What if the wisdom you seek isn’t beyond you, but within you—woven into the very fabric of your body, waiting to be heard?

Early Kabbalists taught about an essential correspondence between the human form and the metaphysical structure of existence. The 16th-century mystic Rabbi Moshe Cordovero describes how each part of the human body mirrors aspects of the Divine and aligns with the Sephirot. These spiritual manifestations, elements of the kabbalistic Tree of Life, are also considered parts of the body of God. Within each of us, says Cordovero, lie hidden limbs that can be awakened. The right hand embodies Hesed (loving-kindness), the left hand is Gevurah (discipline and strength), and so forth. To Cordovero, using our bodies for holy purposes—acts of generosity, restraint, contemplation, and in broad terms living a life of mitzvot—allows us, limb by limb, to become vessels for subtle and vital divine energy. [1]

Centuries later, the Hasidic masters expanded on this idea in practical ways. For example, Reb Menahem Nahum of Chernobyl (1730 - 1798, often referred to as the Me’or Eynayim after the name of his Torah commentary) teaches that the essence of the Torah is not only to be found in its written form, but in all things. Every rock, tree, and drop of water bears divine presence, and so too does the human form. Just beneath the surface of our physical selves, there is a radiant spiritual light yearning to reveal itself. [2] 

In many different sermons, the Me’or Eynayim lays out the principle that everything we encounter and experience can be traced back to its spiritual root (i.e. one of the Sephirot). For example, he teaches that if we approach our worldly fears with a posture of trust (emunah) and an openness to discovering the Divine (da’at), we can move from conventional fear into the subtle realm of yir’ah: fear/awe of the Infinite. [3] 

Though the Me’or Eynayim is often quite sparing in specific spiritual practices beyond prayer and the intention of connection-through-action itself, he articulates a transformation path in which fear of a natural phenomenon could be meditated upon to lead us to encountering underlying dimensions of God’s manifested Self. In his own words:

Divine wisdom beyond our grasp decreed that it is impossible to come to total and pure fear/awe [yir’ah] without there being something awakening our physical selves to this quality. Therefore the manifestation of higher yir’ah extended and self-limited into humble, material reality, all the way until the place where a physical human could be awakened to it.

This is because the yir’ah had to be dressed in something material like us. For example, all the fears of external things… Once fear has fallen upon us we can then begin to have awe of the Creator, to take this yir’ah out from its contracted state and bring it upwards to its root. 

This approach applies to any experience and all the midot [the lower seven and most accessible Sephirot]: fear leads to awe (gevurah); lust leads to Divine love (hesed); pride in self leads to pride in the beauty of the Creator (tiferet) and so on. This approach of discovering Sephirot through the everyday, says the Me’or Eynayim, is a  central way for us humans to lift up “fallen sparks” of holiness hidden in the physical realm—including the sensations and feelings in our nervous systems.

When we learn to listen to our bodies with awareness, we can encounter something profound: the divine presence manifesting within us. Of course, there are often many layers to journey through before we may be graced with a palpable connection to the Ineffable. Though no two paths are the same, for many people the first step begins with connecting to our physical bodies with the inner sense of touch. The connection of emotions or “feelings” to physical sensations often comes next. After that unprocessed material such as repressed memories, traumas, and the like may arise and thus present the opportunity to be worked with. At some point on this path—and there is really no predicting when—we may start to discover that there is hidden light within ourselves which is expressed as simultaneously transcendent yet embodied experiences. The ideal orientation is for us to set the stage for a visit from the Sacred through the refining of our body-mind-spirit vehicle. We can never force this connection but sometimes the miraculous occurs and we are blessed by the touch of the Divine. 

Somatic Introspection: A Modern Parallel

Contemporary somatic [body-based] practices have emerged from the worlds of psychology, philosophy, and global spirituality over the last century. Broadly speaking, methods such as Somatic Experiencing, Haikomi, Somatic Psychology, and the Diamond Approach utilize physical sensations and body movements as a route to healing our minds by illuminating hidden feelings, memories, intuitions, and wisdom. As approaches to inner growth, they sometimes share overlapping perspectives with earlier mystical insights, though there are many differences as well. Having said that, since many Jewish mystical sources do not go into depth on the methods for attaining the kind of transformation they describe, these modern body-based modalities grant us the possibility of experiencing the growth and transcendence that our ancestors pointed towards. 

