Untwisting our bodies first of all starts with untwisting our minds long enough to hear what our bodies have to say.
PDF downloadable book and online videos. More info here.
Untwisting ourselves is not difficult, but it does take effort. We have to use techniques to explore the “root causes,” and then use various Bodywork techniques to let go.
A couple of articles back I wrote about about being “twisted.”
The way to body works as regards holding pain goes back forever. For example, this:
…a massage therapist was holding the sacrum of a client, who then started to “see” what was going on in her body. She’d been in an auto accident, and was compensating. Her body was “twisted,” but thing thing is, after compensating for whatever, you stop noticing the compensation. Twisted becomes normal.
Our compensations become our reality
Back in the 1920s-30s, a psychotherapist, a 20th century student of Freud, Wilhelm Reich, identified what he called body armor / character armor. He described the armoring as physical blockages to the free flow of energy.
He worked with his clients by adding in bodywork and breathwork, as he realized that talk therapy alone wasn’t cutting it as far as healing went.
He realized that trauma of any sort that was not resolved (through the release of the blocked energy) ended up “stuck” in the body
This is armoring — the tightening down of muscles so that the trauma is “held in place,” as opposed to expressed and released. The longer it’s held, the tighter and more blocked the person becomes.
Reich equated physical and psychological pain to restricted energy, which of course also sounds like Chinese medicine. He dubbed the energy “orgone energy.”
Most blocks are not caused by physical injuries.
They’re caused by unresolved trauma. That trauma can relate to upbringing, sexual or physical issues / events, and decidedly by how we view ourselves.
This week, I want to talk about how to discover what’s going on for you,as you explore what might be getting “caught” in your body.
A decade ago, I started leaning to the right at my pelvis, this caused by a wonky SI joint. I did Bodywork and physio for it, and am almost straight again. After this happened I started to notice how many others had similarly twisted lower backs.
I was amazed, on Playa Samara, to see lots of teenagers and 20-somethings with the same out-of-alignment lower backs.
I created a movie of the woman in the centre. It’s for the Bodywork book I wrote.
The images show:
- 1) me, tilted right at the pelvis,
- 2) a woman tilted high left at the shoulders, high right at the pelvis (her rib cage is compressed on the right, and
- 3) a woman with a level pelvis.
Please note! The hips of all three people stay the way you see them as they walk!!!
If you’ve been reading me for long, you know one of my issues is a combo.
- The a) part is that I have a burning desire to be “of use.”
- The b) part, which is contradictory, is that I also think that people don’t like me for me… they like me for what I do. This can quickly become resentment and sadness.
Both of these are sacral, 2nd Chakra issues. No coincidence, then, that this area of my body gives me trouble. I hurt, especially if I sit too long.
The idea with Bodywork is to go where the pain or resistance or blockage is, and to help the places to release. The principal approach is to apply enough pressure to help the muscles let go, and then to continue until the underlying pain is expressed.
What I’ve learned as a bodywork recipient: I do not need to come to any conclusions about why I do what I do to myself. I already, in fact, have a pretty good story invented about “why.” I just need to straighten out my twists, breathe into them, and then let go of any emotion that comes up.
Most, on the contrary, find excuses for not working things through — that’s how they got “twisted” in the first place. Many know exactly where they’re are caught, and how.
They recognize that releasing might be messy, or noisy, or angry, or emotionally charged, and they step back. The key is to let go of a lifetime of stories. That letting go is going to have something to do with being locked in by our minds — forbidden, in a sense, to feel.
An exercise to begin the process
This exercise is found in my web book / video series on Bodywork.
PDF downloadable book and online videos. More info here.
At workshops, I often read a heart meditation; I decided to write my own heart meditation for this article.
I’ve also recorded it, and you can download the mp3 file here. (right click to save) OR… left click the above link, and it ought to play!
Heart Release Meditation
Begin by finding a place to lie down. Adjust yourself so that you feel comfortable, secure, and safe.
