Mind/Body/Spirit

When daylight hours start to decrease and it gets colder outside many people may find themselves experiencing symptoms resembling depression. For some the symptoms are relatively brief. Tempers may seem shorter for parents stuck inside with cranky or sick children and an increased sense of lethargy is not uncommon on a dreary winter day. For others, however, these symptoms can be quite disabling.

The bedroom door is shut. I hear voices, recognize my parents’ and hear another unfamiliar voice. I stand in front of the keyhole, covering one eye with my hand; another eye is wide open close to the keyhole trying to catch what is happening behind the closed door. I feel the tension in the air. I don’t dare leave my room, so instead I’m hiding behind the door and checking what is happening through the keyhole.

I’ve worked with spiritual teachers for many years to “wake up”. The awakening that comes from listening to the division between parts of me—the voices and energies split during early wounding experiences to create the illusion of safety, to survive that which was emotionally experienced as insurmountable. I have learned to watch, to observe, to be the witness to my experience and not get caught up in it as if it were truly real. I’ve learned that what is, is and that so much of this lived life is merely an illusion. When reading Singer’s book I felt a kindred resonance, a sense of coming home to what I know but had stepped away from in the hustle and bustle of being Nancy in some chaotic times. I knew this book appeared in my life at that exact moment for a reason, a reminder to practice once again the meditative moments that bring me closer to the energy that is me and allow me to step away from the noise and confusion of patterned responses in a mind, a brain and a body that try to claim they’re me.

It Didn’t Start With You is considered a “pragmatic and prescriptive guide for readers to use his core language approach to discover the roots of their trauma, conscious and unconscious.”

When I’m entrained with my clients in mutual readiness, I become aware of my own inner sensations and how they allow me to “listen” with my ears, my eyes, and my intuition, with my fullest self. Working from a state of readiness enables me to catch fertile moments of therapeutic potential

There are situations and events in the here and now that trigger past memories and our past responses. These memories can be conscious or unconscious. Regardless, people periodically brace (as defined as their muscles tighten) in response to these memories. Or they have enacted this brace reaction for so long, it’s now part of an unconscious habitual lifestyle.

Can you remember a time when someone said, “Can I tell you a secret?” Were you intrigued? Did you feel a slight stirring inside? What sort of revelation did you prepare yourself to receive? Isn’t it funny how images and connotations, interpretations and expectations can make the body respond in certain ways? What do you experience in your own nervous system when you expect a client is about to reveal some secret traumatic event? How does your body physically react? With impulses, shivers, goose bumps? Perhaps a sense of dread and queasiness in the belly, a catch of your breath . . .? While such disclosures are often necessary and vital to treatment, there are also other secrets that can bring healing to soma and soul. Roald Dahl, author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, simply and profoundly captures the point when he writes, “The greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places.” This wise truth was delightfully demonstrated recently in a session with Neko, a twenty-two-year-old client with mild developmental delays, whose strength and soul wisdom had been hidden in the unlikely location of a traumatic past.

Have you experienced the pleasure of getting so close to your goal that you can almost taste success? Have you tasted the coppery flavor of fear or characterized an unpleasant experience as distasteful? Disappointment can be bitter; revenge can be sweet and babies’ feet are delicious. Getting something you want at the expense of something else can be bittersweet, and romance can add spice to your life. If capturing events and emotions in olfactory and gustatory terms heightens the felt sense of the feelings, why not make the yummiest emotions burst with metaphoric flavor? Take happiness for example. You most likely don’t need a formal definition of happiness since it can be argued that you know it when you feel it. But because happiness can occasionally slip by unrecognized, it’s worth knowing what the Dalai Llama says about this state of pleasure. "I believe that the very purpose of our life is to seek happiness." His Holiness explains.

Is mind/body/spirit unity scientific or is it just a fairy tale? In a therapeutic setting, somatically embodied intention, deeply sensed, can feel like conjuring clinical magic.

Imagine a somatic solution to the hazards of stress. Whether it’s a slow car in the fast lane, a fast truck in the slow lane, the sudden realization that your phone is missing, or worrying about next year’s storm, how quickly and vividly will your mind and body deliver a high velocity jolt of stress?