Somatic Experiencing

(Written in July 2009)
The session with Caryn was very low key. I cried, and had a little discharge. I told her about the difficulty with my right shoulder. She had me walk around with 3lb weights so I could feel the weight keeping my shoulder down. She had me imagine the weight was growing lighter so I could raise it without hunching my shoulders. She asked me to walk around without the weights, feeling my “fish body”. I sat down again and there was considerable subtle discharge in my shoulders. I slid down more toward the floor and worked with the image of mud flats. When I told Caryn how sad I felt looking at my garden that was full of weeds, she asked “what is growing in it?” Daisies and black-eyed susans and lupin and some other pretty wild flowers. She said the garden was a metaphor for my life: what comes up when you stop making/forcing things to happen? That shifted me a little, and I enjoyed the “meadow tapestries” on the way home. So I’m looking at the garden a little differently, and asking the question “what comes up when I stop forcing?” While I was sitting in my corner with Caryn, at one point I was sitting with my legs bent in front of me, holding on to them with my hands. I wondered what would happen if I let go — my legs fell apart and then down so I was sitting with right leg straight and left bent. Then I put my left arm along the cushion on the wall to my left, and suddenly felt different — impossible to find words — there was a sense of dignity, or outward focus from a very grounded and centered position. Paying attention to how my body felt, I realized this resembled Kuan Yin in the “Royal Ease” pose. I took my left arm down and everything felt completely different. Exploring the two postures I discovered that the arm up straightens my back and shifts the focus to outward, the arm down collapses my torso and shift the focus inward. Caryn also said that this time of low energy, of “doing nothing” is a time when healing is going on deep inside. It’s not on a conscious level, so I’m not aware of it, but it is taking energy — that’s why I’m so tired.