“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”
Martha Graham
This blog’s intention is to offer a strength-based perspective and some simple practices to tap into your life force.
There is already so much drama in our life! We all tend to get attached to what is ‘wrong’.
Consequently, we need to make a conscious effort to focus on something other than that.
And so, I would like to ask a few questions before sharing some simple body-oriented exercises.
What is your definition of strength?
What are your resources?
What are your experiences of empowerment?
What are your experiences of times when you felt nurtured and cared for, and loved?
Why did I ask about your definition?
Because the definition of strength is not universal; it is as unique as the person experiencing it.
It’s connected to neurolinguistics.
Definitions are language orientation around something.
Definitions are perceptual lenses, which help us understand how we see the world and give insights into how we perceive something.
How you see, perceive and interpret something creates and shapes your reality.
Your reality contributes to creating your experience.
Your definition of strength clarifies how you view your world through that understanding.
There is no set of exercises or fixed definition of strength.
I will offer below a series of practices you can play with and see what emerges for you!
The uniqueness of our humane experience allows us to meet ourselves in our reality and definitions.
Every time you say ‘strength’, you have a response based on your perception.
You have an experience (it’s not neutral) and a bodily response (whether you are aware of it or not).
That is why somatics comes in.
Soma is a Greek word, and it means body.
Somatics focuses on the living body (vs robotic or unfeeling) and its capacity to be responsive and interactive with the environment.
Somatics, it’s all about bringing more into the light of awareness what is happening in this living being, in you.
Somatic practices are about shifting from a third-person perspective to a first-person: it is about ownership of experience vs conceptual language.
This way, you can move more quickly from conceptual to experiential and from books to an embodied understanding of what is happening.
92-94 % of what happens in the body is not in the light of our awareness.
We are in constant response to our environment. That 95% we are not aware of, it is evolutionarily designed.
But 100% of what is happening affects thoughts, behaviour, physiology, emotions, state of being etc.
We are still having a response to every interaction. That happens not just when it’s big enough to bring it to our attention or when we label it as something.
We are in an ongoing relationship with all life.
These bridges we create in our relationship with ourselves and our bodies are the same ones we need to enhance the relationship with the strength already living inside us.
Thanks to these bridges, we can navigate the fluctuations of life.
We can expand our embodied awareness and pay more attention to subtle changes thanks to somatic practices.
The more we relate to what is happening, the more we are present and empowered. This way, we can also acknowledge and celebrate what is already alive, at ease and well inside us. Even if it is a small 1%, it is always worth paying attention to.
But one of the biggest challenges in our contemporary culture is the phobia of inner experience and the fear of internal sensations.
We develop all of these avoidance strategies to not turn toward that which is uncomfortable or feels out of reach or inaccessible.
We must recognise that there’s a profound importance in coming out of those avoidance strategies and learning to courageously turn towards what may feel uncomfortable at the beginning.
Paradoxically, turning to our inner strengths and resources may feel challenging simply because it may be unfamiliar and uncharted territory.
In this blog, I share some embodied resources and invite you to reflect upon your definition of strength. I intend to offer you ideas, practical tools and inspiration so you can have more choices when something difficult emerges.
When we embrace a somatic approach and embodied self-awareness, we shift from why something is happening to how we are experiencing it. The more contact we have with the HOW, the more we become responsive and less reactive, less of a leaf in the wind. We become more empowered to embody and feel our strength rather than being at the mercy of self-criticism and self-doubt.
Here we go…..
you can find here below some practices that can help you connect with your strength and see what works for you!
1) Pick a memory of when you felt powerful
You can sit or lay down.
Choose the memory you want to work with.
Please bring your attention to where the body is making contact with the supporting surface.
Noticing where the earth, chair, or floor meets you.
Feel where that point of contact is receiving you.
Allow your breath to rest and lean into that point of contact.
See if you can allow yourself to be received and supported by that surface.
I invite you to imagine a movie screen in front of you at whatever distance you wish.
