Tag Archives: somatics

Entherapalgia

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There is a particular emotional state, which through my years as both a therapist and a client of therapy I have come to recognize as a distinct state that we don’t seem to have a name for. It happens in the milliseconds following the experience of getting something we’ve needed for a significant length of time, almost in tandem with the needed relief. I’ve decided to begin calling it entherapalgia, meaning “the pain within healing.”

Somatically-speaking, it tends to show up as an opening sensation in the chest and/or stomach, often accompanied by a little gasp and a sigh that brings some muscle relaxation. Sometimes that relaxation is the softening feeling that precedes crying. Similarly, entherapalgia can feel like a sigh of relief and a punch in the stomach in tandem. As you might imagine if you can feel into those particular sensations, it can be difficult to tolerate.

Because it involves a lot of vulnerability, we will sometimes tense up when we predict that an experience will evoke the feeling of entherapalgia, or we try to clamp down on it once it’s begun. Both pleasure and pain share one entry point in vulnerability, so even though staying open is how we heal, it doesn’t always feel safe enough to do so.

Since I began using this word for myself and my clients, I’ve found that it’s quite helpful to expect healing to be a little painful. Why shouldn’t it be? Physical healing almost always is, especially when what we’re healing is something that we’ve been organizing ourselves around for a long time (my posture-correcting physical therapy comes to mind). When something pleasurable or relieving makes contact with something that hurts, of course we’d feel both. It’s an extra challenging one to be sure, as it seems that the experience of being vulnerable doesn’t really get easier, just more familiar. Though familiarity does bring some amount of comfort.

Part of the beauty of somatic work is in making space for healing by learning and practicing how to experience pain in a tolerable way. The aim is always for experiences to be embodied rather than solely intellectual, and the intellect and senses can be helpfully bridged with the right words. So I hope this term and its framing can be a support in our ever-progressing process of learning how to be vulnerable.

Befriending Wildness

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For reasons that are just now becoming conscious for me, I have been steeping myself in wildness more than ever. And because of that, I’ve begun to notice that many others are doing the same. It’s as though nature is finally managing to vine its way back into many of our lives.

When I use the word wildness, I mean that which exists in parallel to our lives: plants that grow in cracks in our sidewalks and at the edges of our yards, the coyotes that come down into urban neighborhoods from the Santa Monica Mountains, and, of course, the night sky. These things are not separate from or unaffected by us, and yet they have this entire existence onto themselves that we typically know very little about. Like the body, where we can look for some of the clearest and simplest information, the wildness of nature offers us tremendous wisdom.

My re-acquaintance with wildness seems to have begun through gardening. More and more plants are showing up in my yard, in my home, and in my office. My clients can certainly attest to this change, which became especially apparent when a tree in a twenty gallon pot appeared atop my filing cabinet. I’ve realized that this shift in me is in direct response to what I’m seeing happen in the states and on our planet in general. It’s a place to put my care and attention that’s both needed and well-received. As a fellow therapist in my office building said, “My garden has never been so free of weeds as it is under this administration.”

It can be difficult to articulate the ways in which interacting with wildness is good for the psyche, partly because the gifts are simultaneously simple and vast, but especially because it’s such a felt experience. That in itself is a huge part of why it’s important; it’s embodied. It requires us to be present, to be tuned in, to be hands-on. We have to be aware of ourselves, the space we take up, and the impact we have. With gardening in particular, we must be committed witnesses who take action on what we see. We have to experiment to find the right course of action. Sometimes we have to be patient as a process unfolds. And all of this gets to happen alongside enjoying the beauty, oxygen, medicine, and food that plants have to offer.

With the intention of finding more words for some of these felt experiences, I just took a pause from writing to go outside for a little gardening, and was reminded of a major component of tending to the earth. It’s humbling. I have two passion fruit plants, which I sprouted from the seeds of a few fruits that I ate last year. They grow rather slowly, but just recently have begun to really look like plants. After over a year of tending to them, it’s been very rewarding to see that, and to imagine that soon they’ll begin to vine up the fence I placed them near. I’ve been wondering how many years it’ll be before they produce fruit, and have imagined how special it will be to finally eat one. Last week I noticed a caterpillar munching on one of the plants, so I moved it as politely as possible. Just now when I went out to transplant something nearby, I saw that one of the two plants was completely eaten, and that my caterpillar friends (of which there are now four) have begun on the other. Therein lies the challenge that brings humility. Do I keep fighting the caterpillars? Do I kill them? That’s an easy no for me; I made a commitment some time ago to avoid killing other creatures, unless my health or safety would definitely be affected otherwise. Fortunately those moments are blessedly rare, and that was very important to discover. We so often approach situations with a zero sum mentality when in actuality, nature rarely works that way. When we give to it, it gives to us. We just don’t always get to choose exactly what we get back. So it comes down to: do I want passion fruit, butterflies, or to plant more of something or other that the caterpillars might focus on instead? I’m going with the butterflies. And chances are I’ll get to see them cocooning somewhere nearby and I’ll get to witness their growth instead of that of my plants. Seems like a pretty fair deal to me. In this way, gardening is both self-care and activism. I get to grow and so do plants.

