Recovering from Trauma... Finding home and reclaiming our bodies

There are some things, unlike me, that will never get old.

As I approach turning 44, I  am rethinking so very many facets of life and living. This morning I was remembering this one statement, "Live Your Life." Yes, it is a common phrase, but the moment that was circulating within me was the time when it was whispered in my ear three years ago.

I'll never forget that day.  I was walking back to a retreat site. We had yet to move to Virginia but the physical move was pressing inward.  I wouldn't say I was praying. I was walking.  I was feeling more of an oddity than anything else.  Dressed as if I lived in Charlotte walking the back roads of Southwest Virginia.  It became a funny game for me, how many pick up trucks could pass me where the driver looked, looked again and did a second double take.  Oh it wasn't that I was dressed all that fancy. But I certainly felt out of place.

I thought I was going home to something that had been growing for almost a decade and a half.  I thought this country road would literally be bringing me home.  So the moment that that whisper landed so did fury.  It was startling to me. I didn't want to live my life per se. I wanted to live the life that my husband and I had been planning out for almost eighteen months, maybe even 15 years.  I knew something about that whisper was telling me things were going to be different.  I didn't want things to be different, not back then.  Ever so grateful now for whispers on the wind.

I wasn't being brought home to anyone location.
I was being handed my life.
I was being brought home to me, to my body, to my soul, to my spirit... To my life.

This morning I began to grow into a deeper awareness of my body.  Laying quietly in bed, I began to think of this journey that I've been upon.  This journey  into my body.  Again, I will say that in the Christian spheres I have lived in there is almost a criminal lack of understanding or acknowledgement of embodiment. The adjective most used for any talk about the flesh is evil. Legalistic standards of morality suffocate questions let alone any communication concerning living life within the framework of flesh and bone.

I've thought about this post.  I've thought about this post a lot.  The nature of the stories of my life are such that they make fabulous "Testimonies." Stories of  how "God saved me," of how "God healed me," of all the things "God has done."  As long as the language used was appropriate. As long as the story was cleaned up enough so that the horrible parts were shared in G rated environments.  I bought it though.  I thought I was sharing stories that were changing people's lives. In some cases they really were doing just that.  For all of that I am immensely grateful.  But at what cost?  And that has been part of this current journey.  That has even been the journey this morning.

My life isn't food or fodder for the general populace. I am not some robotic "survivor," who has stories to tell. In hindsight that is how much of all those years felt. I used to be able to tell stories of my life to hundreds, and now I can barely get them out within the safety and privacy of a therapists office.  What's the difference?

I've been invited onto a path of reclaiming my life, my body, my emotions.  It matters to me and the people, now walking with me, that I get the time to integrate body, emotion, soul, spirit, life, energy, vibration. It matters that the moments of my life aren't just some "story," or "testimony," to be shared.  They are the moments that I stand on or fall on.

Back to this post. This morning I shockingly came to the place where I was recalling the more recent steps.  It felt organic to come to my laptop. It felt right to come to these keys, close eyes and let a dance of words float from my heart through my arms into my finger tips and upon the screen. I've been given such a gift. I really have.  It isn't a journey that is special and exclusively mine.

My body once was not my own.  Other people's rough hands touched my arms, my  legs, my body. Other people's rage filled voices filled my ears.  Other people's mouths took liberities. I knew too early on in life,  that my body was not my own.  I learned to early in life to regard it as such. No longer was it even a body. No longer was I even a person. I was thing. It was an object. I lived above it. I lived away from it. Never, or as little as possible, residing within the temple that was created to house me. I wouldn't even let myself me a "me."

Sadly that mentality fit very well within ministry circles.  Be aware of spirit, be aware of movement, be aware of what is happening within others and be able to tell them.  I didn't need to be an "I," because we are called to "die to self," anyway.  It mattered not whether we had even developed a "self" to be sacrificed and laid down to a deity of American materialistic consumeristic making, certainly not the character of the Jesus who first wanted a woman to know she wasn't condemned.  In those moments between an adulterous one and the Christ, His heart was first and foremost for her preservation. Before any instruction would come, he ensured all stones were where they needed to be, and all onlookers had vacated the scene.

