After the New Years' Resolutions- Dissolving Your Manifestation Blocks

 As I write this, it is mid-February. New Years’ and its resolutions have come and gone. Winter gloom abounds. Here in Devon, non-stop rains have turned farmers’ fields into lakes and railroad tracks in junk piles. The dark days could be depressing, but the days are getting longer and occasionally the sun comes back out to remind us of what is possible.

In the light of winter, how do your New Years’ resolutions look today? Did you even set any? I’d like to talk today about how our goals and plans, like New Years’ resolutions, may run into roadblocks on their way to manifestation, and how these blocks may relate to our earliest history.

Many years ago, I took and then taught a course called DMA, later changed to Technologies for Creating. Through this course, I changed my life in many ways. Robert Fritz, the founder of DMA, had applied his experience as a musician to the phenomenon of creating what we want in life. He described three stages of the creative process: germination, gestation, and receiving. Years later, through doctoral studies in Pre- and Perinatal Psychology, I learned how our very early experience in the womb and birth can affect our ability to move through these stages. Lets look at how they may be affecting you.

The Path of Least Resistance

The first step in changing anything is awareness. If we are unaware of the problem, we won’t take action to change it. With increasing awareness, our options multiply. In his book, The Path of Least Resistance, Fritz described how we tend to follow the same path repeatedly. In automatic mode, we take the path of least resistance, leading us to where we are used to going. To create something new, we need to establish a new pathway. This requires paying attention and making different choices.

My current mentor, Emilie Conrad, states “the nervous system is a pattern addict.” It needs to establish patterns to enable us to function in our world. If I had to stop to create new neural pathways for each word I write, this blog would never reach you! It reminds me a bit of my efforts to speak French with a friend this morning. After years of not traveling that path, it now seemed quite overgrown! I had to weed out my newer Spanish vocabulary to find the dusty French. My brain was quite tired after twenty minutes of sorting through the mess for every sentence!

Our lives can be a bit like this. We know we are not happy. We decide we want something different. We are determined to have it be different, but the path of least resistance takes us back again and again to what we already know.

In this vein, New Years’ resolutions can become too much work very quickly. They fall away as we continue down the old path. The question is, how do we do something else?

In Continuum Movement, we practice slowing down, which enables us to become more aware and make different choices. We even ask the question, “What else?” What else is possible here? If my body always moves in the same way, what else could happen?

We may make supreme efforts in our lives to be more aware, to make different choices, to take a different path, but we keep finding ourselves back where we were. We might give up and say, I’ll try again next January!

Early Imprints

How might all this relate to our early history? I find it interesting that Fritz used the terms germination and gestation to describe the first two stages of creating. Germination refers to when we get an idea for something; we conceive of it. We may have abundant energy for it, bursting with enthusiasm as we begin down our new pathway. Some people, however, get stuck in their creative process right here at the beginning. They have trouble conceiving of what they want, of setting goals, of allowing themselves to even feel a longing for what could be. Fritz taught techniques for discovering your visions and defining them in practical, measurable terms. This can help us get over that first hump, but why does the hump occur?

We may have tried before to do something different and concluded after our failures that it isn’t possible. Some people, however, do not make this conclusion. I am reminded of holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, who managed a positive attitude despite all odds in a concentration camp. I don’t know what Frankl’s conception, birth or early life were like. Based on years of experience working with prenatal and birth trauma, I imagine he was a wanted, welcomed baby who enjoyed some healthy bonding within his family.

Where we have suffered in our first creation, coming into this life, our early imprints tend to express themselves with each new beginning in our lives. Planned conception is a relatively rare event. Most conceptions are unexpected, even if the parents want a baby. There may be feelings of ambivalence, questions as to one’s ability to parent a child at this time, thoughts of abortion, or abortion attempts. Conception may have occurred through rape or within a fearful, violent environment of war or mental illness. How we relate to new beginnings, including setting new goals in our lives, can differ, depending on if we experienced rejection or warm welcome when we were conceived, when the pregnancy was confirmed and our presence discovered, or when we were born.

