On Being in my Body
The most common form of "healing" in traditional therapy is the top-down approach to healing.
The top-down approach is precisely what it sounds like – focusing on one’s mind-set, beliefs, the psyche in order to harmonize and navigate life’s challenges. Highly effective approach, yet not the ONLY way….
In recent years, somatic therapy has become an incredibly popular therapeutic technique, which emphasizes the Down-Up approach, which is a body-nervous system first approach towards building inner-coherence and healing.
If there has been one thing I've learned in my studies and life-experience is it that:
YOUR BODY IS A MAP, BLUEPRINT, EXTRAORDINARY TEMPLATE, AND GUIDE THAT IS CONSISTENTLY AVAILABLE, PRESENT, AND SPACINESS IN NATURE.
The body's soul job is to KEEP US SAFE, digest, assimilate, and integrate experiences, emotions, and thoughts without you even needing to know...
SO, why not let the body do its job?
For one, many of us we learned early on:
“My body isn't safe.”
“My body betrays me.”
“I need to control the body in order to survive.”
“I can outwit my body using my intellect.”
“Feeling pain and emotions in the body are dangerous.”
In my personal experience, I've observed that the top-down approach often led me into a cycle of revisiting my narratives and becoming fixated on seeking solutions or relief within my psyche.
It never allowed me access to the thing that was going to CHANGE my mind.... MY BODY.
Early on in my healing journey, I knew working with my body was going to be a deep needed exploration.
I had already been well-acquainted with these stories, and discussing them was, in fact, a re-traumatizing experience.
Recognizing the world as it truly is has been something I had been remarkably skilled at evading.
As a young child I learned fairly quickly that the world was filled with deep pain, suffering, and fear.
I would often watch the adults around me stress and become dysregulated in a pinch.
I quickly associated becoming an "adult" with pain, and responsibility with expectations of others, that I may never meet. Naturally, I quickly learned it wasn't safe to see the world as it truly was.
More importantly, I learned it wasn't safe to be in my own body. It hurt too much. It felt safer for me to build a world of my own where I could stay safe.
This is a profound survival mechanism that served me.
However, years of exploring and creating intimacy with my nervous system has brought so much for me.
... I deepened my relationship to the unseen world, my intuition, and creativity – while being able to access a deeply grounded, rooted, and embodiment connection to myself. And realized both these polarities cannot exist without each other.
.... I now recognize my unique window of tolerance in my nervous system is not something trying to punish me, hurt me, or keep me from doing radically beautiful things —but rather it is a gentle guide that shows me where I can stretch, and expand — while remaining connected to my Body and staying in my capacity.
.... Being in body has taught me more about spirituality than any new age spiritual ‘woo-woo’ technique ever could.
Being in my body is now my superpower.
Many people I work with are highly intuitive and aware & have mastered the top-down approach to transformation…
When I work 1:1 with others, I watch their transformations unfold, not from them gaining more knowledge/information, or from any woo-woo practice
But because for the first time in their lives they are getting access to their own body's wisdom and attuning to their nervous systems in a way that brings them beyond past and future, but right back in the present-moment, where all true transformation takes place.
May we remember, being in our Bodies is where we belong.
May we remember the superpower of being human is being, embodied.
May we remember being our body is our response-ability.
May we remember seeing the world as it truly is courageous and safe.
