One which I have thought quite a bit about. Recovering from Trauma will touch upon issues that people face as they live in their bodies, with themselves and the realities that they have faced. These posts will touch upon stories and give examples and exercises in regards to body and breathe and meditative techniques that will empower us all to live a richer and more full life, overcoming fear and pain and empowering each other towards a deeper wholeness then maybe ever thought possible.
There are so many things we don't talk enough about it.
In a book entitled The Girl Next Door, I am writing about that very thing. We live in neighborhoods, next to people; we live and work and walk among each other and pass each other on streets and in buses, in restaurants and malls. Presentation dictates that which we think about one another. Exterior vestiges displaying that which we choose to portray to the larger world.
I used to watch people drive around the cul de sacs of the neighborhoods I grew up within. I used to hear how people wanted to move to this part of town or that part of town, the best schools, etc... I used to watch out of my window, as if I could hear their deepest longings to live upon streets like mine. Perception of what life is like upon those roads, within those houses. Perception is as people would make it to be, it isn't reality.
So much happened in those "perfect," suburban neighborhoods, stacked with perfectly manicured lawns, beautifully painted shutters, and mail boxes lining drive ways measured exactly same width and distance from street and curb.
Perfect.
Perception. Very faulty.....
The stories that I share in The Girl Next Door, are shared to empower people towards knowing that they have a voice and learning how to use it.
How am I going to use my voice this evening?
I want to talk about how yoga, unlike anything else I have experienced, in almost 44 years of living, has empowered me to live and exist in my body. A place, I would rather normally be caught dead in, then ever live fully within. I've negated my body most my life.
This past weekend I took an amazing Restorative Yoga Teacher Training class. It reminded me of when I started yoga, when I went for my 200 teacher training, when I would walk for the first times into a studio and lay down upon a mat and begin to a move a body that I had hated all my life. Somewhat, ok totally not somewhat, actually completely 100% oblivious to my own body and how it can move, how I can live within it, what it can feel.
As a very young child, I became master at disassociated living. I became an expert on how to leave my body, and float above it, living far away from it, completely disconnected from every reality that happened, within or without. The sad part of that existence, one at least, was that it became to the degree that it didn't matter whether the events were good or bad. I had conditioned myself to survive. I had taught myself not to feel. I had learned how to negate all sensation.
To that reality I still pretty much existed when I stepped upon the yoga mat back in December 2014. My body and I are not friends. I am not saying that in ten months my body and I have become BFFs. In some ways I still struggle very much on a daily basis. I'm almost 44, I am 5'2", I weigh normally around 140ish (can I just say information that I haven't even told my therapist, nor am I willing to go in and stand and be weighed blind) But tonight I have felt the importance upon this post and the ones that will follow.
Yoga is the one modality that is getting my butt in gear towards touching life; within the framework of bones, tendons, tissues etc. Yoga has been the path that has brought recovery beyond my wildest imagination. Yoga has put me back into my body; not always and not every time but more then not I have laid, stood, sat upon that mat and been transformed. I have opened up my heart and mind to receive the physical reality of me. Christianity doesn't talk about the body as much as it should. It talks about the evils of the flesh. It talks about this or that, but it didn't, in my case, ever talk enough about the precious reality of the embodiment of God within Christ and how our bodies are truly temples that hold the Holy. (Christianity isn't the only world faith that teaches that about our bodies being the temple, and sadly it probably does one of the poorest jobs of doing so.)
So I lived. During my stay within one organization it was known that the world known leader had his thoughts on people who were heavier. It was image issue. Something he believed reflected upon himself and his organization. Other churches I have known, have their staffs order out of the same catalogs for clothes as to present a look that was and is congruent with what they wanted to be perceived as being.
Why is this relevant to a conversation about trauma and body? Because even in places that need to be safe, messages of image f#%@ with people's heads. F&*%ed with my head. And it shouldn't be so. It re-traumatizes people and it is wrong.
There are enough messages out there about bodies, body types, beauty, small versus large, etc....