Even if we were conceived intentionally, we might not sense ourselves being welcomed for who we actually are. It is not unusual for couples to try having a baby to solve relationship problems, to manipulate a partner into marriage, or to try to have a boy or girl if they already have a child of the opposite sex. Children are also wanted to ensure continuation of the family line, take over the family business or fill in some other kind of gap. Children born into this field of expectation may find it difficult to be themselves and determine what they really want.

The subsequent stages of the creative process, gestation, and receiving, can also reflect your early history. Gestation refers to the time after conceiving your vision of what you want, when you may not notice much progress, like the bump of pregnancy that is initially too small to be seen. At some point, there is a quickening, when you begin to realize you are making progress. If you did not feel held and welcomed when your pregnancy was discovered, or through your time in the womb, you may not recognize signs of progress toward your goal. Or you may be plagued by feelings of hopelessness, self-judgment, and worthlessness. Do I really deserve to have this? Or you may unconsciously sabotage your own efforts, as a way perhaps to avoid the kind of pain you experienced when you were rejected or judged as a little one.

This theme can continue into the third stage, receiving. This relates to the time of birth and just after when the baby is received. How the parents or family receive the baby is not always joyous. For example, I remember being told many times that my father looked at me and declared how ugly I was! Babies with visible deformities are often met by shock, rejection and judgment. A girl born to parents wanting or expecting a boy can feel like a failure and may never feel able to be or have what she really wants. Babies can also be conceived through a secret affair, to be revealed by how the baby looks at birth. Even if the baby’s looks don’t give away the deceit, the fear, shame, guilt, or dissatisfaction they represent may follow them throughout life.

How we are received can affect our own ability to receive what we manifest in our lives. The perfect job or partner or opportunity may present itself to us and we don’t notice, are too busy or don’t allow ourselves for whatever reason to take it in. Or, we succeed in reaching our goal and, instead of celebrating and feeling satisfied, we focus on how it isn’t quite perfect, or we don’t deserve to have it, or we move on to the next thing so quickly we never really take in what we have accomplished. Sounding familiar yet?

Dissolving the Blocks

A first step in dissolving this kind of block is to be aware of it. Taking time to consider your early history, asking your parents about it if possible, recording it for yourself or telling others about it as a coherent story can help you to recognize its echoes in your life. It can also facilitate acknowledging this as your past, rather than who you are.

It is important to differentiate what has happened to you in the past from who are and what you are capable of now. Having the attentive reflection of a practitioner experienced in prenatal and birth therapy can be extremely helpful in sorting your history out while establishing on a somatic, cellular level a different kind of relational field, where you experience being welcomed, supported, acknowledged, celebrated for who you are.

There is so much to explore in this area. Please stay tuned for my next blog entry to continue on the journey!

The Power of our Stories 2: Gifted through Conditions

In my previous blog post, I described an experience I had many years ago with a concussion that changed the direction of my life. Today, in the wake of New Years’ celebrations around the globe, I would like to discuss the power of this kind of review of our life stories, and the gifts available to us when we are able to witness these stories without identifying with them.

The turn of the year seems like a potent time to examine our lives, or at least the events of the passing year. Based on our year review, we set goals, intentions or resolutions for the year being born. This process, like any transition, can echo our original experience of being born into this life. We often do it unconsciously, with an abundance of numbing substances like alcohol or too much food. This can be a reflection or re-enactment of a birth process involving anesthesia or other drugs. We often feel at the mercy of time, as it moves too quickly or too slowly, emphasized by the passing of another year. Similarly, for many of us, our birth was taken over by the speedy intentions of those attending our birth. It is not uncommon to lose our sense of our own timing in this process.

As January rolls along, I have been with many who are finding themselves feeling heavy, depressed, resistant to embracing the promise life offers them. This is not unusual when we have found ways to evade what is most meaningful for us, following more popular distractions or promises from loud advertisements, or people around us. We may be tired from overeating, partying, or even buying or receiving too many Christmas gifts. What happens to the depths of us in all this activity? I find my clients arriving this time of year feeling worn out, deflated after all the excitement and adventure of the holidays.

For myself, I am aware that the holidays offered not only rest and heart-warming family gatherings; they were also marked by grief and loss. My mother, whose health has been gradually deteriorating, went through a sudden decline at the end of November and seems to have endured a small stroke. I feel sad as I witness her new challenges with walking, talking and orientation. I feel grateful that her sweetness remains and everyone seems to still love her as much as ever, but my mom as I knew her, is not quite still here.

