Did you know….On average, 95% of what you think today, you also thought yesterday. One of the many ways that we are creatures of habit. You are what you repeatedly do…..think, believe, move, who you surround yourself with, etc. We are the amalgamation of every past moment. Yet, some past moments and some patterns seems to occasionally be quite loud, or dominating, or isolating. As if to narrow our sense of self into a tight or limited expression of what could be much more expansive, liberated and adaptive.
Anyone who suffers with intrusive thoughts or patterns of thinking that are infused with darkness or the weight of the world knows that thoughts can make us sick and thoughts can make us well.
We cannot change the past per se or decrease the trauma of events that were too fast, too soon, unjust, harmful or that lacked the support and resources for repair and rehabilitation. What we can change is how we think about the past and how we utilize our thinking and being power in general.
For example, little me. This is a photo I didn’t know existed until a couple of days ago. And it delights me to have this gift of a moment in time frozen in a photo, as a mirror for what had been frozen inside of me for many years afterwards. My younger brother was born on my fourth birthday, and we joke now as adults about my struggle to share my birthday with him, my birthday twin. This photo captures the moment I first met my brother at the hospital, after my birthday party was interrupted and cut short for his arrival. There are a lot of emotions expressed in this little one’s face, and looking at this I can sense in my body the memory of joy, sadness, frustration, and confusion. I sense it now with love and nurturance, whereas when I was not in relationship with my bodymind/soma, I struggled to understand or allow these sensations when I felt them.
There is “what happened” in the past or the pain point we struggle with, and then there are the patterns of behavior we develop to cope with that pain. The patterns of behavior are evoked by the nervous system state or neural platform that signals to seek safety and/or cope with varying degrees of activation, extreme energy conservation and/or numbing.
When we learn to listen and notice our nervous system expressing these discernable neural platforms, we can develop the ability to skillfully navigate in and out of each state and observe as we change how we perceive, relate, connect, listen, move, think and speak.
The practices within the Somatic Savvy series are opportunities to turn towards your soma (i.e. your bodymind) and offer repairing modes of reconnection so that what has been veiled and separated can be re-integrated. And the tension from holding can be released.
To experience the somatic realm more fully is to listen, feel and bare witness to the reactions and expressions of the body that arise in the form of sensations, feelings, emotions, movements (i.e., twitches, impulses to reach, stretch, roll, twist, shake, tremor, etc.), visuals and various other types of communication that generally skips conscious processing. The wise Maya Angelou expresses the importance of this work with her words: “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you.”
To be savvy in your soma is to be in the practice of understanding and utilizing your innate power to be in compassionate relationship with your self, which accompanies the ability to alter your own mood, physiology, emotions, beliefs and perspective. As well, through practices of reconnection we access a deeper knowing that we have always been connected and are far more interconnected than we may realize. Ultimately, this is a spiritual awakening within your body, a felt experience of remembering your divinity, while still honoring and embracing your humanness.
A process of learning how to turn towards your body, to awaken and nurture your aliveness, and come back into relationship with the parts of you that need validation, collaboration, love, support, and guidance. Echoed in the words of Indian yogi and mystic Sadhguru, “Self realization is a process of radical inclusion.”
Somatics is a pathway to embody your wholeness more fully.