Resurrection is a strong word. I was
surprised, myself, when I saw it emerge on the page. Resurrecting your life
implies it has been dead. Is it true?
Of course, you say, I must be alive or
could not be reading this page. Well, on one level that’s true. On other
levels, it may be that aspects of you have been dead or as-if dead for a long
time. How do we resurrect what may have been dead, when we may not even be
aware of its deadness? Or its existence?
These are important questions. Just as
significant may be the question of how aspects of us may have died or shut down
in the first place.
In previous blog entries, I have referred
to various early prenatal and birth events that may have left deep imprints on
our personality, attitudes, beliefs, relationship styles and tendencies, as
well as other habits and patterns in our lives. This is a common focus in the
field of Prenatal and Birth Psychology, but, to me, it is important to also
acknowledge and learn to access the potential of this early time in our lives.
When we are affected by very early trauma,
we often lose touch with our earliest, most essential potential. Today I would
like to talk about that potential and how it can benefit you now.
Enthusiasm
and Potential
When little ones first come into being,
they are propelled by an inherent life force, a kind of
If you have ever attended a natural birth,
where birth attendants acted only in support of natural birth process, rather
than intervening out of fear or need to prevent distress, you will know what
this inherent embracing of life can look like.
I remember the first birth I attended.
Maya, the little girl so named because she was born on the first of May,
shocked us all by immediately lifting her little head and looking around the
room at each of us, almost before the rest of her body emerged. We were all
deeply touched by her sweet eye contact. We felt an equal eagerness to meet
this new little being amongst us.
Take a moment now, as you read this, to
consider how you feel reading about this birth. Do you feel a resonant kind of
enthusiasm for life? A curiosity? Amazement? Or do you have some other kinds of
feelings? Doubt? How could a newborn have
lifted her own head and looked around the room like that? Babies can’t lift
their heads on their own. Newborns can’t see. This is nonsense. Babies can’t
feel enthusiasm. Babies’ nervous systems aren’t developed enough to respond to
a situation like this. It was just reflexive. These, by the way, have been
the responses of otherwise sensible scientists and researchers who have not
believed in the sentience of little ones.
What is your response? Do you feel awe? Do
you feel anger? Sadness? Delight? Stress? Do you feel your feelings? Do you feel your body? How does it respond to
this story? Is there tension somewhere? In your shoulders? Eyes? Back? Feet? Are
you holding your breath? Check out what you are aware of in your body in this
moment. What is it telling you?
How we respond to birth stories and reports
can inform us as to our own early experience. Not feeling in your own body may
relate to a dissociative experience when you were little or to a somatic
re-enactment of anesthesia given to your mother at birth. Anesthesia is
designed to stop us from feeling pain. This involves not feeling. We may learn at
birth to react to stressful situations by similarly not feeling.
Dissociative
Tendencies
Dissociation may be considered a kindness
of nature to reduce the suffering of animals in distress. If a saber-toothed
tiger is about to eat you and there is nothing you can do, it may be helpful to
leave the sensations of your body and not have to feel the pain. As little
ones, we usually don’t have other options available to us when under stress. We
can try crying for mom, but, if that doesn’t work, we aren’t strong enough to
fight or fly. We need to withdraw into dissociation to prevent full overwhelm. Unfortunately,
once we have learned to react to a situation this way, we may automatically
react to life stress the same way.
No matter how long we have practiced this
dissociative pattern, our life energy, our life enthusiasm, remains beneath it.
We might even appreciate the intelligence of a system that is capable of
protecting essential life forces by causing us to withdraw from overwhelming
stimulation of the senses. If you have tended to dissociate in your life,
consider that this has been a survival mechanism. It has enabled you to get
this far in life. It may not serve you today the way it did when you were
little, but it was an expression of your bio-intelligence. You made it through
whatever terrifying, painful or otherwise intolerable situation you may have
encountered before you had a mature enough nervous system to process it, or
before you had other defensive strategies in place to deal with it. Can you possibly
find an appreciation or gratitude for this dissociative mechanism that kept you
from being completely overwhelmed back then?