It’s these sort of experiences that inform my way of looking at the world in general. If I always choose convenience, to prioritize my individual needs, or narrow-mindedly stick to my original plans despite receiving new information, I’m choosing a selfish and eventually destructive path. Selfishness accumulates and eventually it affects others before finally returning to us. That is what we’re seeing now. We’ve been selfish with ourselves, with each other, and in our relationship to Earth. It’s fairly clear what we’ve been getting wrong organizationally, but what we do on the large scale is but a macrocosm of what’s happening inside our hearts and heads.

So I find it very heartening to see what’s happening in two areas in particular: art and fashion trends. Now of course I know that as the curator of my own perusal of art, I’m likely seeing more wildness than is average. But it’s clear that earth-based elements have increased within popular culture. Plants are everywhere in our art. We’re bringing crystals and minerals into our homes in both old and new ways. Geometric shapes have dominated the furniture market for several years now. And the succulent craze has brought more plants into people’s lives than any other houseplant trend in the recent past. I’d offer that this might be rivaled by the macrame extravaganza of the ’60s and ’70s, but we’ve brought those back, too. Simple shapes, raw wood, brick, beautiful glass… we are surrounding ourselves with basic elements. We must need it. And just look at all of this grounding, evocative, nature-based work…

“Bathing Beauty” by Rachael Dean

art and tattoo by Lisa Cardenas

“Mama Bird” by Racheal Rios

“eternal return” by MerakiLabbe/ Vanja Vukelic

“connected soul. spirit sisters” by Marcy Ellis

Notice how many themes are repeated across the pieces: plants, intermingling, growth, the feminine, birth and death. I am most definitely a sucker for symbology, and know well through my studies and experiences what a profound impact it can have on our psyches. Notice how often heads are replaced by plants. I love what’s suggested by finding a plant where one would normally encounter the places where our thinking, seeing, and speaking originates. I won’t ruin it by over-defining it. Just ponder that. Feel into it.

My hope for this time is that this love for the natural world does not fade from us as trends do, that we understand how badly we need to make lifelong friends with nature and wildness, and that we incorporate this knowledge into our institutions in such a way that it cannot be lost again.

A Lesson from #MeToo: Intellectual vs. Somatic Knowing

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We do ourselves a great disservice when we devalue the power of feelings. The somatic landscape holds much of the information that we seek, and yet so much of how we live prevents us from knowing that. A client once reflected in session, “I used to hate having emotions. Now I know how to use them.” I could have jumped with joy. Country, let’s make this the norm.

When I saw Caitlin Flanagan’s response to what “Grace” shared about her date with Aziz Ansari, I felt nauseous. She made a lot of damaging comments, but the one I’m taking on here is her belief that Grace could have simply left. It is a brutal misunderstanding of the power of feelings, and I cringe knowing that anyone read it and agreed. From Grace’s account, we can pretty safely hypothesize that she was stuck in a freeze response. When neither fighting nor running away are perceived as possible, our parasympathetic nervous system offers up this third option. In extreme cases, it can look like playing dead. It can also look like playing along. Now whether or not that’s actually what happened for Grace, no one can say except her. We can, however, use her story to look at what has become a common encounter.

The #MeToo Movement has been extraordinary for shedding light on the pervasive epidemic of unsafe sexual behavior. We’re finally voicing this deep collective trauma and with each new story, we’re made increasingly aware of the need to understand what brought us here and how to move forward in a way that is healthier for everyone. This is a psychotherapeutic process like any other; it’s just on a very grand scale. So we will be well on our way to healing if we can learn and enact the wisdom offered to us through the psychotherapeutic process. Most relevant here: the need for embodied wisdom.

Historically, we tend to get stuck on deciding who’s responsible for an unpleasant sexual encounter. What therapy teaches us is to be interested primarily in understanding and navigating the interpersonal dynamics involved. Even in the most objectively black and white circumstances, the ability to say whose fault something was is only helpful in bringing us to the next steps: what each person can do moving forward. So rather than looking at fault, we ought to be looking to answer more specific questions like, “Why couldn’t Grace leave?” and, “Why couldn’t Aziz notice her cues?”

It’s very fortunate that #MeToo is bringing us into exploration of these gray areas of human interactions. It’s where some of the most important work can happen, and that’s exactly why it’s so challenging. What’s happening in response to what Grace shared should make very clear how impossible it is for us to quickly lay blame somewhere and move on. The subsequent conversations it has provoked have been a loop of “he should have…” and “she should have…” Often both things are true. But the complexity does not end there, as there is a myriad of reasons that brought each of them- and any two people- to this interaction wherein one person left feeling violated. So it’s time we distinguish between intellectual and somatic understanding.

“Somatic” means whole body. The word is used as a way to point to the entirety of an experience rather than to artificially separate what’s happening in someone’s body from what’s happening in their brain. The two are inextricably linked, and that’s extremely important to understand particularly as it relates to sex. Our bodies will tell us right where we are with things, which is vital to pay attention to, because knowing something intellectually is not the end of the process. You can think of it like learning to play a musical instrument. Studying theory is helpful, but you won’t be able to really play until you’ve practiced.

We’ve been more acutely onto this knowledge over the last decade or so. We’re realizing that intellectual insight is limited. It does not automatically translate to being able to do anything with the information. We can understand something, but not believe it. We can know why something is happening, but feel unable to prevent or change it. We can even fully believe something in thought while our body strongly disagrees. Embodied knowing simply takes further work.

