Recovering from trauma: Our bodies.....

Welcome to a multi post series.

 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...

Why? Because I have some need to self-reveal to the degree of humiliation?
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. 

I never felt so alive... skinny dipping might have that affect upon oneself.

My fingers spread out upon the waters, tapping  the surface.
The sounds playing into my ears.

I would close my eyes and then I would open them.

When they were closed, I was in another world.
When they were open, they beheld a most amazing sky.
Blue as blue can be, white puffy clouds floating by.

I was naked.
I had jumped into the waters of this pond and it was amazing.
I was free.

Free for the moment as I began to learn how to  touch the birthing of freedom for a life.

I most recently posted last year's picture.



















Alongside I posted this year's picture.

But there's another picture still.....


So my first day of a year without fear... is this post... My goodness! It feels amazing, exhilarating and terrifying to look at the calendar and touch that it is Monday, August 17, 2015 and that in 365 days when it is Tuesday, August 17, 2016 I will have lived at least 520 moments of choosing life and action and not fear. All my what ifs are going to be transformed.  Instead of fear based and hindrances they will be hopeful and liberating.


Ten things this week will be done. I haven't planned them out. A little over an hour ago remembrances of what it was like to float naked upon a lake, feeling the warmth of sunlight and beauty all around, started to make their way into my heart. I know the reality of those impressions. They are linked to an expression. Something I know I am to share.  I am so familiar with those moments. It is my life to step into them.


I need not know what ahead of time the moment will hold, I have come to love the exploration of being led into the unknown. I haven't always. The predictable and the safe was what I wanted to carve out for myself. Trying to control something because I felt so out of control.

I was so terrified of the "what ifs."  I let myself drown instead of float. I drowned myself in food or the lack there of,  so that I wouldn't feel like I was drowning.  I drowned myself in the constant spending of time in ministry and service so that I wouldn't have to sit still with self.  I made sure I was always full or at other times ever so empty.  Food was the metaphor. Whether stuffing or starving, I used it so that I didn't have to feel what I was really starving for, I used food so that I would be full of something and not feel so empty. I stuffed down all the emotions. I stuffed down the truest expression of me so that I wouldn't have to face what "me," had to face. 

So to continue I need to share another photo and tell a story.  For you readers who can't see me as I type,  I just paused.  I just closed my eyes.  I just breathed in and I just breathed out.  This next picture is hard for me to see and as I look at her, me, there's a place where the I that I was back then was so full and not of food and not of life. So full of fear. So full of pain.

 Full

 I wasn't floating back then. A heavy weight had been dropped upon my gut and I was sinking.   Do you remember what I wrote when I introduced you to the invitation of living a year without fear?  I was saying good bye to shame, embarrassment, fear, humiliation. I didn't want to be hindered by those things anymore.

So this it... The next picture
and
 then that story...


Withholding or gorging it was all to avoid. Avoid me. Avoid what was really weighing me down or avoid why I felt so empty.  I could focus and fixate on something else so that I wouldn't have to focus.

I needed another way of living.

It was going to take me a long while to find it.

Thomas Edison has a quote.  
Edison once said, "Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time."

Just one more time... 

 

That would become my motto. Discovering how to live and live my life would take awhile. It's taking a while. Unlike the bowl of ice cream or the 10 days of back to back restriction/starvation, real transformation was going to take time.

Honestly I can't tell you I knew what I was doing, or where I was going, or how everything was going to end up? The hardest part of the journey was that I didn't know.  The most transformative  part of the journey was that in not knowing and in being afraid, I still showed up.  I still believed that somehow, somewhere, someway there was something different for me and if I just didn't give up or stop, I would find the way. Maybe the better way to put it all was the way would fine me, or we would find each other.  You see, I still don't know each step or what the 1000th step from now looks like. I'm learning to stay with this step. These days I'm spending time in silence and stillness and they are the re-writers and authors of new ways of thinking. It is wonderful and marvelous to behold.


Elizabeth Arden has this most amazing quote.( Can you tell I love words? Ideas? Expressions?)

To achieve Beauty, a woman must first achieve health.

My journey towards health has been one towards self and discovery.
Again so little has to do with the actual weight.

In a recent blog I wrote this statement.. "What is obvious would be the weight that was lost.  What isn't as obvious but the same words could be used is the weight that was lost."

What's being lost now? Maybe I should ask that question in a different way.  What's being gained?  I've struggled to trust myself. While for others I could bank on my intuition and insight, for myself there only was immense doubt and fear.   For others I could pour out compassion and empathy. For myself there was extraction and harsh criticism. That is the truest difference between the picture of me making a Mexican meal, and the picture of me a few days ago as I sat in the sun.

