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omg Volodymyr Zelenskyy's grammy speech 😭
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Section 106: Your Eyes
Chapter 4: Intuition & Somatic Memory
Standing Lateral Neck Stretch w/ rotation
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Section 106: Your Eyes
Chapter 4: Intuition & Somatic Memory
Supine Lateral Neck Stretch
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Section 106: Your Eyes
Theme: I See
Acknowledging the visible and invisible world
Chapter 4: Intuition & Somatic Memory
Somatic Memory or somatic intelligence is a body's independent intelligence. The body holds embedded memories just like the brain does, and somatic practice is the integration of awareness between the body's nonverbal communication system and the mind. Think of it like its own style of meditation. Somatic healing is about listening to the language of immediate experiences, without any verbal messages or any planned intentions, and giving them a voice.
We existed as wild creatures long before humans stood tall, or used tools, or formed languages. We could feel when the weather was turning on us, or danger lurked in the dark without hosting an incessant internal dialog about it. Your stomach might feel upset or legs feel twitchy because you know something bad is coming, but your brain doesn’t have a way to describe how it knows. Like being carsick inside your own skin. Your brain wants to take action to make the uneasy feeling stop, so it knee-jerk does whatever made the feeling stop last time based on its embedded memories. A simple example would be like having to pee. Or having to pee while sleeping. You don’t just pee the bed every night, and you don’t wake up and have a conversation about it with yourself either. Your body just gets up and goes to a bathroom. Crisis is averted, you feel better, and positive reinforcement is repeated with minimal effort. This might be a crass description of our mysterious and magical sixth sense, but it is one of our body’s intuitive responses, based on an embedded memory. The original memory of potty training no longer matters once the new learned behavior is locked in.
But not all learned behaviors are beneficial. A body that is in pain with tight muscles or limited flexibility is more likely to feel nervous and threatened, and read it’s surroundings as dangerous unnecessarily. And it’s more likely to look for outward sources to soothe itself quickly. It is significantly easier to become reliant on quick-fix coping mechanisms than it is to diagnose a problem we can’t put words to. It’s also easy to trust these quick-fixes too quickly and form disappointment loops when our body’s needs, and its huge expectations, are never actually fulfilled. Our body remembers the coping mechanism giving us relief, at least for a short time, so it tries it again and again and again and again frantically hunting for the cure. But small doses can become big doses hoping for bigger relief, and our somatic intelligence system can’t process why this isn’t working. And the longer it’s been ingrained, the harder it gets to change.
Somatic healing is not a quick-fix. But it is a real fix. It takes lots of repetition and patience with yourself, just like starting any other good habit. Digging new ruts feels awkward for a while. That’s ok. So start off by listening to the queues. What is your body seeing, feeling, remembering, or being triggered by? Give everything words. It can be a real description, or if the feelings are too vague still, give them each a placeholder nickname, like ‘weird air’, or ‘purple elephant’. It doesn’t really matter yet. Someday maybe you can give the purple elephant more words, but today we just need to acknowledge its existence. (Side note: to clarify here, I’m not trying to make anyone dig up repressed memories or re-live traumatic events. Even if those were the origin that kicked off the triggers, the goal here isn’t to write an autobiography of our pain, the goal is somatic or systemic healing.)
Once you’ve named a trigger, next name whatever symptoms go with it. Queasy, dizzy, shaking, sweating, rage…? There’s no wrong answer, we’re just giving names to feelings. When these symptoms start, what is your first reaction to do? Usually it’s some sort of: fight, flight, self-soothe, medicate or eat, smother, distract, etc… Don’t do it right now, just feel it. Name it. Our body (or rather our somatic intelligence system) follows this pattern: “when I’m triggered by <unknown elephant> and I feel <twitchy and scared> then I will <eat and binge watch tv> until the feeling stops.” /end. Your body is trying to avert a crisis for you, like not peeing the bed at night, but it can’t mentally process or reason anything more complicated than that. All it's got to work with is a series of muscle twitches and gut bacteria. This is the language of immediate experiences. And this is where the mind has to step in and help sometimes. Hence the need for somatic practice, to bridge the gap between the body’s nonverbal communication system and the mind when the reactions aren’t healthy.
So now that you’ve named a pattern, what do you hope to feel or accomplish by doing the action? Does your action rationally have anything to do with the original trigger or symptoms if you give yourself some time to reflect? Your body chose the action because it just wanted the uncomfortable part to go away, but what about you? What would be the perfect scenario? What would a better path be like? How do you get to that?
By giving our queues and triggers a real name, we slowly take away some of the fathomless dread they carry. If we can detach our symptom from it, we can release the body’s unnecessary danger signals, and reset its expectations to slowly help it heal and carve out new, healthier paths of our choosing.
