An area of my life that has been hugely challenging for the past few years is easing greatly. It’s a great relief, and yet as things change, I notice my system taking its time. There’s a hesitancy to expand fully into the new amount of space afforded to me. Maybe there’s a period of making sure this is real, that it’s safe to relax fully into embracing this new normal. It’s the same pattern that I observe and work with in SE/Feldenkrais sessions.
Our system can leap into protective modes more quickly than our rational mind can think. But finding our way out takes time, aided by our ability to observe the messages of our body. Now that I have years of experience in this, it’s second nature to listen to the signals my body sends, and to allow for the time my system needs to find ease. Learning to clearly tune into those state shifts, and my own expanded ability to be “a container” for the challenging things that can arise for clients as we tune into the body, is what shifted my private practice dramatically in the past decade.
Pendulation is the word which was coined in SE for the constant state-shifts of our nervous system. Our bodies, even with each breath in and out, are always moving between more and less heightened states of being. Our heart-rate moves faster and then slows, our sense of muscle tension or other internal intensity builds as a blaring fire engine nears, and eases as the sound fades into the distance.
When we feel stuck in a trauma response we can feel as if there is no pendulation happening. That’s how I usually interpret people’s meaning when they tell me trauma is stuck in their body. It’s usually that they feel stuck either on high-alert or in a disconnected state where they feel removed from life, (or both). When people are in these extreme states of trauma response, it can be extremely challenging to register any movement in their system between more and less heightened states because everything feels so big.
When we’re lost in the woods, we need to see some glimmers of light through the trees to know which way is out. Part of feeling stuck in trauma comes from being unable to discern the subtle cues from the body, the little glimmers of lightness that show us when we’ve shifted towards less intensity. Maybe at first that looks like noticing a shift from feeling terrible to slightly less terrible as we track sensations of the body that feel less tense, painful, twitchy, numb, etc. No one I’ve worked with has felt super happy or relieved to find a feeling that is less miserable — how could they?! It seems so trivial at first. But once we can find and track experiences in the body that feel less intense, I know that we’ve found our first glimmer of light coming through the trees — we’re beginning to walk on the path out of where the trees grow the thickest and moving towards where lasting change can be experienced.