Performance has given way to peace.

The physical pounds of weight are really irrelevant.  The immense weights that laid upon my heart, stealing my breath, crippling my soul.. those were the "gremlins" that needed to be seen, touched and met.  I avoided meeting them. Suffocated pain and ignored my body and what it was trying to tell me.  I stayed busy. I kept going. I kept stuffing everything down. Stuffing down or denying and living on empty. This is so not about food.  Touch the metaphor.

What do you stuff down?
Where do you live on empty?
What are you full of that you are so afraid to see? What do you want to full of?
What do you not want anyone to know about you?
What do you wish you didn't even know about yourself?

I was a prisoner in my body, in my mind, in my heart...
When I let myself go and told myself I could be free that's when I started to live...
The suffocating weights that bound all my insides up were going to meet breathe, and that introduction would change all things.

Yeah I went skinny dipping.  I would do it again.  Floating upon the waters, as my senses came ever so awake and aware, I felt alive. I felt alive in me, in my body.. My spirit soared and my heart laughed as the skies and the clouds and the birds and the fish and the frogs all joined in a chorus celebrating freedom.

Elizabeth Arden said, "To achieve Beauty, a woman must first achieve health." Well, I am determined to live a beautiful life.  I float now. Sometimes naked.  Sometimes while I'm walking barefoot down the street.  I want to live in health not stuffing down or restricting intake.  I want to take it all in and live... I feel now.  Instead of stuffing I release and instead of restricting I saw welcome in.  Fear still tries to remind me  that posts like this one put me so far out there.... And what I say to fear is that this post is just number one for the week, for the year... There's at least 9 (or 519) more to come... I'm so curious as to what they will be.


 

A drive to charlotte would introduce me to my toes...

WHAT?

I'm somewhat in denial that I moved away from the Carolina's over two years ago. Maybe it is because we left our oldest son behind when we moved to Virginia, but in fairness to the other five children that made the move with us, they are all  pretty incredible human beings.  I often say, if they weren't my kids, I'd want to know them. They are some of the most fabulous individuals I've ever met.  It definitely could be the weather.  South Carolina spoiled me as I lived in flip flops or bare feet basically 365 days of the year.  Yes, there is a reason that Crayola calls that amazing color, Carolina Blue, the skies are the brightest and bluest.  Maybe it was the strawberries, the peaches, the once upon a time small town like setting right next to something like a city. Hey, I was born and raised around NYC and Boston, Charlotte didn't ever feel like such a city.  But, hey, it's growing.  Why?  Because it's the Carolina's. 

But move away we did.  And actually the only reason any of that is important to this posting is because I look for every and any opportunity to return. Hence, I am an expert of the three hour drive from Blacksburg, VA to Charlotte, NC or Fort Mill, SC.  Even before the move actually happened that stretch of road and I, we were great friends.  

Something different would happen this one day, as I traveled 81 S to 77 S. That happening would enter my heart and start to ricochet, creating new pathways of thought, hope and life.  Ok, I never said I wasn't corny. Matter of fact I'm coming to grips with the reality that I have more common with Nellie from South Pacific than most people.  For most of you, you need to know it is a musical.  There's this song where she sings Cockeyed Optimist, set in the Pacific during wartime, she decides to see a different way.   I can also be prone to exaggeration but since I discovered that about myself I've tried to learn how to hold it in check.  I think to myself, is this true, I mean like really really true and to this degree.  I modify expression where necessary. The truth is  I just love words, the way they can be used to communicate or express is a wonderment to me and so I try to fit in as many of them as I can. Why say something in ten words when you can use 10,000.  I'm working on becoming more succinct. 

As my good friends know, while it is sadly against the law, I love driving bare foot.  Also as my good friends know, my left foot is often found up on the windowsill on the drivers side. (Just saying for clarification purposes.) I hit cruise control and get as comfortable as one can. I had it all going for me this one day, the music, the cruise control, my foot... There was a beautiful big blue clear sky and it was just a happy moment. 

 My hand would reach forward and begin to rub my toes. Oh, it started innocently enough.  Just rubbing my foot.  But then I started to notice them with my fingers, and my fingers began to separate and touch each individual toe.  As music would play and the light would shine in, my heart started to say, "These are my toes."  Before I realized over an hour had passed, I had repeated and repeated those four words over and over and over again.  I had found different emphasis at times.  Such as:

THESE are my toes.

