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.

Healing Can Be Destabilizing, Too

In the beginning, healing can be so destabilizing. It can exacerbate symptoms, heighten anxiety, make space for big overwhelming emotions.

So if you feel like you’re going backwards, know that this can be part of the process.

It can feel unfair to be met with shaky intensity when we’re trying to recover from a traumatic event that destabilized us. But healing can be cyclical, spiralic, a swirl of beginnings, middles, and ends that aren’t even ends. So the intensity isn’t strictly the stuff of beginnings.

You might periodically feel destabilized, sucker-punched by waves of grief that take the breath from your lungs and drop you to your creaky knees. These dips and rises might not change, but our ability to be with the dips and rises, our ability to be gentle with ourselves, to turn to our tools and ask for support - this might change, and can make a hard process a little easier.

Keep going. Keep resting. You’re doing great and it’s so normal to feel like you’re not.

jess

I AM NOT A HEALER

I️ AM NOT A HEALER.

I’m a spaceholder, facilitator, sometimes-guide and more-often follower, and deep deep listener.

But I️ AM NOT A HEALER. You are your own healer.

We don’t need anyone else to heal us (even though I get that it’s tempting) because how could they?! Other people are not you. Not in your body or life experiences. And everything you want to heal from is trying to show you something. Maybe in the most irritating or heartbreaking or life-disrupting way, but it’s trying to show you something. And that message is for YOU.

In my client work it’s so important to me that I’m not in this holier-than-thou I️-have-all-the-answers-just-pay-me-and-you-can-have-them-too place. It’s really not about me. I️ mean, I’m great, but I’m great in that your session is about YOU. Your body, your sensations, your story. Your pace. Your process.

I️ AM NOT A HEALER, I️ am a witness as you reach for healing. I️ am stepping back so you can do your sacred work. I️ am this lantern next to you as you stumble along your path, but it is YOUR path and guess what - you’re the fucking moon.

You are your own healer and you’re the fucking moon.

Take care, self-healers. You’re doing the damn thing. Don’t forget it.