The many voices of Pain

(public post)

Hello! How's it going friends?  Hope you are enjoying the season and finding moments of joy and stability.

I was recently experiencing some interesting somatic stuff and learning so much about how pain and sudden loss of control in the daytime life delivers a rich and complex dream life.

I  had a really intense neck spasm that seem to come from nowhere that put me down for a bit. It felt like I was in a terrible car accident but I wasn’t, or so I thought.

During the waking time, much of my ego, identity and purpose seemed to shatter so quickly, especially as someone who has a 20 year career in the movement and wellness industry that couldn't move with any fluidity or somatically sense anything but anxiety.

When all of my own expertise and methods of healing stops being attainable, it's a really interesting space to inhabit. I kept hearing my own words to myself... watch your mind as you ask for Her grace, as I make my offerings to Kali, the Great Cosmic Mother of dissolution and removing attachments. 

Those of us who are facilitators of health and wellness, it can get tricky to be on the other side wondering if anything or anyone can help... it becomes a matter of TRUST. Even thinking my love of  Goddess Kali was responsible for this terrible state I was in was showing me about my challenges around trust and the difficulty of  these feelings became a reaction avalanche of blame, shame and I kept hearing a voice in my head saying, 'its all over for me'.  I chuckle now because that voice of the pained one seemed annoying and unproductive at the time  but this voice belonged here just like the one that said, 'this is interesting, let's stay calm and listen.'

The heavy gravity of trust issues, feelings of being unsafe and not being able to rely on anything
or anyone takes up a lot of head space and somatically this leads to more bracing and contraction.

As a somatic healer, I am trained to assess, intuit and lovingly apply technique onto the 'issues' presented by my clients. But when it's our own debilitating pain, it can become really hard to resource our wisdom or hear any solutions. And that's ok. We don't need  to know how to heal and fix ourselves all the time. There is power in the  not knowing.
Not having a clue, giving into the experience and giving space to the loss of control is where I found the most amazing things.......it was in the quiet place.
When my frozen neck was not budging the need to know why was actually keeping me hooked into controlling the perceived threat narratives, even the obsession around fixing myself was pulling me out of flow and grace. In the vulnerability and non-answering space, I could really feel the core of the pain.... it was a gnarly bracing, and this bracing led me to remembering a scary dream I had a few days before about being thrashed around in a car as  I was falling straight down a giant tree (yes, like the Whomping Willow from Harry Potter). And so even though I wasn't exactly in a car accident, somatically I bridged both sides. 

My amazing dream body was reaching out to my waking body and the emotions of my dream body wanted to be realized. 

Such strong desire for the self to be known is fucking powerful and affirms why movement, art, writing, somatic therapies, embodied spiritual studies and dreams keeps me in blissful awe of human consciousness work.

So after this realization moment about the dream and appointments with acupuncture , chiropractic and bodywork, I finally got out of the intense bracing pattern but was still really stiff and numb but I could get back to my own self care routine and even back to pole dancing (after a year break) which was incredibly fun and nourishing. 

Thanks for reading and if somatic adventures from a bodyworker, spiritual embodiment specialist is interesting to you,  you are in the right place.

Did you know that I now offer an online membership for all of your embodiment needs?
Recently, members got to explore the innerworkings of Qi Gong through my June immersion: The 8 Treasures of Qi gong. You can experience this legendary sequence by joining Tier 2 and up