It is possible that you don’t have a
tendency to dissociate. I am writing this as if you do because we live in a
highly dissociative world culture in this 21st century. In the
modern western world, we are taught early on to ignore or distrust our bodies
in favor of mental reasoning. We learn to cut ourselves off from our first
order of experience – our sensations – and to jump ahead to interpretation, or
to the interpretations of others.
Even if we have some ability to sense and
be with our sensations, how likely are we to stay with them in the speed of
everyday life? For example, as you read this, do you have a sense of your body?
The internet is a wonderful way for us to connect across the world, but it also
speeds us up beyond our biological capabilities. I am reminded of a comparison
I once heard, that our brain to brawn (body) ratio when driving a car is the
equivalent of that of a dinosaur! Remember, the dinosaurs are now extinct. They
were not able to adapt to a new environmental situation. We may need to find
ways to counter this brain to brawn ratio if we as a species are to survive. Do
you sense your body when behind the wheel of a car? Do you sense it when
watching television, talking on your mobile phone, playing video games, or in
any of your other daily activities?
Sensing the body is now known to change our
neurobiology. Parts of the brain develop more fully when we practice mindful
awareness. I believe this can help counter a dinosaur-like brain to brawn
ratio, as we learn to interact with events from the present time oriented, socially
adept pre-frontal cortex of the brain and its related social engagement nervous
system, rather than reacting automatically from a past fear-based orientation
of the amygdala, the sympathetic fight-flight nervous system, or the
parasympathetic freeze/dissociation nervous system.
Take
some time to sense your body and breath as you read this. Feel free to pause in
your reading until you feel settled in your breath. Let yourself be aware of
what you sense in your body. Which parts of your body stand out for you in this
moment? Do you tend to be most aware of areas of discomfort, pain, tension,
holding? Are you able to orient to what feels ok or even good in your body?
Take some time to scan your body, head, neck, chest, breath, diaphragm/stomach
area, belly, pelvis, back, arms, hands, legs, feet. What stands out for you?
What do you notice that surprises you? What do you tend to be aware of
habitually? Can you challenge your habits a bit and guide yourself to notice
areas or sensations you are not accustomed to noticing. This might mean
noticing any sensations at all. Or it might mean sensing that little space
between your right index finger and middle finger. Or where your neck meets
your head. Or the base of your left big toe. What can you sense in this moment
that is new for you?
Return
to Potential
As we inquire as to what is new, as to what
is in this moment, we begin to return to the potential of the little one. Coming
back to Maya, everything in the room was visually new for her! She had not seen
us before! She had not seen a room full of people, colors, shapes and forms
before she was born.
In this newness, there is infinite
potential. As we develop and mature, we make decisions. Our cells change in
certain ways, even in the embryo, establishing that they will become heart
cells or liver cells or skin cells, etc. Throughout life, we make choices and
change in response to our life conditions in ways that tend to set us on
certain paths. Other pathways become less apparent or available to us through
this process. The more we repeat our same choices and decisions, the more
rigidly we become set on our path.
If you know me, you already know that I
tend to mention Continuum Movement as I find it such an effective and
accessible practice for dissolving our patterns and coming into presence in
each moment. Returning to the concept of resurrection, Emilie Conrad, founder
of Continuum, has compared the fluidity we are capable of to a snake shedding
its skin. Each skin represents a life or period of life being let go of. In
order to resiliently meet each moment as it arises, we must relinquish each
past moment. We must die and be resurrected again and again. Otherwise, we try
to meet the current situation from a stance established for the past and not
necessarily appropriate or helpful for the present.
Continuum is of course not the only way to
practice death and resurrection. Any practice that really brings us into the
moment will facilitate our ability to be present and will take us that much
closer to our original potential.
And
in this moment, are you still aware of your breath? Your body? Your sensations?
If you stay with them, what changes? How does the room look? What is new? How
are you being resurrected in this moment? What is new? What is your potential?