Life or?

At the same time, numerous friends and colleagues are meeting cancerous invasions in their bodies. I witness and support as best I can their valiant attempts to find health in the midst of this embodied chaos. I understand cancer as an expression of cells gone astray, isolated and no longer in resonant communion with the whole. Weakness, weight loss, pain, as well as cognitive effects seem to take over the scene, while the essence of who this person really is strives to express itself. Choices are made about embracing life more fully or embracing death and dying.

I can relate to these challenges. Some years ago, I was diagnosed with a malignant melanoma. I was confused that this happened shortly after I felt I had made for the first time a strong choice to live. This cancer seemed to be a way for my body to quickly express my earlier ambivalence for life. I had always said that, if I were ever diagnosed with cancer, I would only use alternative treatments. When the moment came, however, there wasn’t time to refuse the surgery. My dermatologist told me I needed to get to her office that very day. This was serious! This was life threatening! In that moment, even with the fear of what this all meant, I had no ambivalence. I got myself to her office and had the surgery.

This was a wake up call like no other in my life to date. It is too easy to fall into survival mode, just taking care of what needs to be taken care of in life, rather than deepening into essential presence and intention. After this emergency surgery, the ongoing pain of the scar served to remind me of the choice I had made. I chose to be here. I had the opportunity to leave but I chose to stay. I see this choice being played out by those I know who have been ill or overwhelmed by other life circumstances. They, like me, are being asked to make a choice. I suspect that their choice will affect them for the rest of their lives, just as mine has.

What Do You Choose?

In view of this, I would like to invite you to take a moment now to consider your own past year, and

the life that led up to it. What events stand out for you? What have been your greatest challenges? What has been overwhelming for you? When you consider these experiences, how familiar are they, or the feeling they evoke for you? If they are familiar, chances are you are in some way re-living an aspect of your earlier history. In this case, you have a special opportunity here to revamp your history, if you will. You can make choices now that may not have been available to you back then. Perhaps your situation is about more fully embracing life, as mine was. You have the chance here to really commit, to acknowledge what is most important to you deep down, and choose that.

Take a moment to reflect on this. It may take much longer than a moment, but allow yourself, if it feels right and useful to you, to be with this within yourself. If these challenging situations were offering you a gift or a lesson or a message, what would it be?

If you find yourself opening to new possibilities here, or re-visiting old ones you had forgotten, make some notes for yourself to remind you later. This is important. This is about touching into your original potential. This is about what you are here for.

Whatever it is, welcome to this life you now find yourself in! Welcome to this moment. May it feed and nurture you in whatever way you may need just now.

I would love to hear from you about how this little exploration has affected you. Please feel free to leave a comment below or to contact me to let me know.

Wishing you ease, grace, happiness, peace and embodied potential for this new year!

The Power of Our Stories

Supporting a student recently, I was reminded of just how widespread trauma is amongst us, of how powerful its grip on us can be, and how empowering it can be to simply acknowledge it.

How many of us have not been through overwhelming accidents, embarrassments, abuses, or other assaults in our lives? Most of us have not had the so-called ideal childhood where every moment was wondrous and every interaction rewarding. Most of us were not adequately seen, held, respected, met and reflected as little ones. Research on PTSD (Post traumatic stress disorder) has found that those exposed to challenging situations, like war, for example, are more likely to emerge with ongoing symptoms of stress intolerance if they had a traumatic experience when younger. Our histories, our stories inform us throughout our lives as to who we are, where we belong (or don’t) and what our purpose may be. We define ourselves according to our experience, particularly our very early experience.

The student I talked with had been depressed, having lost interest in the work she had previously been so enthusiastic about. A shocking accident had left her in pain, unable to walk for months, and unable to perform tasks she had previously excelled at. As I listened to her, my heart opened. I felt the angst of her struggle and recognized it. As support, I shared with her a piece of my own history.

My Concussive Story

In 1979, I had a concussion. I was engaged in my favorite hobby – folk dancing. Supposedly a relatively safe activity, I had been dancing Scandinavian turning dances at a weekend workshop out in the country. There were too many dancers on the floor. Someone’s foot accidently became entwined with mine or my partner’s. With all the momentum of the spin, we fell. Had I been on my own, I suspect I would have stretched out my arm and landed on it, probably breaking it. Instead, I went straight back on the back of my head onto the concrete, with the weight of my partner on top of me.