These are MY toes.

These ARE my toes.

These are my TOES.

And so it went.................

OK, I'm sure I've lost about half of you. But maybe the other half of you are either in tears or smiling.

My body and I haven't always been friends. Matter of fact I'm not sure we are on BFF status often.  In those moments I was claiming my body, starting with the toes. This my body.  These are mine. They simply and profoundly are, they actually exist... I exist. I exist in a body.  It is a body. It is mine. More like a toddler or a yogi in Happy Baby pose, I was finding delight in being in my body and having a body.  For me that was huge.

When life circumstances and situations come where we would rather not be in our bodies,maybe even in our lives; we become adept at living elsewhere.  We live in our minds detached from our hearts and our physical selves.  We live in a hovering place where one feels so separate from the reality of having a physical self, that the connection between life and feet and living rarely happens.  Maybe we are so filled with self - hatred or disgust over how we look that to identify with our physical body is the last thing we would ever want to do.  Maybe we are embarrassed by  certain qualities or lack there of and in comparison and in life we die a million tiny or not so tiny deaths every day and every time we look into the mirror.

This moment, in the car, I was beginning to reverse those ways. I was claiming I have a body. This is my body. These are mine. I can share them or not. I can show them or not. They are mine. They are beautiful.

So here are a couple practical exercises for you if you want to get to know and love your body more....

1) Pick a part.  NO!!!  Don't "Pick a part" yourself.  Pick a part of your body. Maybe one that as been least likely to find Friend of the Year Status. Sit with it. Touch it. (I don't care what part it is.. touch it, if its been an issue) You can use my four statements with the different emphasis on each word, or find your own.  Don't rush away when it becomes uncomfortable.  Sit with yourself. You are in a body. This body is that which empowers you to walk upon the earth and engage with her and live. Take the time to get to know this that houses the essence that is you.

2) There is this Japanese scientist, Masaru Emoto. "He  was born in Japan and is a graduate of the Yokohama Municipal University and the Open International University as a Doctor of Alternative Medicine. His photographs were first featured in his self-published books Messages from Water 1 and 2. The Hidden Messages in Water was first published in Japan, with over 400,000 copies sold internationally.  What has put Dr. Emoto at the forefront of the study of water is his proof that thoughts and feelings affect physical reality. By producing different focused intentions through written and spoken words and music and literally presenting it to the same water samples, the water appears to “change its expression”.

Essentially, Dr. Emoto captured water’s ‘expressions.’ He developed a technique using a very powerful microscope in a very cold room along with high-speed photography, to photograph newly formed crystals of frozen water samples. Not all water samples crystallize however. Water samples from extremely polluted rivers directly seem to express the ‘state’ the water is in.
Dr. Masaru Emoto discovered that crystals formed in frozen water reveal changes when specific, concentrated thoughts are directed toward them. He found that water from clear springs and water that has been exposed to loving words shows brilliant, complex, and colorful snowflake patterns. In contrast, polluted water, or water exposed to negative thoughts, forms incomplete, asymmetrical patterns with dull colors.
The implications of this research create a new awareness of how we can positively impact the earth and our personal health. The success of his books outside Japan has been remarkable"  (Whatthebleep.com)


I've seen pictures of these experiments.  I believe in the power of words.  Ancient Hebrews believed that once a word was spoken it never ended. It was. Interesting that the Christian wisdom writing would then express that one must be aware of idle words. Language is potent.

Now think of the ways you speak about yourself and your body and your life.  Now realize that you are made up of 70% water.  Just pause and let that all sink in.

SO.....  Place a hand upon your feet and bless them. Put a hand upon your mind and bless it. Bless your arms and legs for the work they do for you every day. Bless those hips or that ass that drives you crazy and has you wishing it was 3 sizes smaller or the breasts you want bigger, or the arms you want to be more muscular. No, these things will not necessarily change the shape or size of said body part. They will change your heart.

One day I had this picture for this person.  I saw medical tape with words on it. I simply suggested that she take the tape and put words like: Beautiful, courageous, strong, intelligent,peaceful, magnificent, fabulous, wanted, loved, cherished, etc... on those pieces of tape.  Then apply those pieces of tape with words onto her body.  I've done it too.

It's amazing how throughout the day, as I knew that there were such words upon me and I smiled at knowing my secret. Despite what world, family, co-workers, peers, teachers, or SELF would say I was putting another message upon my body.

So it started with a drive upon highways heading to Charlotte, I met my toes and they introduced me to a whole other life I hadn't been living.... Enjoy the journey and your body and you..