Summer of Healing

Earlier this year, I began studying somatic education theory.

The premise is straightforward: the body holds what the mind declines to process. Tension, grief, deadlines, and years of saying "yes" are packaged into micro-traumas that are stored within the body, waiting for release through breath, movement, and sound.

What struck me was the research showing that the body can produce its own version of what we typically reach for externally, such as a morning cup of coffee or a glass of wine at the end of a long day.

I attended the group sessions with serious enthusiasm. I studied the lectures and participated in the practice. I was even invited to facilitate a few guided sessions of my own.

Then, at the beginning of this summer,

I was in a minor car accident.

It did not require hospitalization, but the event triggered a cascade of emotions, memories, and physical pain buried deep in my subconscious, along with negative self-talk and overwhelm I had assumed studying the theory had already addressed.

Why did this happen to me and why now?

It took a collision to personally acknowledge the pace I had defended since launching Peribloom.  Prior to this incident, I had not taken in the concepts I was asking other women to consider.

This summer gave me the opportunity to bring the theory into practice.  I had assumed comprehension was most of the work.

Read the material, grasp the structure, and apply it.

It's how we move through school, through our careers, and through every problem that responds to synthesis, analysis, and action.

The body does not respond in this way.

What moved me was bilateral work with a somatic therapist: not in learning more theory, but in doing the actual movements and exercises. 

I was encouraged to explore memories and feelings I had left in middle school.  The exercises are simple and unglamorous, and yet something shifted for me.

When something unexpected occurs,

there is now space between the event and my response.

I never had that space before, and the people close to me noticed the change before I did.

 ***

I don't think I'm unusual in believing that understanding something is the same as having done it. Most of us are waiting for a reason legitimate enough to stop studying and start feeling, and the reasons that qualify are large ones: a diagnosis, a crisis, something no one can argue with, including us.

Short of that, we keep going, because we're fine and because it's manageable. People depend on us, and stopping feels like a privilege we have not yet earned.

What would it take to stop you?

And why does the event have to be catastrophic before we let ourselves listen?