If being in your body feels hard
We live in our bodies. Our nervous system is housed there. So, of course, when a traumatic thing happens, and after it happens, it can feel hard to inhabit your body, and hard to partner with your body in healing.
It can be challenging to connect with body sensations, and I get why we wouldn’t want to connect with body sensations. They're not always pleasant. So many of us live with chronic pain (always and perhaps especially now as covid continues on).
So many of us are taught not to be with or in our bodies by capitalism and even just our own sheer survival strategies (one of those things is brilliant, the other keeps me up at night, okay they both keep me up at night but you get it lol).
But what happens when we're healing and we're told to be with our body and listen to our body? When we're asked what we feel in our body and where and how we know this and we come up short, fuzzy, blank?
If connecting with your body is a goal that feels impossible to reach, but you know it's a critical key to your healing, I want to offer this:
Yes, it's hard. Yes, it's possible.
There's nothing wrong with you if connecting with your body feels frustrating and fruitless.
There are wise reasons for this. Maybe it's that disconnection is an effective survival strategy. Maybe it's that so many people whisper yell at you to feel your body without offering any baby steps to get there.
If you want to connect with your body and you also know that very topography and inner landscape often feels both tender and tumultuous, I want to offer that there are so many doorways into connection, and often our hand on the knob is acknowledging we want to do it and we don't know how yet.
There are many paths to partnering with your body in healing (without bypassing that sometimes we feel less like pals and more like frenemies). Here are a few from me to you.
I've opened a few Somatic Resourcing Session packages if 1-1 sessions to connect with your body (and all that can come up along that journey) sounds like what you've been craving (and maybe a lil apprehensive about - that's welcomed, too!)
LAND, the Somatic SSP Experience, is enrolling for 2 new cohorts. One beginning mid-July; the other in September. The SSP (Safe & Sound Protocol) is also a journey of being present with your body and sensations, and music is the doorway. If you're intrigued, you're welcomed to read more and even apply for your spot.
And for my babes and buds with businesses, I'm elated to hold space for the spreadsheety-markety-systems piece of having a business AND the somatic experience, too. Being in biz is a lot, especially these days. I wanna support you! That can happen right here.
Okay friends. So glad you're here. Sending you and your body some tenderness today.
Jess
P.S. This was written while listening to Joan Shelly radio. Highly recc The Push and Pull and Haven.