You can replay that memory of power on that screen as it arises.
You can even hit the play button.
You can loop it as many times as you need.
Watch the memory on the screen.
And from watching it, I invite you to move closer to the screen until you can walk into the memory as if the screen is a portal into the memory. As you move into the memory, inhabit the sensations related to your surroundings, sounds, smells, and textures.
Perhaps you can taste or touch something. As you receive the smells, colours, and textures, notice where that resonates inside you, where it emerges inside.
Where are the colours, sensations, and imagery in you?
Perhaps in your chest, abdomen, shoulders…… Whatever resonates, imagine you can take an elevator down into that resonance.
As you arrive, I invite you to contact that resonance, meet it, and enter it. As you connect to it, see how it wants to be described. Allow images, words, sensations, and movement impulses to help express this resonance’s quality.
And from the depth of connecting to this resonance, I invite you to zoom out and have a sense of your whole body.
Zooming out a bit further, please invite an awareness of your space.
How is that memory of power resonating in your body? How is your body responding to it?
To bring this to a close, you may shift your weight from side to side. You may expand your senses, perhaps open your eyes, without losing the connection with that resonance, embodied experience of power and sensations.
Take your notebook and write about the experience without censorship, allowing a stream of consciousness!
2) Explore and play with your posture
Suppose you are playing with the idea of taking more space, expanding, growing or becoming more visible.
You may be tired of shrinking, hiding, or being small and invisible. Therefore, opening up at the physical level, creating space between vertebras and lengthening your spine may also be essential.
Becoming more aware of your posture and sensations in your vertebral column, chest, and back is crucial!
I invite you to be open and curious.
You can play and simultaneously soften your chest, lift your crown towards the sky, and feel your feet rooted into the ground.
What happens when you relate to gravity and the space above you? You don’t exist in isolation.
How would this open stance impact your mood?
How about pausing a few times daily and noticing how you are holding yourself?
People’s postures speak volumes. The body always tells a story.
Certain ways of standing may also enhance physical sensations and emotions rooted in muscle memory.
Imagine what happens when someone’s shoulders are habitually closed or looking down, and their neck is leaning forward and rigid. They may communicate sadness, helplessness, insecurity, excessive need to control etc…
If someone’s ribcage is very tense, they will not be able to breathe correctly. Consequently, they may experience further contraction in their tissue (and therefore more anxiety!) This could create a vicious circle.
And those around them may pick this up also just at the subconscious level.
I know from experience that I tend to collapse and close my chest. This old habit (rooted in childhood trauma and needing to disappear or hide) often aggravated certain depressive and anxious states.
So I ongoingly find ways to soften this area gently, massage it or put a hand on it to release the gripping in the tissue. I experiment with creating more space inside.
My teacher Dr Scott Lyons says that suppression is the refusal to do anything but the mundane movement.
Movement is about self-awareness and experimenting with different possibilities. It is about how we embody that self-awareness and the expression of it.
Perhaps, you may want to experiment more with your boundaries, expressing healthy aggression in a way that is not harming you or others.
So I invite you to with your hands making claws.
Or imagine you are a big cat or a mama bear protecting their territory or cubs.
How do they move? How do they walk? How do they jump, lay down or stand up?
And you can use your voice and growl (without pushing so you don’t hurt your throat!). There is no limit to your imagination and creativity.
A few more words about postures.
You may have heard about the research on power postures!
Open-body stances may invite and stimulate new ways of being and narratives.
You can play by standing outdoors with your open hands, letting the sun kiss you, and receiving support from life.
Stand tall.
Surrender to gravity and feel the ground under your feet.
Let yourself feel that with your whole body.
Sing your intention, speak it loud, and make poetry with it!
Sense what is happening in every fibre of your being!
In the beginning, it may be pretty uncomfortable.
It can take time to develop a new habit so that your muscles, fascia, and tendons can counteract and rebalance old patterns.
And there is also that old adagio that says, ‘fake it until you make it, right?
