Manifesting Tarot in the Body

People often ask me what my favorite part of tarot is.

I love all of it, but lately, it has become how I have to listen. Most of my formal training (MFA and BA as well as many times over a coach and guide and tutor) is in acting; the physical manifestation and embodiment of character. Bringing form to voices without bodies, to stories in need of a vessel. I have to admit I’m not terrible at it. I consider it a sort of sacred work, which is why I hold the narrative and story of tarot so near and dear to my heart. Most of why I love acting is in the listening. In how important it is to the work to be able to listen with your whole self; separately at first, as the heart will hear things in the script that brain won’t even touch, and the body will have impulses that scare the shit out of heart, but together they become ONE channel. One vessel.

Holistic listening is magic.

Depending on where you read, psychologists around the world have deduced that anywhere from 80-93% of communication is non verbal. Whichever side of that stat you stand on, that is a huge number. If that is true, we spend most of our time and energy trying to decipher messaging from the outside in; from the world to our vessel. But what about from our vessel to the world? What if we turned the lens back towards our own bodies? Trying to hear and see and feel the messages our own skin and bones and blood are desperately trying to communicate to us? And through us, what are we trying to communicate to the world?

To be a good actor, you need a certain level of willingness and courage to surrender to ‘the work.' Artists know this phrase intimately, and I’m sure if you have found your way to these words, you can also relate to your work being a sacred and important part of ‘the work.’ The work becomes all that matters. “The play’s the thing.” Hamlet says. Sub out ‘play’ for your calling and there you have it. We sacrifice our lives- financial, emotional, spiritual, political, sometimes familial or relationships- at the altar of ‘the work.’ Chasing the ever elusive yet intoxicating moments of being ‘dropped in,’ centered, channeled. The moments when you can no longer feel where you end and the character or spirit begins. ALL artists know this moment. Rilke’s ode to it in Letters to A Young Poet pulses with the utter need to surrender to craft (or kraft)…a manifesto to creating.

This obsession fills the body.

Mind blowing.
Heart pounding.
Gut wrenching.
Blood boiling.

You know the words. This is where tarot can step in as a messenger for this calling. We know the suits, much more intimately than we realize. We ARE the tarot, but so often when we approach it, either to learn or to be guided by it, we see it as separate.

In the same way an artist approaches a character or piece of music or canvas or blank page or lump of clay or marble or metal or earth, I’m inviting you to approach the tarot in the same way. With ALL your body aligned and activated, or at least with the intention that full alignment and activation is on the other side. It is a big and new journey to listen to ALL your brains- not just the one between your ears- to form a complete picture of your soul’s truth. The truth and message only YOU can share and channel, which makes it necessary and sacred.

A great deal of acting technique is rooted in psychology and movement practice. (Please note, not all and it’s not definitive, please reach out if you want to talk acting and the brain more)! This makes sense on a fundamental level as actors are essentially building a human from the emotions out, we’re learning to lend our vessel to a soul that is without one. One of the key players (again, from my experience) in this work- both spiritual and creative- is a Dutch psychologist named Bessel van der Kolk. (PS If this level of nerd-dom is your jam, his book is called The Body Keeps the Score and I cannot recommend it or him enough).

The way I approach character is the same way I’m offering an approach to tarot, combining a healthy dose of anatomy and neuroscience (because after all, we are in a human body) with the symbolism and triggering emotional nature of the deck.

Some quick and I promise palatable science! Last one!

There is a nerve that runs UNINTERRUPTED (in multiple directions) through your entire amazing body from top to tail called the Vagus nerve. It connects your brain to all your other mind/body centers. Head through throat to heart to lungs and stomach through intestines to (for those that have them) uterus. Essentially, science has given us the body connection to feed the connections between the suits of the tarot.

Swords for the Mind.
Cups for the Heart.
Wands for the Gut.
Pentacles for the Groin (or I sometimes refer to it as the blood).

As I practice the Tarot, I use this physical connection to help drop messages from Spirit into my readings to help me tune into where in the body I or my querent may be living in fear or deficit, and therefore might be blocking messaging. OR I use it for the reverse, where are you so dropped in you can open more safely and securely into messaging coming through for you or that need to be channeled out? Yes this is similar to chakra work, and I use that as well, but I want to emphasize that where I am focusing is in the body as a structure. In our response and connection with muscle and bone and mind/body centering. Not that energy is not crucial, but this is simply about reconnecting to bloody human bit of the vessel.