I (like most people) am triggered by tons of things all day long. I am afraid of heights for example, and I don’t even have to be that far off the ground. I actually love being up high, looking out airplane windows, and I think being able to fly like a bird would be sheer bliss. I wasn’t always afraid of heights, I don’t want to be afraid of heights, but I’ve apparently fallen enough times in my life out of trees, off ladders, monkey bars, bleachers and hills, and sprained enough ankles that my body has created symptoms like extreme vertigo and sweating if I’m ever more than a foot off the ground. And my action is to freeze and very slowly lower my whole body back down to somewhere stable until the panic subsides. Where I can’t get hurt. Do my actions and symptoms have anything to do with being on a step stool? No. Going up 2 ft. of elevation doesn’t make people sweat or dizzy. So I can now relabel my trigger as not a fear of heights, but my body’s embedded memory of injury when the ground doesn’t look or feel stable. If someone else is flying the airplane I’m fine. My symptoms aren’t actual ailments that need treatment, they are a non-verbal communication of that fear of injury. And my action response to lay on the floor isn’t a reasonable solution since I’m going to need to use step stools and ladders for the foreseeable future. Could I avoid them forever? Maybe. I wish. Is that mentally a healthy lifestyle solution? Not really. So I ask myself what would be my perfect scenario here, and how do I get to that? How can I climb ladders and reassure my body that I won’t get hurt? Maybe larger steps and a handrail, or someone below the ladder for stability. Maybe I should do more root chakra exercises for muscular and joint stability if my body knows that something internally isn’t steady. The more I firm up my foundations and practice the new path I want to be on, someday the symptoms will ease and the fear pattern will end.
All of our muscles and nervous systems have to talk to each other to work correctly. When they’re scared and not functioning properly we have to slowly teach them how we want them to behave and communicate what’s expected from them. Like teaching a child. You wouldn’t just toss one in a job site or an office cubicle and expect them to know what to do. You need lots of practice to embed good memories and experiences to draw from first. The stretches this week are neck side bends. Are they repetitive? Yes. But that’s how we form good habits.
References this week from Jo Ann Staugaard-Jones "The Vital Psoas Muscle"
#physical therapy#chakras#stretches#maslow#neck#healing#intuition#somatic memory#somatic intelligence#relearning#nonverbal communication#anxiety#triggers#self improvement#third eye
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Section 106: Your Eyes
Chapter 3: Lucidity & Looking Deeper
Palming Your Eyes
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Section 106: Your Eyes
Chapter 3: Lucidity & Looking Deeper
Rotational Vision Exercise
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Section 106: Your Eyes
Chapter 3: Lucidity & Looking Deeper
Vertical Panning Exercise
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Section 106: Your Eyes
Chapter 3: Lucidity & Looking Deeper
Depth of Focus Exercise
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Section 106: Your Eyes
Theme: I See
Acknowledging the visible and invisible world
Chapter 3: Lucidity & Looking Deeper
Lucidity comes from the Latin lucidus meaning "light, bright, or clear." As a personal quality, being lucid means to be completely and easily understandable. Being transparent with nothing hidden in your words, actions, or appearance. As an action, using your lucid eye or lucid sight means looking beyond the physical or material forms in front of you, and seeing quality.
What do you see when you look at a person? Do we look at people we know differently than strangers? Just walking around out in public I probably spend less than a second each gauging how near or far away people are so that I don’t bump into them, and vaguely how threatening vs. in distress they might be to determine if I need to react or not, and then move on with my day. I can’t say I spend much time assessing how stylish or fit, cheerful, tall, short, old, or classically attractive anyone is ever, whether I know them or not. Those qualities in other people don’t really affect me, so I suppose I’ve never learned to pay them much attention. I’m sure everyone’s got different levels of what they pay attention to though, this is just my experience through the filter of what’s been important in my life.
A cousin and I once noticed over a few glasses of sangria one night that we remember the people we know or friends we like as actually more attractive than people we don’t know or people that have treated us poorly. As if the actual mental image memories of them are altered to remind us later who we liked or didn’t. An inner qualities filter or watermark for future reference.
I was watching a movie last night and there was this couple, maybe in their mid 50’s lying in bed talking about their lives, and it made me think, what would a couple like that see when they look at each other? I imagine they still spend about a second gauging how threatening vs. in distress the other person is on a basic level. And they’d vaguely be aware of what the other person is wearing, or how fit or cheerful they seem at that moment in time. But there’s a whole other pile of filters happening on top of that image beyond the basic like/don’t like. Filters of how many times they’ve looked at each other, and their memories of this same face changing over time. Different places they’ve been or lived together. Summer tans and freckles and scars and hair styles. How life experiences have shaped them, and the feelings that all of those moments left behind. They’d overlay this current image with millions of similar ones from months or years back until the picture itself becomes less of looking at a person and more of a feeling. Of safety. Of struggles. Jealousy. Lust. Comfort. Determination. Perseverance. Pride. Sorrow. Loss. Camaraderie.