Yoga broke that down for me...
Want the low down on my psyche?
Oh I will tell you, you don't...
You really don't but here goes unedited for a few minutes...
NO...
Because I am struggling right now in life to even put any food in my body. I negate hunger. I over exercise. I go days without eating and I think that is strength. It isn't strength. It is stupidity. I need to stop. Guess what? I can't. I am not in control of food or body image or what my eyes see or what I feel.
When I first went to yoga and had to see my body in a mirror, the disgust and horror I felt daily was at times beyond me. I would say to myself, "today I might look hideous, and that won't change tomorrow but soon.. hopefully soon it will." The fact of the matter is that though lighter in weight now, that feeling didn't go away. Doesn't just go away.
But yesterday I laid upon my mat after a Hot Yoga class followed by a Restorative one. I was so grateful that it was one of my absolute favorite teachers, and I felt safe. I felt so safe with her presence and instruction filling out the studio. I relaxed into my body during each class. I stretched and breathed, I laid still and allowed breath to find its natural rhythm. I felt solid within my body. I felt relaxed. And I knew. I knew that posts like this one and the ones to come had to be written. Unedited. Raw. Real.
It is said that one out of every three girls have known some sort of physical or sexual abuse, and one out of every five boys. There are lot of people walking around in life devoid of the reality of what it feels like to feel safe within one's own skin.
I know I have a voice and experience to help with that, not as an expert or one who has gained solid victory. But one who is fed up with the messages and lies I tell myself about my body, about me. Facing fear down these days has opened up the invitation to exist physically within the world. As I do so, I need yoga. I need a safe place where I can come and move and breathe and be. Yoga puts me into my body. Yoga has been a restorative pathway through which I have entered my body, stayed put more than ever before and lived much more fully then I ever have.. Physically, emotionally and spiritually. I still have a long ways to go, but step by step I'm moving there. Even upon the weeks where it isn't so much 5 steps forward, its more like 2 miles back. But then I know there's a modality I can touch that will ease me slowly and surely back. I can lay, sit, stand upon my mat in a safe place and feel what it feels like to be a human being within a physical reality.
I want to brag upon the studio I'm a student at, and if you don't think this would be your reality at yours, you need to change.
So one of the ways that verbal cues were given to students who were in stretching poses, such as Warrior II, was to stretch arms out as if you were being pulled apart. For reasons I won't go into in this post, that verbal cue, literally produced hives and would cause immense ripples within my being. After talking about that reality with my therapist, I went into the studio. I approached the owner. I expressed that I knew I was only one student out of the hundreds that that studio sees, I said that I didn't expect that there would never be another utterance of those verbal cues but that for personal reasons wondered if there were other ways such cues could be given. Let me tell you, that was pretty early on in my yoga experience.. Basically in December. You want to know something? From that day to this I have never heard those verbal cues ever again, multiple teachers, tons of students and yet upon that day to this day.. I was not only heard but my heart's desires (NEED) was listened to and acted upon.
Talk about safe places!
One component that is very large in my heart in starting Living Mangaliso and Yoga Therapy and my work as a Spiritual Director is to create safe places.. Physically, emotionally and spiritually. I have been given that in Yoga. I have been given safe places to explore what it can be like to live an amazing life within my body. I have been taught that one can be free with their body, that I can listen to my body, that I can express myself through my body. I have been taught and shown and strengthened towards the reality that my body and I can be acquaintances for now and that bit by bit we will grow into a friendship. I have been taught that all of this can happen in its own time, at its own pace as it should have always been.
In posts to come I will share some exercises I have created and others that are just out there to help assist you back into a very full life and friendship with yourself and your body.
For now just begin to notice. Just begin to be real with yourself. How does it feel to be in your body? Where does your breathe land most days? What do you want?
Speak loving kindness and blessings of life into your body. Begin to own that you are a you and you are a beautiful you at that, gifted with a body. You are a precious gift. Learn to be that for yourself and you will live that more fully for yourself first and also with and for others.
Looking forward to more.
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