Feeling Safe in Your Body and Easter Goodness.
If you've never heard of somatic healing - read on!
Did you have a lovely Easter weekend?
We had a lovely time camping out the back of the farm. I wonder what the stats are on how many people camp at Easter? It’s gotta be high.
And boy did the weather turn it on for all the campers. Barham was absolutely buzzing and it felt like pre-covid times. Back to when the supermarket was heaving, and you can’t get a park and everyone in town is talking about how busy it is! It was so great to see. Our local shops really needed a bumper one and it delivered.
We camped out the back of the farm with some of our mates (I actually came home and slept at the house which is just the ideal scenario, so good) and I had many moments of just taking it all in and feeling very grateful for where we live. It’s so beautiful out the back of the farm and the sunrises and sunsets were just incredible. The kids just had the time of their lives, motorbiking, doing treasure hunts, walks, Easter hunts, and they just never stop. And because there’s no phone service there wasn’t a device in sight. So good.
Recommendations
As we’ve been out the back over Easter and it’s been a busy family time I haven’t listened or read too much this week - which has probably been very good for my overstimulated brain. But a couple of things to recommend still!
The Ram Dass Here and Now Podcast
If you are a spiritual seeker like me and you love learning more about who you are and how it all works then the Here and Now Podcast with talks from Ram Dass is very cool and I have been loving it.
Magic Mind Drink
I actually discovered this through the Ram Dass podcast as they recommend it and I’m a sucker so I bought it and it’s actually so good. I am definitely feeling like I’ve got more energy and it’s a fun little drink to have in the mornings. It might be placebo - who knows but there is a lot of research around the products in it so I am confident it’s doing something good. It’s a bit exy though so i am not sure if I’ll continue it but if you have the cash, give it a go!
Hot Tip
Do you feel safe in your body? Are you always in your head? Do you even know what it feels like to feel safe in your body? If you’ve experienced any sort of trauma (which something like 70% of us have) it can be very hard to feel safe in your body - understandably. As I touched on last week - I’ve been doing a lot of work on this myself lately. The work to feel safe in my body.
Because we are not really taught about being in our body and we are very much driven by our minds in Western Society we don’t know what it even means to process emotions in our bodies. Often if we experience a trauma we don’t know how to manage it and we don’t have the tools to feel it so we go in to our heads and shut that shit down. Our brain can sort of shut down the feelings and survive and our bodies just blocks up. And even the idea of this seems pretty weird and foreign really if you grew up like I did! Who would ever talk about feelings and emotions?? We just “get on with things” no point “dwelling” just get on with it. Sound familiar?
But there is lot’s of research that highlights the importance of healing our bodies and allowing our bodies to heal the emotions and feelings. The Body Keeps Score is a very popular book detailing this. Brene Brown talks about emotions a lot! There is a lot of work on this around how we don’t know how to talk about our emotions and most people can only name 3 emotions. Happy, sad and mad. Check out this video on that.
But if we just hold all the emotion in our body and don’t let it be felt it can lead to all sorts of problems. Either physical or mental.
So perhaps it’s worth considering somatic healing if you are finding you are anxious or you have a lot of body pain or you just feel like there is something unsettled in your body..n
What's the fundamental concept? "It's a treatment focusing on the body and how emotions appear within the body," Baker explains. "Somatic therapies posit that our body holds and expresses experiences and emotions, and traumatic events or unresolved emotional issues can become 'trapped' inside."
This is taken from an article from Harvard on somatics, HERE
I would highly recommend getting support from a qualified therapist with this, in my experience it can bring up a lot and be quite challenging at times and it’s so helpful to get support. You can do some work by yourself like just breathing and feeling in your body and noticing where you feel things in your body etc. But for deep trauma it can be quite trapped and quite a process uncovering it!
Shout Out
Salt bush Stretch! You probably already know these guys from an earlier podcast interview I did with the legend founder, Em. They have a challenge that’s just started if you want to get around it! Absolutely love all their work.
Joke of the Week
A couple of memes for you this week as Tim left before I could get a joke out of him. I get most of my memes from Jac at The Broad Place. They are always just hilarious. Enjoy.
Thanks so much for being here
Love Katrina