When so many people are upset by a topic this disturbing, one of the greatest challenges is finding our common goal in the work. Fortunately, this one is quite clear: we all want safe and enjoyable experiences with others, especially when it comes to sex. Knowing that is an important part of the process, because we now get to address what’s in the way of getting there. Our current roadblock: we’re lousy at attending to feelings.

The experience of feeling unable to do something is, in the moment, no different that being physically unable to do it. This awareness is built nicely into all fields of psychotherapy in the form of verbiage for states like post-traumatic stress, which is a response to a real or perceived threat of injury or death. Fortunately, this knowledge has been sneaking into popular culture in various ways. We’ve finally begun to consider the “placebo effect” a legitimate effect, for instance. And indeed it is. If it has an impact, it’s an effect.

But historically we have been very poor at acknowledging emotions as real, legitimate, and unpreventable. It’s that last one that seems to give us the most trouble, because we can learn to make choices that make particular emotions less likely to surface in certain situations. But this control is limited, and it’s limited even more so than our ability to control something like hunger. With hunger we can eat regularly, eat enough, eat well, carry snacks, and so on. But with emotions, we have far less control because emotions most often surface in response to other people, who are ultimately out of our control. You can be well rested, well fed, and in a great mood and fear will still surface when you nearly hit someone who walks in front of your car. So our greatest power comes in our ability to respond to our own emotions appropriately. And no matter the context, an appropriate response means one that comes from a place of compassion and openness. These are the qualities that allow us to listen to, learn from, and make use of our feelings. Once we can do this for ourselves, we can begin to extend the practice to others.

Now think about that myriad of reasons that, even without knowing their unique backgrounds, allow us to guess at why Grace and Aziz would find themselves in such a confusing and painful exchange. To name what I’m sure is far too few:

  • People, especially females, are routinely objectified. Objects are things that we can interact with as we please. The impact we have on them is irrelevant, and so we often don’t even consider it.
  • We fail to teach people, especially males, how to interact with their emotions. We will even use shame to suppress them. Since emotions do not long tolerate being ignored, they find ways to get their needs met surreptitiously or violently.
  • The above factors create a very dangerous combination. Objects are handy sources for getting our needs met, since they require nothing of us. We don’t have to admit our feelings to them in order for our needs to be fulfilled. So it confuses, scares, and sometimes angers us when an object suddenly speaks up about their subjective experience.
  • We teach women that sex won’t be all that enjoyable, and to be polite about that. This was actually written in pamphlets given to women at the turn of the 20th century. That’s only a few generations back for a lot of us, and so its remnants remain strong.
  • We are persistently reinforced with the notion that there is a way to successfully manipulate our interactions with others, and that most of it has to do with pursuing and distancing. If we pull back a little, the other person will come pursue us. If we lean in too much, they might distance. They’re distancing themselves because they want to be pursued. You can’t be explicit about pulling back or you’ll hurt their feelings. Most plot lines depend on our belief that we should be indirect. The next time you’re watching a television show, imagine what would happen to the trajectory of the story if just one person were able to share what they were feeling.

It is no surprise then that we have ended up here where one person wasn’t trusting their feelings and the other wasn’t even noticing them. So whose fault was it? Everyone’s. It is collectively our fault. We train our females to resist their urges to fight or flee, and we train our males to fight no matter the circumstances. Most of us contribute to this even though we consciously try not to. It’s my fault for not speaking up last week when someone used the term “man cold.” It’s the fault of every catcaller. It’s the fault of every person who agreed to distribute that pamphlet to our great-grandmothers. It’s the fault of the schools that fail to teach sex ed. It’s the fault of everyone who’s ever said, “You’re just emotional.” We must attend to all of this if we want healthier interactions. Fortunately, we’re already amidst a gender revolution, and I suspect that one of its many gifts will be to draw us away from rigid roles that train us out of our natural states of being.

I hope that any of us could find our way to relating to either person in an interaction like Grace and Aziz’. If any of it seems easy, I encourage you to recognize how you’re devaluing your abilities or taking them for granted. The ability to leave, speak up explicitly, or accurately read bodily cues are all strengths. If they’re strengths you have, figure out for yourself how that came to be, and then help others to develop these qualities. If these aren’t strengths of yours, learn to listen to the subtle cues of your body, and then learn to do so with others.

It is returning to embodiment that brings us health. We need our sensations and emotions in addition to our thoughts in order to understand what’s happening in the moment and to act accordingly.

Further Reading and Resources

Books:
Healing Sex by Staci Haines
Waking the Tiger by Peter Levine
Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
The Sex and Pleasure Book by Carol Queen with Shar Rednour

Research:
http://usabp.org/research/somatic-oriented-journals/

SE Research and Resources

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A Guide for Effective Journaling

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Therapy is where we learn to cultivate our inner sanctuary. It’s where we can get what we need in order to be present with ourselves when no one else is around. Because relationships are our holding space for being ourselves, it is getting enough practice at that with others that allows us to become our own safe space for doing whatever delightful baloney we choose. Journaling is a thread between those inter- and intra-personal spaces.

Consider your diary to be a log of your honesty with yourself. From honesty comes our best explorations and our best art. Know that the work is to move towards increasing depths of understanding of yourself and of the world. Work to be honest to the extent that your diary becomes a sort of photo album of your living experience- but one no more organized than a dream.

Here is my guide to making your experience pleasurable and useful…

Remember the intention: What do I need in order to be willing to see the truth of myself, and of the world?

Flow with your materials.

