The Power of Somatic Healing: Understanding and Healing Your Body
Through discussing the body's communication, potential for healing, and techniques for establishing safety and trust within oneself, the episode emphasizes the importance of listening to our bodies to heal wounds, build intuition, and live a more fulfilled life. Lisa guides listeners through understanding their body’s needs, cues, and instincts, proposing that change involves confronting oneself and navigating through discomfort with a combination of patience and empathy towards one's experiences and sensations.
The Power of Somatic Healing: Understanding and Healing Your Body
Through discussing the body's communication, potential for healing, and techniques for establishing safety and trust within oneself, the episode emphasizes the importance of listening to our bodies to heal wounds, build intuition, and live a more fulfilled life. Lisa guides listeners through understanding their body’s needs, cues, and instincts, proposing that change involves confronting oneself and navigating through discomfort with a combination of patience and empathy towards one's experiences and sensations.
15:46 The Process of Trauma Renegotiation and Healing
18:27 Understanding the Body's Sensory Motor System
21:29 Concluding Thoughts and Next Steps
Lisa:
Greetings, my friends, and welcome to another episode of Healed Now What? A podcast where we discuss life, relationships, connection, and trauma through the lens of somatic and attachment psychology, nervous system health, relationships, and self discovery. I'm Lisa Dawn, and I'm on a mission to teach people how to transform their deepest wounds into their greatest strengths by first transforming the relationship they have with themselves. So whether you've had trauma, years of failed partnerships, or just want a better relationship with your body, I've got you covered. I am a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, Educator, Relationship Mentor, and Trauma Survivor. With a lifetime of experience helping not only myself, but countless others transform their lives by learning how to become the fullest versions of themselves. Learn more at www. somatic. com We do this through self awareness, connecting with their bodies and changing the way they perceive themselves and others. I have coached innumerous people how to heal their wounds and create lasting change so they can live a more joyous, passionate and fulfilling life. Thank you so much for tuning in and enjoy the show. Hey guys, Lisa Dawn here. Thanks for dropping into this week's episode. I wanted to begin, just by referencing a few quotes. Before there are words, there is the wordless communication of the body. The human body is not an instrument to be used. but a realm of one's being to be experienced, explored, enriched, and thereby educated. So on today's episode, we're going to be talking about the body and how we can begin building a relationship to it, how we can understand its needs, its wants, its protection, and also its aliveness. And I also want to note that Learning about our body and how it's been impacted by life, trauma, death, and rebirth is non linear and can feel challenging and overwhelming. So part of what I do in working with the body and its experiences is help people to have more skills and practice at interpreting their body's messages. Learning how to trust these signals and knowing what the next step to take. Would be to feel more relaxed, awake, alive, and connected to themselves. And again, we've talked about this before, but these are skills to be developed. And within these new skills, the aim is to find new sources of power and energy when we feel exhausted or defeated. The goal is also to be able to discern intuition from fear. And also to be able to stand in discomfort and feel alive and safe within our bodies. It is a spiritual medicine journey all in of itself. So, Once we begin this work, we start to tap into our body's needs. And when we do that, we can begin to respect our body's timing of absorbing and taking in information. And let me tell you, so much more life can open up when we are paying attention to what we're noticing in our body, meaning your sensations, your emotions, your images, your feelings. And in all of my years of trauma therapy and experimenting with different modalities, I have found that this is the gentlest, most sustainable way to lasting an unexpected change, befriending and speaking the body's language. So let's just take a moment to notice right now. How is your body feeling? Are you tired? Do you really want to be listening to this podcast right now? Or maybe you need some stillness and silence, how would you know, are you restless or upset? Are you peaceful or content? Or maybe you're a mix of many things right now. And how do you know that you're any of these things? Does your face feel soft? Does your chest feel light and airy? Is there an extra skip in your step? Do you feel strong and connected? This is one of the ways that we can reestablish trust with our own bodies and our own somatic process, because when we actually listen, and give attention to our body's prompts, the body will speak and let us know. So you're hearing and feeling signals and then acting based on those signals, which may have been something you couldn't do in the past. So we can do this many times throughout the day by just touching in. Do you need to move your body? Or are you yearning for stillness? So this will help establish a new sense of safety and confidence by coordinating your body's impulses with the actions you take. And this in turn respects and satisfies the needs those impulses are pointing