The room went quiet. I now know that the stillness was a combination of both the shock in the room and the shock in my nervous system. There was a doctor at the workshop who came over and starting assessing my state. What is your name, she asked. Can you tell me your name? I knew why she was asking. I had been working as an Occupational Therapist on a Neurology unit. I had patients with recent head injuries who couldn’t remember their names. But I knew my name. Saying it was another matter.

I have no idea how long I lay there in shock, paralyzed, unable to make my mouth or tongue move to say my name. I only knew it took everything I had to make it happen. It reminds me of when a petite mother witnesses her child under the wheels of a car and somehow lifts the car to free the child.  In my case, however, the muscles simply wouldn’t respond. The nerves could not convey their messages. Eventually, after what may have been a minute or an hour, my name came out of my mouth. Relieved, I began to laugh. The whole room joined in. They knew I was fine now and life, or at least dance, could resume.

Beginning A Long Journey

Life was not back to normal, however. I was helped to walk over to a mat at the side of the room to lie down while the others went back to their dance. I felt more lightheaded than I ever had before. As I lay on my mat, I slowly turned my head and there, to my surprise, I saw a newborn baby on the mat next to mine! Someone had brought the baby and left him to sleep while she danced. For me, however, this sight was miraculous. I didn’t know it then, but I, too, was starting a new life. At the moment, innocent like the babe next to me, I knew only what I saw.

For a few days, as my friends checked in with me through the night to make sure I was still conscious and alive, I felt a lightness of being. I felt ecstatic with all life being fresh and new. I wasn’t too bothered when, returning to teach folk dancing, I found I couldn’t balance on one foot to demonstrate a dance step. I simply asked a friend to come and hold my hand as I demonstrated.

Over time, however, the headaches and dizziness began to get to me. I began to worry about my memory. When I returned to work at the hospital, I was horrified to discover myself forgetting important things. One evening after work, I realized I had left a confused old lady on the toilet, having forgotten to go back to retrieve her and help her back to her wheel chair before going home. I feared I would lose my job if I told anyone. I didn’t know what to do. I was immensely relieved to see her happily in her chair the next day. I longed to have my own life fall back into place so easily. I began to feel depressed.

My hopeless feelings were enhanced by my inability at times to find the words I needed. Prior to the concussion, I had loved word games. My folk dance friends and I would spend hours when we weren’t dancing immersed in games of Scrabble and Boggle. I excelled at these games, easily coming up with obscure words that brought me more points than anyone else. Now, nothing came. I struggled at times to remember words even when speaking. A visit to a neurologist added to the growing gloom. Reviewing a brain scan, he told me what he saw in my brain would not come from a traumatic injury like my concussion. It signified a more deteriorative disease like MS (Multiple sclerosis).

This shocking news landed on top of the concussion shock, still lingering from a year earlier. Having worked with patients with MS, I had often thought this debilitating disease with no cure was the last diagnosis I would ever want. The neurologist wanted me to do a spinal tap to complete the diagnosis, but something in me rebelled. I had the uncharacteristic thought to not go through with the spinal tap and just think of myself as healthy. I never returned to the neurologist.

  

Guided into a New Life

I now believe something was protecting me, guiding me. Over the next few years, my life began to turn around. I found myself drawn to alternative therapies, leading me into my body and through my earlier trauma history. As I faced my traumas, they began to resolve, loosening their hold on me. The depression lifted. My life force strengthened. Eventually, led to Craniosacral Therapy, the remaining symptoms from the concussion began to diminish.

Today, I look back to that folk dance accident with immense gratitude. I don’t think I would be able to do the subtle therapies I do now had I not been knocked out of my old ways. Up until that time, I had essentially lived from the neck up. My body was just something I had to take care of so it wouldn’t bother me. After the concussion, I could no longer be as heady, intellectual or articulate as I had been before. It was a huge loss for me. Depression was a natural response.