The richest explorations are done in a relaxed but alert state. That begins by being physically comfortable and supported. Ideally the sensations of the journaling itself are pleasant and draw you in so that you can focus on pouring yourself out.

So, use the path of least tension. Unlined paper, a writing implement you like, and a quiet room are usually considered the most suitable. Somatically speaking, it’s very useful to see how your words are written. Writing is a form of drawing. Our muscle tension or relaxation, our speed of writing, the slant of our words or lines- all of it expresses something beyond the letters and words themselves.

However, it is most important is to honor whatever particular things you need at this point in time. If lined pages help you not to worry about straight lines, then lined pages it is. Typing instead of writing is also fine. Use whatever means keep you from physical distractions, but also work to get rid of any physical barriers in order to give yourself incrementally more space. Challenge yourself to try a new setting or technique so that you can keep expanding. Work to stay relatively comfortable as you do so.

Once you find something like a flow, you can move on to attending to the more complex distractions. That’s where the good stuff is.

Be alert for all manner of distraction.

Because this is a practice of burrowing into oneself in order to explore one’s depths, it’s vital to notice what gets in the way. What is the blockage made of, and what is needed to move past it?

Notice your willingness or reticence to write something down. Write down as much of what you notice about this as you can bring yourself to do. These are some of the richest moments of potential for noticing what you are and are not yet willing to know or to do.

Zoom out, and take a look. Every now and then, perhaps at the end of each paragraph or page, slow down and consider your writing. Ask yourself questions-

  • What am I feeling (sensations and emotions) right now?
  • What am I afraid of happening?
  • Who am I writing this to?
  • Who am I afraid will read this?
  • Who do I hope will read this?
  • What am I really trying to express?
  • What do I want to feel- now, or if I reread this?

Use your answers to increase the realness and honesty of your entry.

Honor your reticence.

We tend to suck at this. We are far too practiced at telling ourselves, “If I just…” or “All I have to do is…” Practice not doing that. Replace those moments with honest reflections about what is making something difficult. When you dislike something, it’s for a reason. Listen to yourself about it with kindness. The reason helps to point to what you need. Often you won’t know what you need, but paying matter-of-fact attention to what you’re feeling will often get you there, if only after you’ve enlisted support in the process.

And expect your hurdles to increase in size and complexity for some time. Keep your process moving along the way. Eventually, you’ll move through to deeper work. And then you’ll hang there for a while. And then you’ll deepen again. Eventually the practice becomes the work. The practice is the work, and this becomes apparent after a few times of moving through something tough or lovely.

Before I move on to particular ways of writing, notice how much of this is about paying attention. This is the bulk of the work of journaling, just as it’s the bulk of the work of therapy. You are working to get out of your own way by paying attention to what’s in your way. And paying attention indeed requires paying something. The practice of doing this is the work itself. The technique is what allows you to create something. So return to these reminders often. Now onto the ways to create entries…

Explore from different angles.

  • Have conversations– with yourself now, with yourself at past ages, especially childhood, with your imagined future selves, and with others. Focus on emotions and needs.
  • Log your experiences. Go heavy on sensation-based descriptions. These entries are great for important experiences, pleasant or unpleasant, and are a big part of creating an album of your life that is rewarding to make and to read. But logging can also bring the needed reverence to minutia.
  • Track yourself and your surroundings in the moment. You can do one or the other, or both at the same time. Go heavy on sensation language here, too, and be as grammatical or un-grammatical as you please in the moment. Our experiences go beyond words, so breaking free of their form becomes very important during tracking.
  • Draw. Sketch, paint, scribble, whatever. Being able to draw as you journal is a huge step in being willing to put anything down. It’s a great way to get at the aforementioned wordlessness of our experiences.
  • Write down your dreams. Dreams are a wonderful peak into the deeper chambers of our unconscious, which are typically closed during waking hours. Often just describing them in your journal will cause you to remember more of them, and to dream in a richer way. You can choose to explore them on paper or not, but be sure to notice what emotions you felt during your dreams.
  • Store precious items. Be careful with this one, and really curate what you add to your collection. The intention is not to increase your diary’s show quality (at least not for others). These items are for recounting visceral reactions, and for exploring these reactions. It needn’t even be a special item, but simply one that evokes a sensation or emotion.

Whatever arises, attend to it. If you don’t know how, ask for help. Happy journaling.

show your bleeding heart: A Guest Post from Tulasi Adeva

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Tulasi Adeva is a therapeutic mentor and embodiment facilitator who lives and works in beautiful Hanalei, Hawaii.

I had the honor of working with her at the Oakland Center for Holistic Counseling. She has a fiercely open and clear heart, and I was often speechless when I would hear her talk about the way she knows people and the world. She is often able to articulate what is deep down inside of us all, and this article is no exception. She wrote this beautiful, perfect piece in response to what happened in Orlando this week, and I have the honor of sharing with you here. This applies to everything, and I believe it’s terribly important to realize how vital this work is. I challenge you to allow her words into your body. Try them on and see what shifts, or what would need to.

