(Grab a cup – this is a long one)
Somatic (or embodiment) practices, when used to enforce compliance from our bodies – to move a certain way, to look a certain way, to only express certain energetics through our bodies – are being used violently.
Our bodies are meant to be befriended, not dominated.
Our bodies are meant to be inhabited, not manipulated.
Somatic practices aren’t meant to make us more graceful, more beautiful – attractive in some way.
Embodiment practices – in their essence – are meant to support us in inhabiting our bodies more fully as they are – not changing our bodies in some way to make them more palatable, more presentable.
Somatic practices should make you less compliant – even to your own internal domination.
This path is not for the faint of heart.
– – –
I spent so many years trying to dominate my body.
Trying to starve this part away & exercise that part away.
Trying to be less hungry – physically, relationally, sexually.
Trying to tame my unruly hair, my unruly skin, my unruly voice.
I’ve always been awkward, too loud, too colorful.
I never could keep my opinions to myself – my face always betraying me even if I could bite my tongue.
– – –
In my 30’s, through pregnancy, birth, yoga, sexual experimentation, the underground rave scene, some profound mystical experiences, and simple aging, I began to feel more at home in my body.
I liked how I moved, awkward as it was.
I found communities where I felt like I belonged & I let them love me.
The process of growing & birthing babies broke some social conditioning in a good way.
– – –
But, like everything, this process is a spiral, not a linear path where we ‘arrive’ at ‘healed’.
– – –
In October of 2022 I flew to Sedona to lead my first Teacher training intensive with John Wineland, and drove to Mt Shasta for 24 hours with my daughter just two days after arriving back home – to sign the papers to purchase 40 acres of the most extraordinary land.
10 hours after we got home, I came down with the most violent stomach bug I’ve ever had. I missed Halloween with my kids for the first time in 13 years. I couldn’t open my eyes or move without being sent into violet vomiting fits – my whole body twisting & convulsing.
I woke up after 48 hours in hell & felt 100% well. To this day I’m convinced that experience was more of an energetic initiation than actual bug.
But within just a few days I developed vertigo.
As much as I may have fought with my body throughout my life, I had never experienced non-compliance in my body like vertigo. There were no shortcuts & no pushing through.
Even once the most intense aspects had eased a bit, I couldn’t walk down the street in a straight line without weaving, or tripping on nothing.
It was humbling, to say the least.
But the scariest was a couple of months later, after I thought my vertigo was gone, when it showed up again -in full force- one morning. And I had to ask myself: What if this is part of my experience for the rest of my life? What if there is no ‘healing’ from this? How will I be with myself & my body if this is my experience of being in my body?
Being willing to truly ask myself those questions & meet the answers has been one of the realest embodiment practices of my life.
I am grateful that the vertigo has eased & I haven’t had major symptoms in years now. But the truth is, my body hasn’t been the same since then.
I don’t know which parts are simple aging, which parts are perimenopause hormonal transitions, and which parts are related to vertigo (which is apparently related to perimenopause itself!) – but I can’t rely on my balance the way I used to & the left side of my body is less responsive than it used to be.
So many times throughout the day (like typing right now, or washing my hair) I notice the shifting responsiveness in my hands. So many times in a yoga or pilates class I am struggling more with the simple capacity to balance or to move the opposite arm & leg in different ways, than with the actual exercise.
This is a non-compliant body.
Each class is an invitation into deeper intimacy with my body & my breath, rather than trying to make my body & breath compliant to my will.
Every day I practice inhabiting THIS body in all her non-compliance, rather than trying to fix & change her to be more the way I want her to be, to respond in my timing, to make the shapes & gestures I want her to make.
What is it to inhabit a hand that doesn’t move how I want it to move?
How do I inhabit a shoulder that I can’t sense into with the sensitivity I used to be able to?
What is the practice of loving this wayward body?
This is a process, not a destination.
