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.

Are you leading body scans in a trauma-informed way?

Body scans can be a supportive tool. That said . . . When we lead someone through a body scan, we could be forgetting that there are places in their body that might not feel accessible.

When we lead someone through a body scan without offering grounding resources, we are not offering support for potential activation.

When we lead someone through a body scan without using invitational language and adaptations, we are not honoring their autonomy or needs.

If it is our practice to lead folks through body scans, let's check in with our client around their comfortability with their body and accessing it via somatics and mindfulness.

We might find that focusing on smaller areas better meets the needs of our client. We might find that our client prefers a different modality for checking in. Listen to your client. Consent is key.

Body scans can be a supportive tool at best, and re-traumatizing at worst. We might not have been taught to offer body scans in a trauma-informed way, but it’s never too late to shift our practice.

What’s your experience with body scans, either as a client or practitioner? You’re invited to share below, if you’d like.

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!

Bodybased practices can be challenging for survivors

If you are on a journey of healing from traumatic experiences, it’s possible you are often coached, advised and encouraged to get in touch with your body, connect with your senses, and get embodied.

And while the practice of connecting with our bodies can absolutely be helpful for survivors, it can also feel daunting. Unsafe. Overwhelming.

I want to connect with you about this journey of reconnecting with our bodies, and why it might feel difficult. I hope these words feel supportive and helpful. I hope it comes through that I hold close to my chest the knowing that everyone is on their own journey, that this isn’t a good/bad binary, and that what feels scary at one point can potentially shift. I hope upon reading these words you are reminded that you’re not alone in this struggle, and that this particular challenge might not be a forever challenge.

When you’re ready, let’s gently begin.

Embodiment practices might feel scary or overwhelming if our body has been harmed, violated, and traumatized. Bodybased practices might not feel safe for us, and a lot can come up. Our nervous system might mobilize, and we might experience collapse/dissociation, or activation/flight/fight, just to name a few of the possibilities.

If this has been your experience, there is likely wisdom in these nervous system responses. It doesn’t mean anything is wrong with you; it might mean you need more or different supports. It might mean your nervous system needs loving attention while you engage in this body based practice. It might mean a different practice or practitioner would be more supportive to you and your process.

Part of what can be challenging is that when folks are offering bodybased practices and they aren’t trauma-informed, we might not get the support and adaptations we need. They might not have an understanding of the nervous system that they can share with us and use to support us through what comes up. They might not have trauma sensitive practices in place. And when this is lacking, and we feel retraumatized through the practices, we might blame ourselves or feel shame.

And then, maybe we avoid bodybased practices because they don’t feel safe for us. Even if part of us feels or thinks: I know this could be healing for me. I did this for a long time, way back in my healing. I could not be in a closed door in a yoga class with a group of folks and a teacher I didn’t know. I just couldn’t. I felt closed off, but I was also deeply rooted to my own wisdom. Something in me was saying: not this. Not yet.

Sometimes what feels like the edgiest lifelong forever “no” is really a “not yet” or “not like this” or “not with you”. And maybe that’s okay.

At the same time, I was working with a somatic practitioner in a relationship I trusted. Doing bodybased work in a setting where all of me could be attended to. And building up not only safety and safe experiences with this somatic work, but capacity for it, too.

I could write for a long time about the journey of survivors and trauma-informed body based practices. I wholly believe they can be so important for the healing journey. AND. I don’t believe survivors should be rushed, shoulded on or shamed. I trust survivors. When they say: bodybased work or this certain bodybased practice doesn’t feel safe for me, I believe that. It is their body, after all.

This wisdom is to be trusted. Consent is of utmost importance. Autonomy is to be nurtured. We must not try to weasel someone’s no into a yes, just because we think such-and-such thing would be good for them. For the love of Pete! ..Whoever Pete is. I have always wondered.

And in my other hand, I want to extend a small thread of hope to anyone reading who feels like bodybased practices are inaccessible. Some of them are. Right now, many might be inaccessible for you. I get that and trust that. And. Maybe there is just the tiniest possibility of building a bridge into your body, embodiment, and somatics. The steps can be small. The bridge’s material can be made of whatever you need it to be. The path might be windy, full of fits and starts.

You might not feel like you are doing much, with one foot teetering on the edge of the bridge. But even imagining the possibility of connecting with your body, for someone who has survived immense harm, is brave and huge. I see you in that. Perhaps, for right now, if this is where you are, just considering. It might not feel like enough, but with so much compassion and warmth I want to remind you that what is small can be like a stone in water, with ripples shimmering endless.

Sending you support wherever you are in this journey.

From my pond to yours,

Jess

Touch is a Relationship

it’s not nothing, to receive bodywork. especially from new hands and a new practitioner. especially if we have a history that includes harm and violation via touch. especially if our nervous system is keyed up, our muscles guarded.
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for some people, this isn’t a big deal. it’s no thing, to be massaged by someone, anyone. but for a lot of us, it’s the biggest dang deal. because our body and our skin and our nervous system remember things that have happened to us before. we bring those experiences with us into the session, onto the table, on our skin and under the sheets.
✧
often i remind first-time clients that we’re in a new relationship. trust doesn’t need to come right away. clients can decide how much touch (if any - somatic work can happen without touch, and same goes for energetics), what kind of touch, what pressure, all of that. clients might want to remain clothed, or keep more clothing on. this is all okay. accepted. allowed.
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often for the first massage we don’t do super deep work. it’s more of a hello. here i am, a therapist who is engaging in a relationship and negotiation with you around touch. i am gentle. i am always gentle (though potent) but especially gentle for the first session.
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touch is a relationship and there can be a lot to navigate within that therapeutic relationship. a lot is happening. more than touch is happening, because our physical contact touches deeper layers and because an alchemy exists between the client and practitioner. because, ideally the client and the bodyworker are co-regulating, a safe hum of the nervous systems syncing and connecting. and a safe container needs to be built to hold this hum.
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If touch is a lot for you, i see you. i am you. and in my role as a somatic practitioner and trauma-informed bodyworker, i honor the hell out of that.

You Don't Need to Survive Your Massage

You don’t need to survive your massage
✧if the pressure is too deep
✧if the pace is too fast
✧if you feel panicky while you’re “supposed” to be relaxing

Your bodywork session is for YOU. To meet your needs. Your body, your nervous system. A massage isn’t something to survive or endure. There’s enough of that in the world.

So if you find yourself pushing through, your bodyworker might be pushing too hard. Or there might be anxiety or big feelings on top of the muscles and tissues (and we’ll get to this part soon, pinky promise). It’s okay to ask for a pause. Ask for less pressure. Ask for more pressure. Change positions. Ask your bodyworker to slow down. Take a moment and get in touch with your breath and what’s coming up for you.

Whatever. You. Need.

It’s okay. Truly. Because a massage is not something to survive.