing and it is still alive within me, but it is not the same kind of expression I speak to here. Music and unstructured movement can help us experience the body as expressive, alive and free. Make it yours, let this be a personal exploration of movement, listen to your body, let it lead you.
Sound, breath and grounding
Om So Hum Mantra by Meditative Mind
So Hum is often translated as “I am that.” I return to this mantra as a reminder of breath, presence and our connection with something larger than the thinking mind. This particular recording evokes a collective chior and a reconnection to our collective consciousness. We are all connected.
Eight-Chakra Grounding Sound Bath
A short sound practice for the moments when stillness and vibration feel more accessible than words. Not all sound healing is created equal, and your unique sensitivity to vibrational frequencies is a journey in itself. I am so grateful to have found the Chakra Vibrations channel and I choose these sound baths before any other when I invite sound into my soul as a practise.
The Earthing Movie
This freely available documentary explores the practice and proposed benefits of connecting the body directly with the earth. I recommend it primarily as an invitation to remember something very simple: stepping outside, feeling the ground beneath us and allowing nature to become part of our practice. As with any health documentary, I encourage you to remain curious and discerning about its scientific claims.
Practices supporting my own journey
Alongside these resources, I have personally returned to the ancient wisdom of Ayurveda, acupuncture, massage, yoga, breathwork, Tai Chi and Qigong, EFT tapping, journalling, meditation, walking and simply spending time barefoot outside. Poppy and I have found our favourite trees in the rainforest that seem to speak to us, when we make time to listen. (On that, if you have a curiosity to explore more, this book is a must read)
No single practice has been the answer to everything. Different seasons have required different forms of support.
The common thread is relationship: practices that help me notice myself, meet myself and respond to myself with greater care.
The relationship works both ways
The relationship with our body also includes the thoughts we repeatedly think and where we place our attention. Our focus shapes what we notice, how we interpret our experiences and the possibilities we can imagine.
Dr Joe Dispenza often speaks about waking with a vision of the future rather than allowing the familiar past to become the blueprint for another day. His books and his community’s Stories of Transformation continually invite me to remain curious about our untapped potential.
When I look at the Portal to Good Health, I can almost hear the cells of my body exclaiming in joy—like a choir of regeneration. For me, that response matters. The relationship travels both ways: we speak and listen, give and receive, influence and are influenced.
Louise Hay’s work was one of my earliest introductions to the relationship between thoughts, emotions and the body. I have returned many times to this Louise Hay reference list, not as a diagnostic tool or reason to blame ourselves for illness, but as an invitation to listen more deeply. Her book You Can Heal Your Life and Annette Noontil’s The Body Is the Barometer of the Soul offer further places to explore.
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk is also on my recommended reading list. So many people I know have their own lived experience and interpretation of how the body “keeps the score”—another reminder that our bodies hold stories as unique as the journeys we have travelled.
There is no single correct teacher, practice or pathway—and no one is completing this journey more perfectly than anyone else. As Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey reminds us, mentors may offer tools, but only we can walk our path. His invitation to “follow your bliss” cannot be prescribed by somebody else.
There is no rush, the journey is the destination. We are each learning the language of our own vessel—and I love hearing about the different practices that help others find their way home.
A moment after my first Ayurvedic detox treatment many years ago—a reminder of how deeply the body can respond when it is given permission to receive care.
The Invitation
August carries several symbolic thresholds, including the Lion’s Gate Portal on 8 August, a total solar eclipse on 12 August and a partial lunar eclipse on 27–28 August. Whether you engage with these events astrologically, spiritually or simply as markers in the natural cycle of time, they can offer a meaningful prompt to slow down and become more intentional.
The purpose is not to fear intensified energy or surrender our agency to astrology. It is to remember that human beings live within cycles: light and dark, activity and rest, beginnings and endings, expansion and integration.
When life feels heightened, grounding may look very ordinary:
Eating something nourishing
Drinking clean water
Resting before complete exhaustion
Walking or stretching, and dancing!
Feeling your feet against the ground
Lengthening your breath
Asking for appropriate professional or personal support
Keeping one small promise to your body
This month’s Portal to Good Health Collective Tarot Reading offers another reflective pathway into this theme.
The Queen of Cups invites compassionate listening. The Eight of Cups asks where we may need to move away from something that no longer supports our vitality. Across the four weeks, the Emperor, the Lovers, Knight of Wands and Five of Pentacles speak about creating supportive structure, choosing from self-love, responding to interruption and recognising where we may have been leaving ourselves outside our own care.
The invitation is simple: Listen compassionately to the body. Step towards what supports vitality. Choose one workable structure—and practise it for seven days. As someone recently suggested to me and I have taken in fully, you can “ask your body to participate.”
Watch the August Month Ahead: Portal to Good Health—a collective tarot reading about compassionate listening, supportive structure and keeping one small promise to your body.
Take the reading with you
I have created an August Collective Tarot Integration Report as a gentle companion to the recording. It brings together the cards, weekly themes, reflection questions and practical prompts so you can return to the message throughout the month.
Make it personal
If you would like to explore what is unfolding in your own life, you are welcome to book a personal tarot reading with me—online or at The Portal Place in Kuranda.
A small practice for the journey
Place one hand over your heart and allow your breath to become a little slower and deeper.
Imagine the breath moving in and out through the heart or chest area. Then ask…
What is one small act of care my body would genuinely welcome today?
Listen without forcing an answer. Notice the first quiet response.
You do not need to rebuild your whole life in one month. You do not need to perform perfect health.
Begin with one relationship, one choice and one small act of care.
Your body is not an obstacle standing between you and your purpose.
Your body is the portal through which your purpose becomes lived, experienced and actualised.
This article shares my personal experience, reflective practices and resources I have found useful. It is not medical or psychological advice and is not intended to diagnose or treat a health condition. Please seek support from an appropriately qualified healthcare professional when needed.
The Good Health Intention Portal and accompanying artwork were created by Keri Goldsmid of Bali Mama. The Domains of Resilience framework is adapted from the HeartMath Institute’s Science of the Heart research.