So now, what do you see when you look at a person? How many filters of time, and memories, and safety and distress can you see? How lucid or transparent are they? And what about yourself?
The exercises this week are for your eyes. Notice as you do each as you look around, all the work and information your eyes constantly provide.
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Section 106: Your Eyes
Chapter 2: Meditation & Contemplation
Supine neck flexion
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Section 106: Your Eyes
Chapter 2: Meditation & Contemplation
Prone neck extension
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Section 106: Your Eyes
Chapter 2: Meditation & Contemplation
Standing neck flexion & extension
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Section 106: Your Eyes
Theme: I See
Acknowledging the visible and invisible world
Chapter 2: Meditation & Contemplation
Have you ever looked straight into someone’s eyes for a prolonged amount of time? It’s really eerie. It makes most people uncomfortable and they usually start laughing from nerves to break the tension, fidgeting, looking away, or even crying. A very public example of this is Marina Abramovic’s 2010 installation/performance at the MoMA called “The Artist is Present.” People who sat to face her described feelings like time changing speed, or like prayer. No one could imagine at the time why people would want to come to a museum just to sit and look into the eyes of a stranger. But for 8 hour days for almost 3 months, lines of people waited, craving this peculiar human contact: to have someone look at them.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/nyregion/04about.html
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/marina-abramovic-inspired-novel-1425469
https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/marina-abramovic-marina-abramovic-the-artist-is-present-2010/
I couldn’t tell you the eye color of most of the people I know. Staring into someone’s eyes feels like an invasion of privacy without consent; too personal; too dangerous. Even staring at my own eyes in the mirror has an other-worldly feeling like if I look too long, some portal to something I’m not prepared for will open and demons or something will gust out. It’s a curious thing: to see, and be seen.
“Everyone around you can see you.” That sentiment makes some people feel important. And it makes others wish they were invisible.
“The overwhelming majority of people you will encounter don’t give you a second thought. You are a blip on their radar from their perspective, with their busy lives and busy minds.” That sentiment makes some people feel worthless. And it makes others feel wonderfully light and free.
Both statements are true, but honestly neither of them have anything to do with you or your feelings.
Being seen and being important are not the same thing.
You can change the way you look or change your behavior to become more or less noticeable. You can be noticeable in a good or bad way. You can be noticeable IRL or online.
None of those things make you important. You just are.
You exist. You feel. You do things that cause repercussions, both good and bad. You love. You communicate. You create. You see the world around you and glean information from it. You have an effect on the communal energy pool that surrounds us all. What do you see around you? What energy do you feel around you? How do you want to be seen? What energy do you want others to feel when they are near you?
Meditation
Take a big breath of air and imagine consuming a huge gulp of stray random energy particles. Hold it for a couple seconds. Think about what you want the energy around you to feel like and imagine breathing that type of energy out in a thick gust as you exhale. Imagine the air you breathe out making a circle cloud that settles around you on the floor. Breathe in again, and repeat a few times until you can imagine all these air circles stacking up around you as far as your arms can reach made of the thick energy cloud blanket you are creating. Calm your breathing back down until it’s just gentle small breaths through your nose. Sit in your energy circle for a moment. Safe. When you’re ready, close your eyes, draw in one slow breath through your nose, feel the energy circle around you prepare for action, and when you breathe out hard imagine your energy cloud burst away from you. It leaves you as it grows and spreads and thins. Your energy spreads ripples out in all directions. It smacks up against someone outside taking a walk. Goes through some neighbors. Some trees. Some small animals. Part of your energy touches someone so desperately lonely. Someone else in pain. Someone cold and lost and hungry. A pet waiting for their person to come home from the store. Further to the woods. To the ocean. To a building full of people. Through an empty train car. It catches the winds and crosses grass fields. It blows up the side of a snowy mountain. Past some hikers and a goat. It slows and spreads apart. It settles and mingles with the breath and energy of a million other people. You. Are made of energy. Your energy touches everything around you for thousands of miles. What do you want to be sending out? You don’t need words as you think about this. Just feel the energy in your body, and imagine what you’re radiating, and what you want that energy to do in the world around you. If every particle you sent out for the rest of your life had your name on it that anyone could see, what would you want them to go and do?
This week’s exercises are cervical flexion & extensions: the balance between looking at yourself, and then outwards; down and up; foundation to aspirations; root up through crown; past to future.
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Section 106: Your Eyes
Chapter 1: Trust & Emotions
Prone Cervical Rotation
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Section 106: Your Eyes
Chapter 1: Trust & Emotions
Side-lying Lumbar & Cranial Rotation
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Section 106: Your Eyes
Chapter 1: Trust & Emotions
Supine Cervical Rotation
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Section 106: Your Eyes
Chapter 1: Trust & Emotions
Standing Cervical Rotation
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