you toward, and that builds more trust and understanding between you and your body. So let's check in again. Are you comfortable? If not, see what might make you even more comfortable. If you're cold, grab a blanket. If you're thirsty, go get some water or tea. If you need to go to the bathroom or eat something, please do. Taking the time to begin to notice these natural impulses is paramount. And this is all part of the healing journey. Oh, Hey there body. There you are. It's nice to actually spend some time with you and get to know what you need, what you're all about. This partnership we have with our bodies. It's about beginning to learn a new language for making sense of our inner experience. We are being called to relate to ourselves in a new way. And we are being invited to witness the body's untapped power. And we do this through the process of coming home to our deepest, most intuitive embodied self, which is empowered with a real understanding of how our nervous system works. So we do this by learning how to listen and how to turn, tune into our internal radar. We can help our bodies to redirect their compass away from um, The fear it is programmed to orient towards, and we can turn that towards safety and pleasure while at the same time feeling the fear. And we also do this so we can stop overriding our body's cues and pay more attention to what is actually going on underneath. We can begin to trust our intuition, know where it is located in our body, meaning we can start to feel comfortable and at home in our skin. So what happens when we learn to connect with our inner self? Well, so many things can build and flourish. We can start to feel confident and unashamed when saying no to something we don't want to do. Wouldn't that be nice without having to make excuses? It's just a no. Don't want to do that. Our expressions match what we are actually feeling. Have you ever had a moment like that where you're saying something but your face is not moving in that same direction. Our body language and posture act in a cohesive way. We can know what's best for us. We pick up on signals and know what they mean for us. Whether that is to dance, run, sleep, play, or eat. We can accurately pick up on cues. and leave a dangerous situation as soon as we notice it is unsafe. We are able to define and articulate our boundaries with confidence at work, in relationships, and just out in the world. We can enter sexual connections with a new level of safety, desire, and skill. We can parent more effectively and efficiently. We can stand up and say the things that need to be said without doubt or emotional burnout and we can truly heal. But we must include the body. So in a body that has been repeatedly abused, neglected, and feared, we've got to begin this journey by establishing safety within. Well, how do we do that? Most often, if we don't have it, it first comes from another human being, whether that is a partner, a dear friend, or a trusted therapist. Ideally, we have all three. And this can be seen as being held or witnessed by someone who has a calm, centered, and soothing presence. Someone who can be the calm in the midst of chaos. Trust that our bodies know this. And one nervous system can calm and soothe the other. This is the starting point for our body to begin waking up to hope and possibility. Our human nervous system is designed and attuned to both receive and offer a regulating influence to another person. And how fucking incredible as that. We are both wounded and saved by each other. The medicine is in the poison for real. So the next step is to tap back into the vital world of our inner promptings, and we did a little bit of this already, aka sensations, because when we are overwhelmed or traumatized, we get cut off from these primal sensations, instincts, and feelings, which make it really hard to know where we are and what we need in any given moment. So we really want to ease into this and it's usually not quick work for so many people their body has become the enemy I know mine was for many years and it took some time to get reacquainted with it At first, it was uncomfortable, triggering, and foreign. So here's a little, a fun little exercise. Just think of someone who feels calm and reassuring to be around. Just take a moment to call up someone who just feels like a calming, good presence to be around. And if no one comes to mind, it can even be a pet or somewhere in nature. So just check in right now. Think of someone who you love to be in the presence of and Just notice what happens in your body as you think of this person. Do you feel warmth in your chest? What about your face? Does it feel more relaxed? How about your posture? Does it feel more open or connected? Just take a moment to connect how thinking of this person equates to potential sensations in your body. And if nothing comes up, that's okay too. Perhaps it's just an image or maybe a smile emerges on your face. Just notice. And now, let's redirect that. Think of someone that you dislike or have mixed feelings about. Just take a moment to call that person to mind and notice what happens internally as you think about them. Is there an area in your body that tightens, constricts? Where in your body do you notice that? And now just briefly touch back in to the good feeling person and allow whatever sensations come up with that to take up space in your body. Allow them to expand. Congratulations! You just rocked back and forth between two polarities, which ultimately softens the edges of difficult things. So we're learning about being able to move through bad and difficult things in order to open up more space for expansion and