“maybe vulnerability is the greatest key we hold to our collective healing. not vulnerability held close like in a poker game we are trying to win, but vulnerability revealed, vulnerability laid out for those around us to see.

this is not an easy thing. as humans we grow good at being guarded. we learn all too well how to hold our emotional cards close in. we learn to navigate the hazardous terrain of relationships by defending and protecting. the brain is so sophisticated and complex it manages our whole strategy in such a way that it feels like a second skin, like this is just the way it is.

but when you hold a baby in your hands, a fresh being newly breathing air, you know that our essential nature is vulnerability. and with vulnerability comes unconditional love. with vulnerability comes our capacity to trust. with vulnerability comes our capacity to fully be all the way here.

because let’s be real. this being alive is VULNERABLE.

we may try to hide away, and defend against, in order to protect ourselves, but that protection cuts us off from what we truly want… to be seen, acknowledged, appreciated, LOVED.

we are a complex system of beliefs and cultural conditioning. we are a store house of generational trauma and instinctual survival. amidst all this we are evolving at such a rapid rate, individually and collectively, that we don’t entirely know how to keep up. we are boiling inside.

with our deep desire. with our own fears. with confusion. with pain. with rage. with longing. with heartache. with a calling for more.

without a firm grip on our inner compass, a deep connection to our own heart, a tender acknowledgement of our own vulnerability we get locked into a stance of defense. we resist what is.

we want to hold on to what we know, we want to have it all figured out so we can avoid risk (vulnerability) and play it safe.

part of my teaching is about feeling what’s here to be felt. going all the way in. this is not an easy task, often it feels like the pain or discomfort will never end. but inevitably on the other side we meet our vulnerability, our tenderness, our hearts. and there we come to know ourselves more completely.

there is a teaching in relationship work to take 100% responsibility for what is going on in a relationship. in akido when practicing with another the resistance you feel, is your own. both of these teachings are pointing us toward self responsibility, personal accountability, toward a recognition that how we move and what we choose to do impacts the space and outcome of what unfolds.

but as david whyte says we have to take the close in step. before we can take 100% responsibility, before we can identify the perceived resistance in another as our own we have to know ourselves. i mean really get to know ourselves. look in the mirror and look deep. what are we hiding, what have we tucked away, what don’t we want others to know and see?

our pain is the catalyst for our creative expansion if we have the courage to face it and the willingness to see what’s there to be seen. when we meet and greet our own vulnerability it opens up space, it opens up compassion, it opens up a renewed relationship with responsibility – to ourselves and the world around us.

because no matter how we come in, what we’ve been told, each one of us is a sovereign being with a calling and a purpose for being here at this time. but until we get that, we are flying blind in a selfish charade of pleasure seeking and self protection.

amidst all that the world is reflecting back to us these days it is so easy to be broken hearted– especially if you are in touch with your own tenderness, with your own vulnerability. on countless occasions the intensity i have seen or felt or heard has knocked me to my knees. i’ve wanted to scream but i have kept my mouth shut. i have wanted to cry and so i did behind closed doors. i have wanted to pretend that this was not real and not going on, so i would look the other way and let life go on.
to be a vulnerable human being means to walk through the world with your heart broken open. it means to hold it bleeding in your hands because it’s yours and it’s rhythm matters. to be vulnerable means to be courageous… to move and live with heart. it means we must see ourselves- the light and the dark. it means we acknowledge who we are – divine beings with a greater purose and fallible humans figuring it all out. it means that we appreciate the path before us – the one we have chosen, with all the challenges and triumphs it provides, for this life is our teacher calling us back home to our whole-hearted-ness. it means we bring forward love – for ourselves and for each other, as often as possible, just as we would love that brand new, completely vulnerable baby.

when we are in touch with our own vulnerability and we see it in another, we are opened, connected, changed. today i watched a raw filmed video of a woman speaking the potent truth of something that touched and moved her deeply. she shared the healing of a vulnerability she has been carrying most of her life. and though it was not my story, i felt her in hers. though it was not my story i felt the healing happening. though it was not my story i understood that her healing is my healing for we are never alone and on our own, we are both that baby, we are both vulnerable to all that is unfolding.

lately every sign i see is a call for deepening. a soul dive beneath the surface of the way things seem and the labels and stories we can read. it is a tap root connection to the truth of our own soul. it is a willingness to be vulnerable and speak from that place, to share from that place, to lead from that place.

this world is changing. so rapidly. every day. there is so much more to it than big money and good branding and how many likes your posts receive. it is a life or death battle for the earth, for humanity, for heart. and the only way i can see to get through to the other side is to be all in. take your heart out in your hands and show it to the world.

what if we were courageous enough to be raw and real? what if we no longer held ourselves back? what if we practiced compassion for ourselves and each other, even when we disagree, because we remember and honor vulnerability?

i am still learning. i am practicing. i am afraid that you will hurt me, not see me, not care. i am afraid you will say it doesn’t matter, that i don’t matter and that i shouldn’t share. i fumble all the time. i do not have it all figured out. but when i tend to that still small voice within, i know i am 100% responsible for all of this and my voice matters, my heart wants to be felt. i am letting all of us down when i don’t let the truth of own vulnerability come out.

and so i offer it to you. i offer you a seat here with me, in a wide open space where all that needs to be said can be said. where all that you feel is a welcome expression of the truth of your experience, where all that i feel is a welcome expression of mine. and in this field i know we will meet and see each other again for the first time and remember that we are one. we are tender, vulnerable, open hearted love.

here we will change the world.”

Find Tulasi and her incredible work here.

Originally posted by Tulasi Adeva on June 14th, 2016. Source: http://www.rockyourjuicylife.com/inspire/2016/6/14/show-your-bleeding-heart. Reposted with permission from Tulasi Adeva.