If we could honor one another in such a spirit.
If we could empower each other back into our bodies, back into our lives.
If we could allow for space, breath, time and privacy for the journey.
If we could... I tell you there would be more stepping upon stones liken to the ones that I have leaped off of..
We would give each other wings to soar.
We would give each other spaces within to explore and the time and gentleness to empower that exploration.
We would empower people to find the home that is them. The home that is their body.

I wasn't coming home to Southwest Virginia, nor was I coming home to anyone set of people. I was coming home to me, to myself, to my life, to my body.  That journey has been awful, painful, debilitating, exhilarating, and so fabulous that there aren't enough words to express the reality of the implosions or the explosions or the quiet being put back together and breathing in simple and serene places.

The me, I am these days smiles a whole lot more than ever
The me, I am these days cries a whole lot more than ever
The me, I am these days shouts and screams a whole lot more than ever
The me, I am these days can sit quietly with the me, I am these days and I wouldn't trade that for all the world.


This series.. Recovering from Trauma  will continue... But before leaving you I want to give you an exercise that was actually one of the very first journeys I took into reclaiming my body.  We will start with hands because they are one of the simplest ones for most people.  Remember your breathe. Remember your body.
Remember you. Wonderful, fantastic, AMAZING you!

Hands

Spread out your fingers in front of you and stretch them out.
Look at them.
Really look at them.
Finger tips.
Nails.
Knuckles
Joints.
Back of hand
Palm
Turn them over and over and allow emotion to arise if there is any
Note even if it is boredom.
These are your hands
Think about what you have done with your hands
Pause
Breathe
Think about what has been done to your hands
Pause
Breathe
Spread out your fingers in front of you and stretch them out.
Look at them.
Really look at them.
Finger tips.
Nails.
Knuckles
Joints.
Back of hand
Palm
Turn them over and over and allow emotion to arise if there is any
Note even if it is boredom.
These are your hands

 Do you like them?
How have they changed?
What do you want to do with them?
What can they do?
What can't they do?
What do they feel like?
Under hot water?
Under cold water?
In front of a flame?
Holding something heavy?
Holding something light?
Holding each of them? (Place hands within each other)
Holding them in prayer position?
Holding them faced open?
Holding them in a fist?
Holding them facing down?
Explore and examine your hands! They are hands! They are your hands!

Recovering from Trauma... Our Breath

It was a sensation unlike anything I had ever felt before.

Something was different in my body.

Even my eye balls felt it.

I couldn't find the words to describe what was happening.

I opened my mouth and said, “I feel airier.”

Lighter

Fuller

Clearer

Who would have guessed it was as simple and profound as finding my breath.

But that is what it was....

I had been practicing yoga for a little over a month. People were commenting upon my posture, my demeanor, my countenance. What I was noticing was my spine. It felt airier. I felt taller. Was I perhaps breathing, really breathing? Was I breathing for the first time in my life? I truly believed so.

And it was magical. It was delightful. I was riding breath into new places. I felt alive. Breath filled out crevices within me that hadn't seen fresh air in decades upon decades. It was amazing. It was exhilarating. It was potent. It was awakening. It was deafening. It was terrifying. It was invigorating. It was horrible. It was alive. I was alive. Breath was entering my body day after day, coursing through my frame and creating new pathways into the very depths of my mind, my soul, my spirit, my body.. ME!

When trauma shows up, breath disappears.

In the very moments that we need breath the most, we close our mouths and out of impulse don't let it in.

Shocking or horrible moment occurs, inhale rises chest, mouth closes, lips press firmly and tightly, eyes grow huge, and we stay there.

Some stay there for decades.

Never exhaling the moment that stole their breath in the first place.

Forever living in the shallow tides of prana, breath.

Prana, is the Sanskrit word for breath, life – giving force.

Hebrew origins of man have clay meet breath as the beginning of all human kind.

With in their stories of the prophets of old, the Hebrews tell of a man named Ezekiel and a valley of dry bones, again breath brings restoration and strength. The Christ would exhale upon the cross and all creation would be affected. People of the Pacific Islands hold stories to be sacred as they are told, expressing the truth that within the story the breath of the people are found.

Breath is the life force of all things, yet I was never taught to breathe.

Oh Mims, who needs to be taught to breathe?

All of us!

All of us, would be my answer.