Begin to breathe in and out, softly, and gently, being aware of the breath as it moves through your mouth and nose. Feel the breath filling your lungs, fully and deeply.
Now, using your fingers, locate your breastbone.
Slide your fingers outward, toward the place where your ribs meet your breastbone. Move your fingers into the spaces between the ribs, and press inward a bit, feeling for soreness or tenderness.
When you find the spots that seem the most tender, rest your fingers there.
Breathe.
Press the tender spots gently, and then increase the pressure until you are aware of the pain you hold in your chest.
Breathe into the pain.
Allow your mind to float free.
Recall situations in your past where your heart has been hurt.
Perhaps someone abandoned you. Friends, loved ones, may have died. Situations, jobs, careers may have ended or been taken from you.
See what emerges from your mind’s storehouse of memories.
Recognize that you have pushed these memories away. You told yourself that you’d grieved enough, that it was time to move on. Or you promised yourself that someday, eventually, at the right time, you’d come back to revisit the pain of your loss.
And you never did.
Until now.
The mind stores data. And it replays the data as it seems appropriate. Often, our painful, unresolved memories become the things our dreams are made of.
Our waking moments trigger memories we thought were lost in the recesses of the past.
Breathe. Take in a “breath of calm surrender” to all of your memories, good and bad.
Continue to apply pressure to the tender area.
Open yourself to the possibility that you cannot think a feeling.
Your heart is designed to be vastly capable of containing all that you feel, all that you hope, all that you dream.
As you let down the walls you have erected to guard yourself from further hurt, you begin to feel just how big your heart is.
Breathe. Acknowledge that, in the past, your pain caused you to tighten up. Your shoulders rolled forward, as you attempted to protect your heart from further hurt.
You became blocked, rigid, and unloving – of your self – of others.
Far from protecting yourself, your tightness only isolated you from others.
Breathe. Open to the possibility of letting go. Feel the tender spot beneath your fingers and be kind with yourself.
Recognize that all of the avoidance did not diminish your pain. All that it did was push it deep inside. Your mind seized upon it and obsessed over it. Your mind found people to blame for all of your pain, and when no one was convenient, your mind blamed you.
And you blamed you, and tightened more, and hunched your shoulders and rolled them over your heart, and from there, attempted to live.
No more.
Open yourself, right now, to feel the pain beneath your fingers. Let your sadness and loss be real for you. Open the centre of yourself – open your heart and let in all of the hurts and sadness of your life.
Feel them. Let your heart do what it is best at.
Grieve your losses.
Breathe.
Let go of your need to hold on to your pain, to your stories, to your victim stance. Let it all go.
Let your heart absorb your thoughts and remembrances.
Let your heart begin to feel. Everything.
Notice that, as your heart begins to feel, the pain beneath your fingers is diminishing. Your muscles are relaxing. The pain in your tender spot is easing. You feel your heart opening.
Breathe. Recognize that blocking your heart from your pain means you’ve also blocked yourself from giving and receiving love.
Love is meant to be given with abandon, received with abandon. Love is not doled out with an eyedropper, but rather is released as a flood.
Open yourself to feeling compassion – for yourself and for others.
Breathe compassion out into the Universe and breathe compassion for yourself into every cell of your being.
Notice that the pain at your tender point is almost gone. A remnant remains, not the result of refusing to feel, but rather because, as humans, we all hurt.
All of us are broken at the heart.
Breathe, and have compassion.
Let your hand fall away from your tender spot.
Breathe in the freedom that comes as you open your heart to yourself and to the universe. Notice your relaxing muscles, the ease with which your lungs fill with air, and then release it back.
Breathe. Feel what it means to be human and let yourself hold your heart fully and widely open.
Let your breath return to normal and feel yourself sinking deeply into the ground. Relaxing. Letting go.
Stay there until you are ready to carry on with your day.