Sensing My Way out of Darkness
Last week, out of the blue, I experienced a spell of internal struggle. The darkness crept up from behind, I didn’t hear its footsteps until it walloped me over the head. I woke-up in a cave. A dark, damp cave.
I had been roaming the wilds of beloved Donegal with my husband and two small sons. Life felt so good. Everyone I love is well. I am living my purpose through the Celtic School of Embodiment. I’m surrounded by a tribe of the most wondrous folk. So where did the menace of this encroaching grief come from?
I had just started my bleed, my inner-Samhain. A time of rupture. A time to ask:
What can I let go of?
What is ready to die in my life?
I asked these questions of myself. Still, I felt little relief. I instinctively knew this was different.
MIND OVER MATTER
My mind was telling me that I felt this way because:
There are a lot of unknowns in your life right now - true, there are
You moved Barra (my almost 2 year old) from his cot into his toddler bed - mmmm possibly true
Your bleed is making it worse - likely, but it’s not the source
You know this will pass. It always does - true but right now, it doesn’t feel this way
I cognitively understood that these rationalisations from my mind held truths. Yet, the cave only darkened because often rationality comes with self-judgement. “Up you get now.” “C’mon, back in the game.” “Mind over matter.”
If there is one lesson embodiment has taught me, it’s that “mind over matter” can do more harm than good. I get that this can mean mind over material matter i.e. the task at hand. Yet, our bodies are matter. How curious that we have coined a term to ignore our bodies and trust only our minds. This is reflected in our conditioning where our bodies are coded as nature, in the realm of the feminine (inferior); and the mind as society in the domain of the masculine (superior).
MATTER OVER MIND
So, I started with the reverse - matter. I turned to my greatest ally, my oldest friend, my Bean Feasa (‘Wise Woman’). I knew she held the relief I so desperately needed. I knew she held the illumination I sought.
I turned to my body.
I began to track my felt senses. To have a somatic conversation with my body.
The term “felt sense” was coined by American Philosopher, Eugene Gendlin who discovered that a critical catalyst to effective healing in psychotherapy was a patient’s ability to describe their bodily sensations in a non-conceptual way. To speak somatically (from the Greek, soma meaning ‘body’).
The body speaks a different language to the mind. When I work with clients (and receive Feminine Embodiment Coaching myself), what is said often comes through as an abstract image, a metaphor, a location in the body, a movement impulse. So for example, when I sense worry in my own body, it feels like “a translucent blob-like jelly shivering in the back corner of my stomach.”
Our body speaks the same language as mythology. Asking us to take the Heroine’s Journey. To venture beneath our rational minds and into the nebulous Otherworld of our bodies. And there, uncover the truth of our own story, of who we are. We return forever transformed.
TRACKING SENSATIONS
For a number of days, I tracked my sensations. Carrying a journal with me everywhere. When a sensation bubbled-up, I would pause, drop into my body, sense into it. Then record it. Asking myself:
What am I sensing here?
Where do I feel it in my body?
What does it look like - size, texture, colour, element etc.
How strong is this sensation?
What is my impulse in response?
So for example. This is an excerpt from my journal last week:
I’m sensing a tightness, a closing-in, a heaviness
I feel it in my chest, in my heart
It’s like a humongous grey stone on top of me, blocking out the light
It feels strong, like a 6 out of 10
I want to get away from everyone and everything
I never pushed for more. I only went as far as felt safe in that moment. The very act of acknowledging my felt senses brought immediate relief. Although I did not know what was ‘wrong’ with me, I felt empowered.
After a few days of tracking sensations in my body, I struck somatic gold. My body revealed the image of my head literally decapitating itself and running off into the distance while my body was screaming and sobbing, “I can’t keep up!”
My body was literally engulfed with rage, frustration and grief towards my mind, which had been racing non-stop and in a way, I hadn’t noticed. I had equated a change of scenery from Dublin to Donegal to a change of pace but that never happened. In fact, I got less personal space than I would at home. This along with a number of other contributing factors that I hadn’t yet metabolised in my body, were flooding my nervous system and I was overwhelmed.
Me and my hyper hound, Juno
CREATING BETTER
There was such a tenderness in this revelation, which is how I knew I was releasing frozen tension in my body, back to flow. I sobbed along with my body. I apologised and told her I would take care of her and I did. I slowed down. I allowed time for recalibration.
This week, despite moving at a much slower pace, having a sick child (desperate teething) so no childcare, I feel in these intermittent moments I have access to, I am doing deep work. There is a congruence between my body and mind. And so, there is a depth to whatever I apply myself to. I am creating better. It feels rich and dare I say, juicy.
You don’t have to be in a dark place to develop your sensation literacy. You can begin right now by getting curious with your body and making a sensations vocabulary list - recording words that describe your felt senses, no matter how odd they appear. Sensation tracking is part of my longer-term work with women in the Banríon Mystery School and Celtic Woman Coaching. It can be an immense source of empowerment.
MOTHER IRELAND
Serendipitously, after the revelation came on Friday, I pulled out Eavan Boland’s New Selected Poems and opened the book on ‘Mother Ireland.’ As I read it, tears rolled like crests down my cheeks. There are many interpretations of this beautiful poem, most commonly as the journey of Irish women. For me in that moment, it felt like my embodiment journey. Trust me my body whispers. There is no coming back.
MOTHER IRELAND
At first
I was land
I lay on my back to be fields
and when I turned
on my side
I was a hill
under freezing stars.
I did not see.
I was seen.
Night and day
words fell on me.
Seeds. Raindrops.
Chips of frost.
From one of them
I learned my name.
I rose up. I remembered it.
Now I could tell my story.
It was different
from the story told about me.
And now also
it was spring.
I could see the wound I had left
in the land by leaving it.
I travelled west.
Once there
I looked with so much love
at every field
as it unfolded
its rusted wheel and its pram chassis
and at the gorse-
bright distances
I had been
that they misunderstood me.
Come back to us
they said.
Trust me I whispered.
Sources:
Call of the Wild by Kimberly Ann Johnson
The Somatic Therapy Workbook: Stress-Relieving Exercises for Strengthening the Mind-Body Connection and Sparking Emotional and Physical Healing by Livia Shapiro
New Selected Poems by Eavan Boland