Masturbation Month A.M.A.

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Happy Masturbation Month, all! I’m here to answer your questions about self-pleasure.

Please note that, while I am a therapist, my “Ask Me Anything” forums are not therapy, but are intended for your education and enjoyment.You can view this AMA on Reddit.

Ask away!

Winter Rest

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“He who marvels at the beauty of the world in summer will find equal cause for wonder and admiration in winter…. In winter the stars seem to have rekindled their fires, the moon achieves a fuller triumph, and the heavens wear a look of a more exalted simplicity.” -John Burroughs

Hello lovely readers, and happy winter! Many of you have asked why I’ve been quieter here and on social media lately, and it means a great deal to me that you wondered and reached out. As I’ve shared with a few of you, I’ve been amidst a winter rest.

Particularly because I’m a therapist, I tend to steer away from speaking heavily about my current personal process. But over the last few months, what’s been happening in my personal life has been a clear and, I hope, relatable example of a somatic process, and so I hope that you will find value in my sharing it.

I’ve finally come to understand that winter is about rest and renewal. As a hardcore sun worshiper, in the past I’ve treated winter with indifference at best- a time where you just sort of hold out for the warm weather to return. But a few years ago, I began to celebrate the holidays in a more earth-based way. This began with small things like cooking with seasonal produce more often, and putting local plants and flowers in vases around my home. I recall the latter being a fiscally-inspired decision during a spring season wherein I found myself on a major fresh flower kick. One day I decided that I may as well use the flowers outside of my front door. This started a new habit of noticing more closely than before the subtler changes in the plantlife around my home and city.

Last winter, I read something by Henry David Thoreau that landed and stayed with me: “Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.” I’m especially crazy for that last bit. A huge part of somatic work is about resigning yourself to and embracing the reality of the present.

I’ve realized that in the same way that our consciousness is affected by our bodies, our bodies are affected by the seasons. It sounds terribly obvious to me now, especially since I’ve been clear on other environmental influences. But only during this last autumn was I able to feel the seasonal change in my body. This, by the way, is something that us somaticists absofuckinglutely live for: clear, wise messages straight from the body. I felt my body slowing down, I noticed that I was focused more internally than externally, and on days when I didn’t need to set an alarm, I’d begun to sleep significantly longer. When I happened to read something about the ways in which plants and trees, like animals, hibernate during winter, this new awareness really fell into place. It couldn’t possibly be that plants and animals need to hibernate during winter, but that human animals do not.

So this year, I intentionally made very few plans. And that meant saying no to a lot of activities, of which there is no shortage in Los Angeles. I must have said some version of, “Perhaps next month. I’m in winter rest mode,” at least a dozen times during the month of December. It was in itself an interesting experiment with setting boundaries. And not all the boundaries were external. I have a tendency to become a knitting machine over the winter, and this year I took on fewer, less results-focused projects. Most of us think of cozy indoor activities when we think of winter and the winter holidays, but somehow that often translates to being busier and broker than ever. I simply decided not to do that this year, and while it has felt really good, it has also meant facing certain old beliefs.

Working your ass off and making as much money as possible are values pushed on us from multiple angles. Even most western therapeutic models don’t have a name for over-working. It’s culturally sanctioned. So even in the absence of criticism about taking a long winter holiday at home, I noticed that I would, on occasion, question my choice. Shouldn’t I at least offer a workshop? Or work on my book? Or at least, I don’t know, get some new pillows for the office? Once I got clear on the decision to not even look at email, the suggestions from that voice in my head got a little sneakier… Ok, so don’t work. But produce something. Maybe just throw a small holiday party? But, as one learns to do in therapy and is sometimes able to execute real-time, I was watching my internal process unfold and got wise to this sneaky voice and its overworky intentions.

So most everything that I did was internally-focused, and I believe this to be the essence of winter. Reflection, assimilation, and release. We work hard for months, putting plans and intentions into action, being creative in as many arenas of our lives as we can. Winter is for enjoying all the work we’ve done while our bodies and minds are renewed by the rest. Through reflection we can become clear on what has worked and what hasn’t. Through resting we renew our energies to begin the cycle again.

“In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.” -William Blake

If I hadn’t rested, I wouldn’t have heard from my readers who wondered about my absence. That was in itself a gathering of the fruits of my labor: a time to use a bit of distance to reflect on what I’d produced in the last few months, and to hear how it affected others.

Amongst the other lovely effects of this process has been a deepening of my appreciation for nighttime. And this is something I thought impossible. I am very much a night owl. It is when I have the most energy and creativity, and also when I feel the most peace and wonder. That the nights are longer during winter is not something that I was able to appreciate or enjoy back when I was tensing my body against the weather until springtime. This year, and especially on the solstice, I have been reveling in the nighttime hours. I have done far more stargazing than ever before, and have even begun to dream about space.

I’ve also begun to dream lucidly on occasion, which I also attribute to this slowed-down time of reflection. It’s given me a chance to get more intimately and intricately in touch with my internal world, which feels really, really good.

It’s still winter. If you didn’t rest over the holidays, you have many weeks left in which to do so. I’m very aware that taking time off from work is a privilege that isn’t available to everyone, and by no means is that the only way to rest or enjoy winter. For me it was only one of many ways I’ve done so this season. And while I’m back in my office, and here writing this for you now, I am continuing my winter revels. Rest can and should be integrated into each day of your life.

