I hope you’ve been riding the bumps of our new calendar year and what many are saying is the beginning of a Great Year (2,166 year cycle).
I’ve been experiencing a lot of creative energy coming through, and struggling to get the remaining blocks out of the way to let it express more fully.
One of ways this looks is that addressing the aches and pains from weird postural habits and guitar playing, as well as from injuries to my lower limbs (from skiing, gardening, etc.) has led to me to look at Feldenkrais (mostly with Thomas Hannah’s book right now) and to continue to have TEB work for fuller primitive reflex integration, as well as focusing on my face head and neck in somatic experiencing sessions, and work with my friend Amy Linville who is an esthetician and RCST (biodynamic cranio-sacral therapist). Which by the way has been a mindblowing experience in being cared for and nurturedface and body, in a safe, loving way with herbals on top!
The short of it is, I uncovered a whole bunch of holding that was still there in my body that I was (mostly) unaware of. So now it’s available to work on, being more in consciousness.
When I started to do the Thomas Hannah exercises, following the instructions at one point to look at my seated posture in sideline, I had my husband take a picture because I couldn’t get a true look with my head turned. My back was indeed straighter, but, above my shoulder blades, I was hunched over and could not change it easily. When I saw that picture, it was like the full knowledge of all of the years of shielding from the front, from behind, from the sides, was evident in that photo. It leveled me. I cried on and off for days. The image did not track with words “maybe it wasn’t really that bad”. The feeling of the image made me physically ill.
I continue to investigate what’s going on in my head, face, neck and shoulders. It’s an adventure, for sure. I feel a little more of those parts of my body, and keep feeling into the fear, the bracing, the protection that’s there. My glasses are a part of it, too. I ask myself, is it really safe to see, hear, know everything? I remember being shamed and told to mind my own business when adults thought they could spell over my head and were wrong. Seeing things so terrible I couldn’t let myself really see them. Lifelong tenderness of my head, ringing ears, electricity running through me at the slightest touch or attention from another. Flinching when adults walked near or raised an arm. Unmistakable signs of my experience that I tried to hide at school, and from others, for much of my life.
I’m so grateful for the brilliant practitioners whose paths I fall into and who I am held and healed by.
Really unexpected ones, like the people who I learned about myopia from, and who support my continued exploration of how habits, traumas, modern life, and the brain and body are implicated in how well the eyes see.
I’ve had to be reminded, yet again, through discovering it in myself, how much masking, shielding, holding back we all do with our faces and voices. I often get a sense of it when inviting someone in my office to make a simple sound that matches how they feel or do something silly. I watch them subsequently crumble, stutter, laugh, change the subject, or collapse in fear, or try to stuff their annoyance with me.
So, I’m just naming my curiosity here about my own face and body holding and armoring, for you to try on, just in case you might sense you are also wearing a mask, or bracing for blows, and something unfinished in you likes hearing me name it, and there’s a little crack in your armoring because of it.
The crack is how the light gets in, you know.