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.

It is brave to stay in my body, it is wise sometimes to leave it

If you are someone who struggles to stay in your body.
If you are someone who has leaned into dissociation as a survival strategy.
If you are someone who struggles to connect with the sensations and language of your body.
If you are someone who encounters deep pain when you touch into your bodyscape so it’s like: okay, why the heck would I even go there?
If you are someone who has been should on to stay with your body as if it’s easy.
If you are someone who has been admonished and shamed for shutting down, numbing out or disconnecting from parts of your body.

This love note is for you.

There is wisdom in living in our body. In embodying the skin and bones, the muscle and cells - the nervous system that works towards equilibrium and survival in any way possible.

There is wisdom in leaving our body. In disconnection, in dissociation, in numbness and avoidance and not being ready to go there.

If you are someone who has experienced or experiences chronic pain, chronic illness, or traumatic experiences, the body might not always feel like a safe place to be. It might not feel like a thing we can trust. It might be a place that betrayal has happened, or is happening. We might feel or have felt this from the hands of someone/thing else, or in the disappointment we may feel about our own body and its processes and how they impact us and our lives.

I want to say that this (this being whatever you feel, whether I have named it or not) is so fucking valid.

It makes sense if connecting with our bodies is hard. It can be wise to move slowly. It can be helpful to work with someone who gets that bodybased approaches might be super challenging and that it’s not a one-and-done deal. It can be affirming for someone to say:

Look at you. Look at the ways you have survived.
Look at the ways you are surviving.
And before we try to change a thing —
Let’s start with honoring the hell out of that.

Shall we?
[ ] Yes
[ ] No
Jess

P.S. I am over the moon to be sharing so much about bodies, embodiment, pain, the nervous system and trauma with y’all! Like, really and truly. ❀ Tending to Chronic Pain, a 4 week journey for meeting our pain & our selves with growing compassion is opening soon. Click here to join the waitlist!

are your hobbies joyful or triggering?

Are your hobbies joyful or triggering?

Here’s the thing. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Some things that I️ love to do (meditative/ecstatic dance, for example) send me to deep and dark&twisty places.

I️ spend a lot of time willingly exploring those places (somatic processing, bodywork, therapy, journaling) and it’s come to me lately that I️ need something I️ love that is just FUN.

If complex trauma has lived through you (and you it) you’re familiar with this very layered life. Rarely is anything simple, and everything touches something else.

At an ecstatic dance class a few weeks ago I️ felt safe, which made me cry. Ya know? It just goes that way sometimes.

So I’m not saying to avoid triggers all of the time, I’m just saying: do you have any hobbies that mostly bring you joy and mostly don’t dredge deep things up for you? I’m still looking for one. Let me know what brings you JOY. Let me know what brings you space to hold pain and process. I’m so curious.

There are many ways to take care. ❤️