Many readers follow the idea that the tens lead into the ace of the next suit, which I use on a physical level with tarot when I read. Actors transition between body-mind centers all the time in order to safely drop into emotions that are not theirs, emotions that belong to character and therefore should be CAREFULLY allowed into the body. I think this sort of awareness and practice is a beautiful and powerful gift to give to mediums/tarot readers/witches of all kinds in order to activate various power centers or help to heal energy centers we may have contraction around. There is an element of shadow work in all tarot I believe, and I think offering a physical way to safely get in touch with (and even more safety get OUT of touch with) some of these shadow elements could truly benefit many of us.

As an example; The X of Swords becomes the Ace of Cups.
Just sit with the imagery for a second.

Ten swords, in your arms. Close your eyes and visualize them for a moment. The weight and the coldness of the metal. Are they sheathed? Or are you cut and bruised? How long have you been carrying them? Where did you pick them up? What did you put down in order to hold them? Ten Swords. That you have carried, so they must mean something to you…and yet, you lay them down in lieu of a single chalice.

What’s in it that makes it worth putting down all your swords? Why haven’t you picked it up before? Would you go back to holding those swords?

Even the moments it took to read that sentence allow for a meditation on moving into the heart space. It allows imagination and care and a deeply intimate and yet extremely fast physical relationship to the card to open us up to the possibilities of it. It allows the heart to say to the arms, “hold this instead” who then say to the brain, “this cup is refreshing. I don’t want to hold those anymore.” And now the card is in your body. And that means your whole body can help you combat that X of Swords energy the next time it rises.

It’s not a workout. It’s not a somatic experience, but it is INVITING the body to be a part of the reading. It’s reconnecting your vessel to your channel. Card by card. Piece by piece.

If we keep going with this instance, a constant reappearance of the X of Swords can offer that you might be ready or on the cusp of needing to drop into your heart space. It might be time for your heart to take the lead, give brain a break. Let heart and cups step into the foreground and make some decisions WITH you. This then can become a physical and replicable healing meditation for you around cards and suits that can move your intuition in a physical AND SAFE way. If we drop in to a physical reality with this card, we can start to remind ourselves when it pops up (or the feelings we can start to label as ten of swords energies pop up) to pause in our overthinking and move into the power of the heart. Where can we surrender to the COURAGE of stepping into Cups space and leaving that sword mind behind?

Of course this works both ways. In this example, we can also meditate backwards into Pentacles, into our Groin/Blood center (the center of NEED). Where is my power here? Where did I drop my power in order to pick up an extra sword? Can my anchored, blood and earth bound pentacle space move some of this fear out of my arms?

Even as you read it, imagine your posture changing, dropping into your strength and power, standing tall and OWNING your Pentacle, Groin, Earth need to be here.

As you are.

It’s power in its most basic form. Natural and connected to the body from the earth and back again. With nothing but your imagination and your channel.

This may feel technical for such an intuitive craft, but I see this (and offer it) as a language. This is our first language, the language of movement. It’s in your bones and the Tarot is a gorgeous and gentle way back into this connection with this emotionally and physically connected vocabulary. We are learning through symbolism and flow of the tarot to speak it all over again in order to communicate and work with our first ally and our home here; our vessel.

Trusting the heart or groin or gut to lead you is daunting at best as I cannot deny we live in an intellectual age. Swords have become the currency of the world (you can take that as you like).

So, yes. Some of this work will feel clunky and uncomfortable, because we have forgotten how (or are scared to) to honor our bodies as a vessel with more than one brain. But gut saves us every day. Groin connects us to the blood we came from and the blood of all who will come after (woah, worth honoring I’d say)! And heart…where do we even begin with heart?

We are more than swords! Not that I don’t love the mind. I so enjoy thought and intellect and analysis, but I also am in love with becoming more. The tarot would be nothing with only one suit. You need them all. You ARE them all. We speak the language of the body- more importantly YOUR body- fluently. You know it better than anyone, and I’m offering this approach as a chance to realign with the power of a vessel you can communicate fluidly with. It’s crucial for your brain to step back from the driver’s seat every so often, if only to let it rest! Let it have some road trip snacks and doze and dream and process while heart and gut take turns making decisions and driving you somewhere brain never thought you could go.

I promise that your tarot, and your soul, will be so happy you let them.