Hildegard once wrote, “The feather flew, not because of anything in itself, but because the air bore it along. Thus am I, a feather on the breath of God.”

“A feather on the breath of God.” 

What an image! 

To live life within that scope would be quite the adventure.

 How can one get there? 

How does one get there?

It took me a while to realize that all that I was feeling had a great deal to do with the fact that I had ceased to breath from my chest, with slow and shallow gasps of air, and begun to learn to pull breath into my body from the depths within. Breath was flowing in upon the inhales and out upon the exhales. Breath was coursing up and down my frame. Breath was filling out my toes and feet, my calves and my thighs, breath was coming into my torso and filling my lungs. I was expanding. I was riding the breath into new places and new places were opening to receive it.

That was both a delightful experience and a horrible realization.

If we don't think that the very thing that empowered our creation isn't as powerful as all that, then we are fooling ourselves and have lost touch with essential qualities of true life.

Pockets that had lived in dark, dry, suffocated places were being rattled within.

Awoken.

Brutal and beautiful things were taking place within.

A defibrillator of sorts was being introduced to my chest.

Shocking what breath can do!

“Come back to life,” was the song. “Come back to life,” was the invitation.

Events happen. We move on. We try. We keep getting up. We keep telling ourselves we are breathing, although we feel absolutely suffocated.

Pause here...

Let yourself settle...

Do you feel suffocated?

Where?

What does it feel like?

What do you need from breath?

Is it to just start again?

Go deeper?

Let yourself be carried by the breath for a while?

Dearest chest breathing friend, I was one of you and there are days I visit you. Except now I recognize the difference so much quicker. There are moments clarity of thought arrive in ways I never knew. There are moments where life feels richer and more full then ever before. But all of this should come with a disclaimer. Breath is powerful. Breath is potent. Breath will change things. It is not stagnant. It is dynamic. In its arrive, its power to affect all of life, bringing forward life is immense and will call for a response. Please, whatever you do... don't forget to breathe!

In an article in Psychology TomorrowMagazine, the Dr. James Reho does an amazing job exploring faith traditions and the reality of breath. It was some of his first statements that pulled me into the entirety of the article.

He writes, “ Breathing is never really simple. Our breath bears our emotional history and is a playing field for our flirtations with both Eros and Thanatos. While our relationship with our breath is often barely conscious, the quality and form of our breathing enhances and communicates much about our emotional state. As children, we hold our breath to get what we want; breath steals and expresses our will. When we are frightened; we gasp for breath sharply with the upper chest; breath influences and expresses our anxiety level.”

He goes on to say, “At some point, as Western Cultures came more and more to take on the viewpoints of Modern philosophy and the Cartesian paradigm, such practices ceased to make sense. Then as discomfort with embodiment (Sexuality, death, particularity, etc.) came more and more to define the Western mind and spiritual paradigm, such practices became either feared or dismissed and ridiculed.”

It is a fantastic article and well worth the entire read.

For our point here... Let me say, there is much detail and complexity to the healing of trauma. Breath is a vital point of beginning. Learning deeper inhales, and deeper exhales, and moving fresh prana in and around and through your body will bring immense change.

Pause here:
Breath exercise: Three part breath focuses the attention on the present moment, calms and grounds the mind.


This  exercise is often done while seated in a comfortable, cross-legged position, but it is also nice to do while lying on the back, particularly at the beginning of your practice. When you are lying down, you can really feel the breath moving through your body as it makes contact with the floor.
1. Come to lie down on the back with the eyes closed, relaxing the face and the body.
2. Begin by observing the natural inhalation and exhalation of your breath without changing anything. If you find yourself distracted by the activity in your mind, try not to engage in the thoughts. Just notice them and then let them go, bringing your attention back to the inhales and the exhales.
3. Then begin to inhale deeply through the nose.
4. On each inhale, fill the belly up with your breath.

My spine felt airier, my head felt cleaner and clearer and I felt more alive then ever before. Traumas from the past resurfaced as the breath entered, but it is time to clean house. It is hard. But then I cling to the promises of Ezekiel... These dry bones CAN and WILL live again, empowered by breath they come back together and learn how to stand as an exceedingly great army. Because that is what we do! That is what I do! I have learned to stand. Now I am learning to stand and breathe.

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.