I went live the other night on IG to explore some beautiful realizations I was having about what somatic release work, and other practices offer, ultimately.
Releasing is not about eliminating unpleasant feelings or experiences, it’s about loosening the grip that have on you and making space to feel pleasure, hope, joy and take action alongside our unpleasant experiences…
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Transcript of Video
Hey everybody, it's 9 o'clock, and I have some lovely, beautiful downloads I'd love to share with you on release work because somatic movement is about releasing patterns of tension, stress, and pain from our bodies that have accumulated because of our life experiences, and other kinds of release work that's out there.
Release work is not about eliminating an unpleasant feeling or experience. It's about loosening the grip that that experience has on you and, in somatic work specifically, loosening the grip that that experience has on your body so that pleasant and positive feelings can also be felt at the same time.
So, I was working with a client today who said that she had been feeling this sense of unworthiness in her body most of her life. There are a lot of people, I'm sure, that can relate to that experience of feeling a sense of unworthiness in your body, an unworthiness in being.
Who am I to chase my dreams? Who am I to think I can do this? And it's very fascinating because that stuff doesn't go away even after you have done release work.
You still have thoughts and feelings of unworthiness. The difference is that now that you know how to release at the moment you experience that thought or that feeling of unworthiness, it doesn't have the same grip on you because your nervous system and body know how to let things go.
So, you don't stop having unpleasant experiences in life because you do somatic release work or because you have done x, y, and z spiritual work. You get better at not letting those things control you when they show up, and you make space in your body to simultaneously feel other things.
So, the things that this person I was working with wanted to experience in place of, if that unworthiness were to be released at the moment and no longer grip or hold her in that way, what would come in to replace that? Or what would come in alongside that feeling of unworthiness?
And her words were creativity, security, compassion, happiness, right? These feelings we associate with positive experiences. It's allowed to be there alongside our unpleasant feelings, and we don't have to try to eliminate or get rid of the unpleasant feelings in life or the unpleasant feelings in our body or even completely eliminate the experience of pain in our body to be able to start experiencing these positive feelings.
That's what releasing and practicing letting go allows to start happening in your body consciousness. Another way to look at this that we talk about in my six-month program, "Radiance," is food habits and behaviors that you want to see change. Sometimes, when we're trying to change how we eat, there's usually a goal in mind, like we want to lose weight, eliminate the propensity towards some illness, or deal with a health issue, right?
And so we can sometimes have this very strict hard line like we have to eliminate and get rid of, and that's not necessarily wrong. That's not the only approach, and sometimes the approach needed in the beginning is to not completely eliminate everything you have made a habit.
We don't have to completely eliminate unworthiness. We need to start bringing in positive experiences and food behaviors alongside what we have identified as problematic. Some of the advice and coaching I offer in my six-month program around food is that you learn about the impact of certain foods on your body and your microbiome. You may already have a lot of information about that. You know what kind of foods disrupt you, right? Can you now bring in things that will be helpful to that issue? It can be as simple as drinking more water. It could be as simple as going on a walk after dinner to help your body move or your metabolism to get going.
And I invite people to be creative. What things can you consume, or what habits can you do to support yourself without trying to take anything away or without trying to take away the comfort food completely? What could you do to support yourself while you still have those experiences going on that you want to let go of?
So, coming back to the somatic release work, when I'm working with a client, we are looking for what feels comfortable, what feels easy, what feels good in their body, in the way they're moving. And can we bring in more of what feels easy, comfortable, and good? And can we gently, carefully invite their body to keep letting go, even of the things that feel comfortable and good? We can also release muscle patterns associated with positive feelings because we want to teach your body how to do the letting go part.
In teaching your body how to do the letting go part, a whole world opens up and becomes available to you because you're loosening that grip that those unpleasant feelings have on you.
I was lying in bed just a few moments ago, and I was thinking about a bunch of different things that I need to do for my business, right? And there was a part of me that was like, I don't want to do any of it. And I want to lay here. And so I just laid there for a while and let myself be with the I don't want to. And in being with the I don't want to, my brain was still thinking about what I needed to do. And I was like, well, I'm not doing that right now, but I'll let myself think about it. And my brain started automatically coming up with all kinds of great ideas of things that I could do, even as I was lying there with the I don't want to.
Ten years ago, I may have had such a block in the 'I don't want to,' and I'd resist it. I feel frustrated and go down this rabbit hole of making it mean something about me, that I'm lazy, or that this is why my things don't get done. I'd start shaming or guilting myself into getting up and doing things. Instead, I just allowed the feeling that I didn't want to exist alongside the creativity and the natural willingness in me. Lo and behold, I got up, took a shower, and I feel different now. I'm going to sit down at my computer and do some things for the upcoming course that's starting on Sunday.
When you think about it, it's like, oh, you do want to like to have a clean house, or you do want to have an orderly kitchen, or whatever these things that we put off, we do want to have like our ducks in a row and have our paperwork done. We resist it. But those things can be made easier if we can release what's in the way of getting those things done or changing a habit or behavior because we're not going to do it all at once. It will be a gradual process where things get done one step at a time.
It's always one step at a time. So these are just some thoughts I'm having tonight, and I recognize again this idea that we don't eliminate unpleasant experiences in life. There's no such thing as a pain-free life, but there is a way to live more painlessly, and that comes from being able to be with our pain, resistance, and unpleasant emotions differently than we have been, with less of a grip on our bodies and to be able to start experiencing the health and the presence and the joy that is possible to experience. Even when there's still some of that unworthiness there, even when there's still some of that resistance or pain there, we can increase our capacity to feel the broad spectrum of what's possible to feel.
And in doing so and practicing this, we make it safe to experience all those things, right? So anyway, I felt very compelled to share with you guys what's been on my mind. There's still time if you're listening to this and you're feeling like this is speaking to you, and you feel like your body really has some things that need to work through and let go of, and you're interested in learning how to let go. You can still hop in and join Revive, which starts on Sunday.
It's a nine-week course online. It's nine week somatic movement adventure for the truth seeker, the freedom lover, the expander of consciousness, the soulful person who's ready to be able to experience all of what it means to be human in their body in a way that feels safe, comfortable and is effective, right? So go to the link in my bio if you're curious about that, and drop a comment if you also have been exploring this idea of being able to be a work in progress and imperfect. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this particular subject.
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