Strength, Grace & Mobility
The creative ways we learn to get through life are immeasurable. Adaption, as a form of survival, is one. But if this behavior becomes chronic, repetitive or is severe-enough, we can we get stuck in ways of being that no longer feel like ourselves. Dissociation can make us feel disconnected to our thoughts, feelings, memories and surroundings.
While it’s hard to fathom pain, despair and trauma as blessings, there are gifts to be gleaned from having experienced them. For instance, some of the early lessons of the pandemic were an appreciation for a slower pace of life and spending more time in nature.
It’s common for trauma to get caught in body memories. This occurs unconsciously and is what makes survivors jumpy, dysregulated, or numbed out in ways they can’t explain. Mindfulness-based, embodied therapy involves tracking body memories as they reemerge in treatment.
When we are disembodied, we live removed from the power and wisdom that comes from the body. Energy stagnates. Joints get sore and muscles turn slack from lack of use. The best to free ourselves from this trap is to engage our body and mind.
The place where the conscious and unconscious meet has no definable boundaries. Needless to say, we humans do not like uncertainty. So we suppress it and override it. But it doesn’t go away because it’s out of sight. This “energy” shows up as troubling behaviors and self-proscribed “treatment plans.”
When choosing a medication, you should not only consider the immediate effect of it on anxiety, but also whether the medication has the ability to change the brain in ways that will help it become resistant to anxiety.
There are many reasons for developing a yoga practice, spiritual growth is just one of them. How yoga can assist us spiritually depends greatly on which path we are following. Not everyone’s spiritual practice is affected in the same way through yoga, though everyone can benefit physically, mentally and emotionally from yoga.
When attention is strong, we can simply do what we are doing, moment to moment. If we are peeling an orange, we may notice the stickiness of the juice, the smell of the orange oil, and a host of other sensations
Through the day, we regularly pass from personality to personality. We can go from Caretaker to Judge to Striver in a flash. Because of the speed and fluidity of this process, we don’t usually attend to the ways in which this inner community conducts its business.
It is the nature of the human mind to be subdivided into parts. We all have them. Parts exist from birth, either in potential or in actuality.