Find or create quiet moments, however brief. Refuse to take on anything besides the simplest and most necessary of tasks. Walk outside with your morning coffee and see what’s happening in the plantlife. Notice what you can smell. If you live somewhere quite cold, enjoy the stillness. Listen to how well sound travels through the cold, dry air. Soak up the particular magic of snow. When you walk from your car to your home, look up at the sky. What do you feel when you gaze at the moon. My own therapist said something beautiful when I told her how quickly I was able to get grounded and present one night when I walked outside to look at the stars. She said that it’s very easy for us to let the sky be the sky.

If you can work less, do so. But do not call it a luxury or indulgence. It is a bodily necessity, and it is never indulgent to take care of yourself. Slowing and letting go is necessary in order for new things to emerge. Rest is not a stagnant process. Understanding and caring for ourselves is both discovery and creation.

The Body and Aliveness

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“Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become Real.’
‘Does it hurt?’ asked the Rabbit.
‘Sometimes,’ said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. ‘When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.’
‘Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,’ he asked, ‘or bit by bit?’
‘It doesn’t happen all at once,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.” -Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

I love this little exchange. It holds such deep wisdom. I particularly love that line: “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

Our sensations, emotions, and thoughts are what make up our aliveness. It’s a lovely little trinity that brings a lot of richness when all three parts are working together. You get a whiff of something lovely (sensation), and instantly feel a little joy (emotion), because it reminds you of something pleasant from long ago (thought). Those moments are some of the best that aliveness has to offer. They’re what keep us willing to tolerate pain. What makes it tough is when the pain begins to outweigh the pleasure. Then we start to shut off, and that natural, flowing cycle instead becomes a pattern of tension.

Whether you’ve experienced trauma or the more everyday hardships, there’s some work to do to in order to awaken and turn back on. Loss or reduction of connection to your body is something to wage war against the moment you notice it occurring. Because as we turn off to sensation after experiencing too much unpleasantness, we also turn off to the good stuff. Numbness/ shutting off/ dissociation is a brilliant mechanism when it’s needed, but we often overuse it. Sometimes we turn off to just a few avenues of experience, but sometimes we chronically turn off to the body. And then we turn off to living. Worse, turning off is too often reinforced. “You’re just being sensitive.” “That’s just the way it is.” “Those are just feelings.” “Men don’t cry.” “Be rational.” That kind of thing doesn’t exactly invite us back into feeling. But your body doesn’t go away just because you’ve begun to ignore it. Your body is with you all of the time. Let yourself be with it by getting really good at knowing how.

This trinity must be supported by two very important things: safety and groundedness. You must be present and alert, and what you are present for must be adequately safe. Our natural state is to be open to experiencing things. But after we’ve had so many painful experiences that we’ve shut off, it takes active effort to open back up. And opening back up to what you feel can be very scary. Not only because heretofore unfelt sensations were only ever waiting for your gaze to fall back upon them, but because much of what one might consider “good” sensations are themselves a little unpleasant. Even anticipation, which many think of as a pleasant state, is pretty uncomfortable- a sort of pleasing agony.

So to begin, get damn good at getting grounded. Groundedness means being able to feel your body really well- the points of contact, your heart rate, your breathing, your muscle tension. When I feel grounded, I feel slower and very aware of my legs. A lot of clients have described it as light but weighted, or pleasantly anchored.

Next is being present, which comes pretty darn naturally once you’re grounded. Presence means being able to notice what’s happening around you- the scents, sounds, tastes, sights and sensations. As I’m writing, I can hear the clickity clack of the keyboard, the crickets outside, the whir of my server. I can taste the chocolate I was eating a bit ago. The laptop seems very bright to me now that I’m really paying attention, and I’m also aware of my peripheral view- the lamp and its light reflecting on the table, an orchid, my red pillows. I feel the laptop on my thighs, my fingernails tapping the keys, the table against my calves where I’m resting my legs, my chest expanding and contracting with my breath, and my stomach beginning to tingle.

You’ll notice that everything I’ve named is fairly neutral or even pleasant. This is a huge part of the safety that I named. If what I had to open up to was largely unpleasant, you’d have a hard time convincing me to stay open.

Even feeling extreme joy and happiness can be tough. When something moves me, my chest swells. I have to breathe deeply to expand- not because my chest contracted, but because I have to make room for this new powerful experience. It’s a little uncomfortable. But it’s great. I believe that this may be the sensation of growth itself. Again, not necessarily pleasant, but very alive.

Also notice that I didn’t interpret any of my sensations for you, though I was tempted to when I noticed my stomach beginning to tingle. A huge part of re-awakening to your body is not making interpretations about what you feel. Let it be simple, because it is simple. Your body will tell you your truth if you get out of its way. We get too used to our own lens, and bring in interpretations too quickly. This will be difficult. We are so adept at deciding things. But if you want to make a shift, get really curious about how you perceive things.

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
-Marcus Aurelius

It’s this reception of an experience that is key. We are constantly presented with opportunities to feel, but we don’t always take them in. Reception of an experience is a muscle to exercise repeatedly so that you can get even a short ways down the path to mastery, which I’ve come to suspect isn’t attainable (something I consider a very good problem). You need only make a little room to start, and the sensation will begin to flow in. The harder work is letting what feels good have as much of your attention as the rest. This is the chief reason to surround yourself, not with drama (which can be confused for aliveness), but with what you love and what brings you joy. You should be awakening to plenty of your favorite colors, music, art, and foods. Walk outside, and you will find plenty to feel and taste and see and hear. If your particular patch of nature is thin on beauty, there is always the sky. Author Karen Connelly writes, “When I let this body outside for a walk, it awakens.”