goodness, which is absolutely pivotal for healing trauma and alleviating all kinds of suffering. It's this natural rhythm of expansion and contraction. And it's vital for us to consciously experience this rhythm so that we can gain access to a sense of opening and flow. but also so that we can prepare ourselves for working with bigger and more painful material in somatic therapy. This is part of the process called pendulation and titration. So we just want to add in here that as we know, we can't change what's happened to us. We can only take the wisdom from what's happened. What can I learn from what I've been through? So part of this is taking the wisdom of what we've been through and learning to come into communion with our bodies. So that is part of that sacred journey. It is the gradual process of trauma renegotiation. And of course, I want to mention that there's risk involved because change is not possible without some form of confrontation. We confront ourselves and take the risk of being embarrassed. The risk of letting someone in on our sadness, our grief, we take the risk of truly being known the risk of being understood the risk of bringing forward the parts of ourselves that we struggle to love. And that love is rooted in the quality and depth of our willingness to be transparent with ourselves and with others. We tenaciously cling to that which we have prayed to be saved from because it's what we have known. So what we're doing when we work with wounds is touching the edge of uncomfortability, learning how to be with uncertainty. And we avoid experiencing these things because of how powerful they are and how helpless and vulnerable they can make us feel. We may anticipate the pain of being trapped with no way to escape. The feelings may just swallow us whole. And there is a reason we take our time with these trapped wounds and trauma. There is intelligence in the fear. Because it is asking for time, for guidance, safety in space, time, guidance, safety in space. It is as simple and as difficult as this. Whatever experiences we turn away from, our brain body registers as dangerous. You know that saying, what we resist, persist. And this isn't just true for our mind, but also lives within our body. So I want to talk a little bit about these, these experiences, these responses that these survival responses that can become locked within us. So when we have an experience where our natural response is thwarted, so let's say we have a car accident or some form of abuse where we either couldn't escape or fight back, what is happening in our. sensory motor system, which is our body's built in way of sensing things and moving around. It's like the brain's communication system within your muscles and senses. So it's like when you touch something hot and quickly pull your hand away, or when you catch a ball without even thinking about it, that's your sensory motor system at work. It's. It basically is the connection between what you feel and how you react physically. So when your natural response is thwarted, your muscles are energized or stretched in preparation for action, but then the action doesn't get carried out for whatever reason. So that potential energy gets stored or filed away as unfinished business. Okay. So on a physical level, this can lead to tension, tightening, constriction, pain, and immobility. And on an emotional level, this can lead to feelings of helplessness, depression, shutdown, rage, frustration, sadness, anxiety. And then when our conscious or unconscious is activated through a trigger or a stimulus, let's just use like say a blue car or the scent of lavender or the way someone is speaking. All of the original hormonal and chemical reactions re energize the muscles as if the original threat were still operating. And of course I'm oversimplifying the process in order to give an example of how these things work. But basically, Uh, direct response to healing or discharging this stored energy results in equilibrium or balancing out of our stress hormones. So another outcome is that our bodies are no longer stuck in the past, woohoo! Because trauma and pain inhibit our ability to be grounded in the present moment, which impacts our ability to engage appropriately with other human beings. More presence means more embodiment. So when we sweep things under the rug, it just prolongs the inevitable and often makes the encounter with triggers even more frightening because it's had so much damn time to build and gain energy. What I want to say is stillness and movement will always be there waiting, even when we don't choose them. And that is the beautiful thing about life. The things that heal us wait patiently to be observed and interacted with. And so I wanted to end this with a quote from Jenna Zoe, she's a human design teacher and practitioner, and I really love her stuff. Here goes. All of the blessings you could ever want are already tagged with your name on them. They're not going anywhere. And there is nothing you can do to lose them. They're living in your aura, swirling around and within you as unrealized potentials, until the moment you decide you're ready to turn that potential into matter. And when you are, they will be there for you. As always, thank you so much for listening. Life is busy, so it means even more to me that you are here. Listen, we've got so many great episodes coming up, so please make sure that you follow along on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you are listening. And if you appreciate these episodes, please do us a favor and leave a review and share the show with anyone you think this episode would benefit. See you again next week. Bye for now.
