SOMATIC FIRST AID: small remedies for uncertain times
Offerings from my personal collection that might work for you or inspire you to create your own bank of resources.
Read on, if you are feeling disoriented, unheard or doomstruck or ever had those feelngs, and do check out a previous edition of Field Notes for: Somatic First Aid - For When Your’e Feeling Out Of Sorts
1. FEELING DISORIENTED?
When something doesn’t turn out the way we expected, we feel many things including lost, not quite knowing which way to turn. This is when finding the compass points can help bring us back to the here and now.
Identifying the cardinal directions (without using the app on our phone!) anchors the mind in a defined task and brings our attention to the small, often overlooked, yet profound truth of our personal geography. And, not only to the tiny bit of this glorious planet that we occupy in any particular moment, but also pinpoints our place in the vast cosmos.
You can do this practice when you are sitting or lying down; you can do this when you are moving, walking; you can do this for a mat practice.
The first step is to have a sense of where the sun rises. Do you know which room in your house is touched by the first light of dawn? How does the sun cycle around your home? Do you have sunny mornings at the front, back, or to one side of your home. Roughly speaking, the answer to this question will locate your East. If it helps, you can turn to face the East.
Now, it’s simple! Directly opposite will be your West - behind you if you have turned. This establishes the East/West axis and the North/South axis will run directly through its centre - North to your left, South to your right, if you have turned. The intersection of the two axes is where you find yourself.
Whether you are in movement or stillness, absorb this spatial relationship you have with the compass points, feel the support of the four quarters, the container of their relationship, allow your tissues to know both the earthiness of gravity and the spaciousness of levity. Earth and Sky holding you as you find your bearings. You are here. This is where you are.
2. FEELING UNHEARD?
It’s highly likely we have had this kind of experience at one time or another in personal, professional, community and collective ways. It arises when we speak up for ourselves or others yet find ourselves being ignored, closed down, or gaslit. It also arises when we find ourselves unable to speak up perhaps as a learnt behaviour that ensures our safety, or not having the platform or support, or in an ability to articulate clearly and effectively.
If you have an available forest or hilltop, you might want to go there and just yell at the top of your voice, however, there are other more immediate ways to free up your voice. Remember, your voice is like another limb, it is able to move on your breath and connect your inner world to the outer world. It is also like a joint (remember that word articulation, above?), it can get stuck, stiff, and unused to its possibilities.
At a functional level, freeing the jaw and the tongue are going to be useful and you might simply try pulling faces and moving your tongue in all directions inside and outside your mouth. If you have a companion also feeling unheard, this is a great practice to share and usually ends in much laughter, and a surge of healing happy hormones!
Then, sound all the vowels. In my native language they are: ahhh, ehhh, ihhhh, ohhh. oohhh. Sound them as short pulses on a single out-breath, followed by making one sound last an entire out-breath. Explore volume too. Repeat very quietly, then in your mid-tone, and then loudly. Finally, on one out-breath slide up and down the range of quiet to loud, to quiet again.
If you have time or are curious, work with consonant sounds in the same way. I particularly like the Sssssss and the Haaaah, and I find a Grrrrrr or Rrrrrr sound can be a satisfying growl that has the potential to become a full-throated roar!
As an aside, I do find that in most movement modalities practitioners are silent: yoga people may chant but not typically; I’ve never heard a dancer’s voice, nor in my limited experience does anyone in Pilates or Feldenkrais make vocal sound. Voice is welcomed in Authentic Movement, however there are usually agreements contracted for the kinds of sounds and volume of sounds that a group can tolerate. So, what would it be like to make sound in your next movement practice? Try some of the vowel and consonant sounds, for example, you might find your tissues responding in new ways.
3. FEELING DOOMSTRUCK?
I chose this word to capture a sense of foreboding that in the immediacy of an event or encounter leaves our nervous system in a kind of freeze state, including our voice: we are “halted in our tracks” and “have no words for this”. Doomstruck (and dumbstruck) can show up as temporary numbness, like the cheek and the tongue after dental treatment. It can show up as disorientation (see compass points above), it can show up as a coursing feeling of “No” in your blood (see the vocal practices above). It can show up as wanting to withdraw into solitude or into your community. I have found, however, that what doomstruck needs is a dose of Nature, a dose of the Beautiful.
John O’Donohue writes in “Divine Beauty: The Invisible Embrace: Rediscovering the True Sources of Compassion, Serenity, and Hope”:
We feel most alive in the presence of the Beautiful for it meets the needs of our soul. For a while the strains of struggle and endurance are relieved and our frailty is illuminated by a different light which we come to glimpse behind the shudder of appearances and the sure form of things. In the experience of beauty we awaken and surrender in the same act. Beauty brings a sense of completion and sureness. Without any of the usual calculation, we can slip into the Beautiful with the same ease as we slip into the seamless embrace of water; something ancient within us already trusts that this embrace will hold us.
So, where is your Beautiful? Water your plants and pay attention to their leaves and blooms. Stand at your window and look at the clouds above the rooftops, the birds about their bird-business. Listen to them if you can. Be fully present to your dog or your cat. Find a tree and pause, take it all in: its size, shape, its reach for the heavens, its unseen roots, its pulsing sap, its quiet witnessing of you, it’s total and utter tree-ness.
I hope this mini-collection from my somatic first-aid kit has been helpful or inspired you to collect your own remedies. I have some more to share and some guided practices coming up in the forthcoming edition of Companion Notes.