Again, opening back up does mean risking pain. And there are so many types of it! Physical, emotional, mental. Intentional and unintentional. Direct and indirect. And then there’s the particular pain of not knowing or of believing that you’ll never know. But even pain can bring access to the Self. Yet before one can even consider such a thing, pleasure must loom larger. But by its very nature, pleasure will not force itself upon us. It wants an explicit invitation, which means that we must have a particular object of desire. Surround yourself with the things you know you love. And be open to finding plenty more. These are often blessedly easy to spot, but terrifying to seek. Extend your openness to learning new ways of seeking. Stay reasonably open to the unknown.

Fortunately, the unknown pulls at us, even if we try to ignore it. Some of us even go searching for it, because it holds tremendous power. Venturing into the unknown we can find exactly what we need- if at first only by projecting into it. We are marvelous at projecting our unknown needs through our fears. Get curious about how you think. Know your go-to lenses. Find your blindspots, and know that there are always more. Consider your stories about what you do not yet fully understand, or what you fear. The concept of the sterile or fertile void is a particular potent thing to ponder. When you stare up into the night sky, imagining all of the black space expanding into the absolute unknown, what do you think about? What sensations are attached to those thoughts? What emotions?

We often refuse the very thing we need by denying its existence. It didn’t exist before, so why should we believe that it does now? This is why us therapists pester you with that damn question, “What would it be like if…” The intent is to make room, to open, to let in. Practice. Practice on the fun stuff. And then keep practicing.

I’ve been delighted to find, through my own practice as well as through supporting clients, that as the body is more thoroughly inhabited, it only continues to expand in ability to contain and enjoy. It is a grand hotel, which grows in size and richness with its constant stream of enthusiastic guests.

The Science of Somatics

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*Hello! This article has been getting a lot of traction lately, and I love what that suggests about where we are with deepening our embodied experience. However, I have so much more I want to say here than I did when I wrote it eight years ago! So, I’m working on that for you. Please come back in, say, late March (2022), for a richer take.*

Soma is an ancient Greek word, once used to describe the whole person.

Somatic psychotherapies are modalities which utilize the body’s role in diagnostics, as well as the healing process itself. Somatics combines the realms of the body and the mind, which were never to be divided in the first place.

Diagnostically speaking, working somatically means paying attention to the body. Heart rate, muscle tension, and the nature of one’s breath are major indicators of what’s happening in a person’s emotional landscape. When you start tracking these things, you are organically placed on the path to vibrancy, because the body speaks in simple, clear terms. Somatic work takes you beyond the “why” into the “how.” Knowledge and insight seldom exact major changes. You can absolutely know why you’re doing something, yet not understand how to stop or change.

Everyone has had the experience of hearing a sentence spoken with an emotional tone that negates the words themselves. Take the classic childhood interaction of being made to apologize. “Sorrrrrrryyyyy.” Are you really? If you’re the receiver of this kind of apology, you know you’re being ripped off. In the therapy room, we follow these inconsistencies. The body always has something to say. Somatic therapists are adept at helping you listen to the body and follow its messages, because it’s easier said than done. That is a major tagline of somatics! We’re trained in the doing, not only the saying.

Professor Don Hanlon Johnson, eloquently writes, “language emerges from the body, if we only wait and allow it to happen, with ever-fresh solutions to seemingly intractable problems.”

What’s happening in the body tells us both about the specific nature of a problem, as well as how to move through it. If, when taking deep breaths, you find it difficult to let your breath all the way out, this tells us something about your body’s ability to relax. An inability to take in enough air can point to tension that is restricting space. Typically, my client and I both have a sense of why this would be happening from our explorations about their past experiences. But again, now what? For the person struggling to exhale completely, we practice incrementally increasing their ability to relax. This is almost guaranteed to trigger emotions, because of its tie to past experiences. For that reason, somatic work is gentle and incremental. Like learning to play an instrument, you are invited to try something that is at the edge of your range of ability. Each time you practice, your range expands. Sometimes we find that certain contexts, people, or beliefs inhibit that expansion, and we deal with those as we encounter them. Therapy is about learning what it takes for you to feel like yourself, and to express who you are to others.

It’s not magic. It’s basic biology. If you don’t take in enough air, your body signals your brain that it’s in danger. If you don’t break this cycle, you are kept in a perpetual state of low-grade (or not so low-grade) anxiety. The more difficult experiences you’ve had, the more convinced your body becomes of perpetual danger, and the harder it is to recognize safety. Somatic work is very effective for exacting needed changes.

Read my article on the science of the orgasmic cycle for an example of working somatically in the sexual realm.

The body is really good at doing what it needs to do to thrive. When it acts up, it’s for a reason. Listen. Somatic therapists are here to help you make sense of what you feel, and to teach you how to meet your body’s request.

If you’d like to do a little reading on the research, check out the journals listed below. And for even more somatics resources, visit www.usabp.org.

The International Body Psychotherapy Journal
Somatic Psychotherapy Today
Hakomi Forum Professional Journal
Journal of Authentic Movement and Somatic Inquiry