 

Talking to the student, I described my story briefly, acknowledging how common it is to feel depressed after a life changing injury. I also explained that chronic pain after an injury can affect nerves up into the brain, repeatedly setting off a stress response. The person begins to feel chronically overwhelmed. Their resources are taken up with dealing with the pain. Their cortisol levels are high. They have nothing to fall back on when stress arises in their life. They feel exhausted, drained, losing interest in anything that takes energy.

The student was glowing more and more with each word I spoke. She felt heard and touched by hearing my story and knowing that others have similar experiences to hers. The next day, she thanked me profusely, telling me how helpful it was just to normalize her situation.

Our interaction inspired me to write this, wishing I could as deeply touch and reassure the many others with similar experiences.

Our Stories as Support

We are all unique. Our experiences are all different. But they are also the same. We all have the potential for compassion based on our own suffering. We actually understand much of how it is to be someone else, even though we can’t possibly understand how it is to be that person! We all share this human journey. Perhaps, the most important service our stories provide is the potential for that understanding. While it can be devastating to identify with our stories, believing they define us, there is profound healing and connectedness available when we witness ourselves in relation to those stories. Knowing we are more than what we have done or seen or experienced, and yet that we have been affected. Our stories are powerful and we can be powerful with them.

As Rumi wrote: "The wound is the place where the Light enters you." When we become our stories, we often cannot perceive or receive the gifts they have to offer us. It is when we step back and allow ourselves to hold our stories within the larger wholeness of our being that we begin to understand. Perhaps then, we even have the potential to embody and pass on the message delivered to us via our experience. The Light is then posted for all to see and share.

Presencing, Being, and Animal Communication

I have just watched an amazing and touching film I wish everyone could be exposed to. You can watch it, too, at  http://www.cultureunplugged.com/documentary/watch-online/play/11936/The-Animal-Communicator

This is a documentary on communicating with animals. It follows a woman who listens to and talks with wild and often upset animals. As I listened, transfixed by her presence, I recognized the kind of resonant, receptive presence we aspire to in Biodynamics in establishing and working within a safe relational field. This is important in Biodynamics in order for the client's system to settle under conditional patterns and resonate more fully with deeper, Biodynamic forces.

The animal communicator endeavored to explain her ability to talk with and understand animals as a function of the quantum connections between us all. As she spoke, I thought of the natural resonance accessed in a quiet being state. In relative stillness, I suspect we all can receive and listen to animals. We also can receive and listen to ourselves and each other.

The state of resonant presence required to practice Biodynamics and other forms of therapy requires  deepening beyond an egoic state of active doingness into a state of universal beingness. Here, we can receive and communicate what is essential for health and well-being.

This is a state we naturally and relatively easily enter into in practicing Continuum Movement. Emilie Conrad, founder of Continuum, speaks of interspecies inclusivity. Like the animal communicator listening to the animals, the Continuum practitioner slows down into a quiet, receptive state, where we can experience the nourishing waves of energetic information from the cosmos, the planet, and our own internal fluids. We may find ourselves moving like other species, our arms becoming wings, our tail swaying, it's movement rippling up through our mid-line.

In communication with other species, there is an acknowledgement of an interspecies continuum. Indigenous peoples who are still skilled at this level of listening and being, declare that we are all connected and belong to one family. We can learn about ourselves and our potential from other animals, as we are on one continuum with them. We can also help them, as well as ourselves and each other, in this state

We can consider this a natural and spiritual state. In the film, traditional animal trackers speak of seeing a line of light leading them to the animal they are tracking. This again is similar to my experience of Biodynamics (and Continuum). I often see or sense light, like a path, guiding me to understand the dynamics of the client’s system and where it wants me to make contact next. Like the animals, the client’s system is often relieved just to perceive it is being heard, without requiring anything of it.

When we emerge from this being state, we run the risk of forgetting it in our busyness, then need to return to rejuvenate. This is one reason I am so grateful for my occupation, where I can spend my days deepening into quiet presence with others, appreciating and receiving who and how they are. It is also why I practice and teach Continuum, as I see an almost desperate need for those of us immersed in modern culture, and its incessant speed and overwhelm, to settle into being and re-member, re-connect with, what really matters.

Being is not only our original, natural state; it is also essential for us to thrive. It may be becoming increasingly important for our basic survival as a species. I hope it is not too late, and that we are willing and able to let go enough to return to being.