New look, New Start - Changing the way that I communicate with you.......
“Yoga is a toolkit for liberation, that has too often been appropriated both for oppression, and for well-meaning disempowerment. To heal we need agency over our own choices, to create individualised strategies, to gather personalised resources, for self-regulating our nervous systems, with time and space to integrate them.”
It has been a while since I have written here, but I am back and I do not want to focus on the reasons why I have been so silent; the countless blogs that I have written but did not publish and the small but not insignificant crises of faith that I have gone through over this past year. Instead I want to focus on finding positive ways to dismantle systems that have been in place for too long, systems that disempower us and remove our individual capacity for an embodied life.
We live in a world that for so long has been designed to work a certain way for a certain demographic; the marginalised, the oppressed and the vulnerable have not had safe spaces to be heard but the conversation is changing and it is important that we are listening.
Trauma lives in the bodies of people who've felt powerless, people who have felt under threat, unsafe, in danger and pain. Trauma is however, not an event, it is a feeling in the body. It lives in the body but it can manifest in many ways.
““Trauma is not what happens to you, trauma is what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you.””
Every day I work with people experiencing trauma in their bodies and the one thing that keeps me hopeful is the human capacity to change.
“If you can sense it and feel it, you can change it
”
and based on my own personal experiences, I wholeheartedly agree with that statement. Trauma is a felt response within the body that is unique to the individual however the greater our capacity to sense and feel is, the greater is our capacity for aliveness.
When we are able to feel what we feel and notice what we notice, it can bring us into the experience of the present moment, this can be difficult and confronting but what I have experienced to be true, is that the breath offers up a container of support. When we can find our way back to the breath, we can find a way back to the present moment, we can find our way back to safety in our bodies.
And when we come back into our bodies we slowly start to expand our window of tolerance, our capacity to deal with life when things get difficult; we become resilient and strong, we learn to put up firm boundaries with dignity and grace, we discover that we can act and speak for ourselves and through that we become our own best advocates.
“Teaching people to be in their bodies is a radical & political act because people who are embodied cannot be controlled”
When it comes to understanding the trauma of others, I believe that there are three key steps to take.
The first is acknowledging what we do not know
“I DO NOT KNOW WHAT IT IS LIKE TO EXPERIENCE THAT”
The second is asking how it feels
“PLEASE CAN YOU EXPLAIN TO ME HOW THAT FEELS”
The third is offering non judgemental support
“I BELIEVE YOU”
And my commitment to you is to honour your experience with kindness, compassion and humility.
Over the next few weeks I will be talking to you about some strategies to find your way back into your body and I will be offering practices that are accessible & reproducible ways to access the body/mind in a way that deepens your sense of self, builds kinaesthetic intelligence, and encourages self regulation and resilience.
I will also be inviting you all to join me in a conversation about connection, communication and change.
Please do not hesitate to get in touch with your thoughts and ideas.