One such method simply called “Focusing” was developed by Jewish philosopher Eugene Gendlin (1926-2017). [4] Focusing teaches that the body holds wisdom just beneath conscious awareness, offering guidance in the form of sensations, images, and emotions if we listen and feel into it. Gendlin’s earliest encounter with the body’s wisdom was as a child when his family was fleeing Nazi-occupied Austria. He observed his father making crucial decisions based on a deep intuitive sense that he felt in his chest—what some might call listening to the soul through the body.

In my own spiritual counseling work, I have witnessed the power of this approach many times. Rather than share a single example, the following story is a composite of multiple experiences I have observed: 

A client, let’s call “Amy,” had already spent a considerable number of hours familiarizing herself with the practice and benefits of somatic introspection. She came into a session feeling overwhelming anxiety stemming from family dynamics. After several minutes of talking, I invited her to shift her attention inward. She closed her eyes, took deep breaths, and noticed an intense tightness in her chest. Slowly and with some guidance, Amy felt into that painful area and described a cold, pea-sized point with rippling circles extending outward. As she stayed with the sensation, an image surfaced—a pot of water. At first, this seemed random, but it soon evoked a childhood memory of similar family struggles with her mother. Amy recognized her mood as the playing-out of a cyclical pattern going back generations, surely a residue from old trauma. Connecting her present emotions to the past allowed her to gain insight into what was truly at play. Simply understanding that her adult scenario was a repeated pattern from her childhood and indeed her parents’ own upbringings gave her helpful distance from the anxiety itself. The insight and clarity on her situation, that fundamental glimpse of light in her nervous situation, allowed her feelings to start to shift. 

Often that is all it takes as a catalyst: grasping the reality of what’s going on, even at a basic level. As Amy’s awareness deepened, the tightness in her chest softened. Amy also began to feel a shift in her mood as she found new perspectives on the issue that had been causing her anxiety.

Then, something extraordinary happened. As she deepened into her somatic experience, the sensation in her chest moved beyond her normal emotional range. Amy encountered something more subtle, something that felt “from beyond.” She described the feeling as love, but not ordinary love—an expansive, illuminated sensation that filled her entire being, radiating out from the center of her chest. In that moment, she felt a connection to something greater than her personal experience, to the Divine itself. 

In our embodied and kabbalistic approach, we can recognize these magical moments as encounters with the Sephirot, in this case with Hesed, divine love. We begin with what is tangible—often pain or tension—and by staying with it, we may access not only deeper psychological material, but something transcendent as well. There is no telling what Sephirah will emerge from our meditations, it’s truly an adventure. Regardless of the above-cited teachings of the Me’or Eynayim, there is no telling if our experience of fear will lead to Yir’ah or if our experience of lust will lead to Hesed. In my experience as both a practitioner and guide in somatic introspection, the intention is to be as radically open and curious as possible, and to let the organic intelligence of the body lead us to where we need to be. If we have emunah in our own physical selves coupled with skillful methods, we are almost never led astray.

In fact, Rebbe Nachman of Breslov (1772-1810) teaches that one must treat the body with care precisely because the soul communicates through it. [5] If the body is unhealthy, tense, or neglected, the messages of the soul become difficult to hear.

This principle is deeply relevant to body-based spiritual work. If we are disconnected from our physical selves—whether through stress, numbness, or neglect—we may struggle to access inner wisdom. However, when we care for our bodies and listen attentively to their signals, we create space for spiritual insight to emerge. The Torah’s wisdom is not merely intellectual; it is something we can feel, sense, and experience directly through our being if we care for ourselves and cultivate the right conditions.

Embodied Wisdom: Integrating Mysticism

and Practice

The Jewish mystical tradition provides us with a framework for understanding how the body can serve as a spiritual vessel and somatic introspection enables us to enact these teachings in real time. 

Cordovero’s teachings on the body as a vehicle and analog for the Sephirot, the Me’or Eynayim’s vision of divine presence within all things, and Rebbe Nachman’s emphasis on bodily well-being all point to the same truth: the body is not separate from spirituality. It is, in fact, a key to unlocking radiant, holy light and making contact with the Infinite Self. Whether through Focusing or other body-based inquiry methods, we move beyond abstract concepts into direct experience. We come to know—rather than merely believe—that the divine is present within us.

For those seeking a deeper spiritual path, the invitation is clear: turn inward, listen, and discover that the divine sparks are within you, just waiting to be revealed.