A Sea Change

Most of my writing on here has come from a place of trying to make sense of or at least process and let go of painful experiences. So here’s the story of a very physical and literal way I’ve started to do that.

In November a little perfect combo arrived by chance. I’d started doing Iyengar yoga again after many years of not. I love this form of exercise, it’s the only kind I’ve ever managed to keep doing for more than a few weeks since dance classes as a kid. It’s the type of yoga that feels very cleansing. It has all the poses of types that work through salutations and a little of the ethos of the more spiritual elements but it’s somewhere in between, focussing on alignments within the body itself. I’ve always struggled to get out of my head and into my physical body and this is one very slow and considered way to do it. You aren’t sweating and overexerting but you are learning and strengthening. The next day is when you usually feel it.

I also, cos my back is fucked from regularly carrying camera gear that weighs the same as the average 4 year old and I have little core strength from years of zero exercise and a c-section literally slicing through anything that was there to begin with, I get monthly hot stone massage. Highly recommend Hannah at Ultimate Wellness to any locals needing their aches and pains sorted. From around November she suggested we work a bit deeper and added in some deep tissue massage.

Also, after a visit to Hamburg where my friend Laura said it might be time to get stuck into the female rage that comes with watching Handmaid’s Tale, I was also binging my way through the 5 or so series of that whenever I had downtime.

And one night a character said a line that just hit a nerve and I started balling my eyes out. I didn’t feel sad, it was a huge purge. But my entire body started to shake and twitch as I lay there weeping. I’ve never in my life experienced anything like this at that point but I went with it and let out as much as I could.

And soon after I was all over a google rabbit hole which lead me to learning about somatic release. I’d basically had one by accident I think because of the combo of the 3 things I mentioned. It’s essentially allowing a release of tension and trauma from joints and muscles within the body, a massive purge of the build up of cortisol that comes from living in a state of fight or flight for too long. It’s an amazing thing for anyone who has ADHD, Complex PTSD, trauma or stiffness in specific areas of their mobility.

It was a wild feeling and kickstarted a bit of a physical ‘healing journey’ (gross) after all the traumatic experiences that surfaced last year while learning to accept and explore that I am more than likely AuDHD. I think I’ve mentioned these things before, along with journalling and sometimes chucking myself in the sea or attempting to jog a 5k without dying as ways that have helped me to process stuff. But this is like a whole next level experience that I feel like we should all have and know about. It’s a bit scary, your body is twitching harder than a nosy nan’s net curtains but if you can just let yourself work through it, the sheer physical release is amazing. It helps folks who tend to ruminate and not really know where they feel emotions in their actual body to recognise exactly that and to breath through it.

So for the last month I’ve been gently working my way through a somatic exercise programme designed for folks with trauma and/or neurodivergence and it’s the most amazing experience. I did some reading and watched a shitload of tiktoks and all that before I found The Workout Witch and she made sense to me. I struggle to form routines for anything but the goth weirdo in me is way more likely to stick to things if I can persuade my brain I’m creating a ritual more than doing a routine and that’s part of the system she uses, hence the witch chat. She’s a survivor of narcissistic abuse, with a degree in psychology and training in pilates for injury so she knows her stuff.

“Trauma, anxiety, stress, and emotional experiences are all connected to the physical pain and unexplained health conditions we’ve been generationally programmed to just “put up with.”

By utilizing somatic exercises, she’s helping today’s generation heal from the unexplained pain that doctors can’t treat, be free from the trauma you’ve been putting off, and introduce you to the way your body is supposed to feel.”

— The Workout Witch

Today’s yoga class comes after some hip and back releasing stuff (the online courses are very simple 10-15 mins a day exercises building new neural pathways and slowly teaching awareness of specific joints and muscles much like the yoga I love but more with a view to unlocking the tensions and traumas held there) and it felt genuinely blissful at points, I felt I could reach a deeper place within a lot of the poses and that I’m getting better at correcting my awful posture to have better alignment.

Might all sound kind of woo woo but it works and I know that our gut and brains are connected, I’ve nearly died from suspected Crohn’s Disease symptoms which have disappeared since I’ve been single and not in any toxic relationship so I think this is the next step, releasing all the held emotionally pain from my pelvis and neck mostly, unclenching the jaw and being grateful as fuck.

Anyone who lives in a state of anxiety or tensions of any kind I’d highly recommend even just reading up about this in general but I like to share all the things I find cathartic and positive as I know some folks out there resonate with the difficult experiences I’ve been through.

I’ve said this before and I firmly believe that we’re not meant to live in our wounds. The shame and guilt for being human that stops us from openly talking about difficult life experience sometimes is bullshit. It’s put there to stop us from healing that shit in healthy ways, it’s programmed in us so we reach for the less healthy coping strategies, stay in a societal set up that really enables a heap of abusive behaviours while victim blaming. We end up staying stuck in places we deserve to grow past. Everyone makes mistakes and it’s the ways we take responsibility for them and grow that counts. I wish they taught shit like this in schools, I feel like way less of us would be living from places of fear or inadequacy projecting our struggles onto others and internalising things others say and do if we had healthy ways of getting to the nitty gritty as rituals in our daily lives.

We should all be frolicking in fields and feeling brand new.

xx