The idea is that we carry old habits in our muscles that we may need to shift. Such awareness is pivotal when we are willing to create new narratives and tap into our strengths.
3) Learn to recognise how you feel when you follow your inner wisdom
I invite you to return to a memory of when you did not follow your gut feeling and inner compass.
So, let’s go back to that night you overate, drank too much, said yes when you meant no or took a job offer that did not suit you.
There is a memory in the body of what that felt like.
There’s a feeling of what happened. And it didn’t feel good.
Maybe there was a sinking sensation in your belly, your heart jumping out of your chest, or whatever it was.
And you can apply that to what it felt like when you went out with someone who disrespected you.
There was a feeling in the body.
Please note I am inviting your embodied awareness and imagination here, not guilt or shame!
And now, I invite you to remember a time when you said a big yes to yourself, followed your intuition or had a nourishing time.
That’s a marker for what feels good and what doesn’t feel good.
It’s pretty simple.
Sometimes it’s just that.
It felt good.
That didn’t feel good.
And when you can consciously pay attention to the feeling in the body, it will guide your decisions. It’s going to affect your emotional regulation.
It will guide your relationships with yourself, who you choose to spend time with, and how you communicate with others.
It will strengthen your empathy and sense of what is already working for you.
I invite you to list times when you followed what felt suitable for you and how that felt in your body.
How did you know that it felt good in your body?
What were the sensations? How did it feel?
Celebrate it.
Acknowledge your strength and wisdom.
Most importantly, when that happens again, please welcome that experience with open arms and congratulate yourself. Don’t let it be unnoticed. Slow down in your daily life so you can recognise small improvements (which is said to grow new neural connections!) Healing grows out of your attention.
Embodiment is often an experience in which what was primarily a physical sensation now becomes an experience of emotional depth with transformational power and meaning. Maybe many of you reading this letter had a felt experience like this.
4) Focus on the extremities of your body and on your limbs
If, for example, during your meditation practice or in a moment of solitude, anxiety and discomfort, you feel overwhelmed by the sensations happening inside your body, take a pause.
Then start to engage the periphery of your body.
Part of what happens when people experience a flood of information or sensations is losing that endpoint boundary in their hands and feet.
When you can reawaken and press into your palms, get a bit of muscular engagement, press into your feet all the way down through your legs. Wiggle your fingers, wiggle your toes, press your palms together and press your feet on the floor.
That’s actually going to open up the channels. So that energy building up inside your body has a pathway to move and sequence out.
That sequencing and muscular engagement can give you more of a sense of physical containment and strength.
Moreover, this way, the energy stuck in the body is moving through.
That’s the innate drive towards health.
In the Hakomi body-oriented method, one of the core principles is what is referred to as organicity. And this is this recognition that the individual’s inner wisdom is self-directing, it’s self-correcting, and it helps us unfold toward wholeness.
5) Push against a wall
I invite you to play with this practice as an extension of the previous one or when you feel tired or depleted.
First, you can bounce up and down and tap on your body to build energy and bubbliness.
After that, please go to a wall and push against it.
Notice if your arms, hands, and wrists are locked or rigid.
While you push, see if you can connect to the strength in your muscles.
Spend a little bit of time there.
Next, I invite you to push with a bit more vigour and bounce back.
Make sure that the floor around is safe and there are no obstacles.
You can have a gentle run against the wall (please don’t hurt yourself!!!) and then bounce back.
You can do this pushing practice also with a person.
What do you feel in your arms?
Do you have the impulse to collapse, keep the energy in the front part of your body or push so firmly that your muscles are locked?
Do you feel a sense of satisfaction-release-completion when you move all that energy through the wall and bounce back?
A push from a developmental perspective (it is different from what a baby does, as we do it vertically and not horizontally) helps us connect-orient-use a supportive surface and let it come back into us.
Something moves through and gets something in return-that is an actual push.
A push can be very front-oriented; maybe your feet or back are separate from the picture.
Perhaps you are doing all the work with your chest.
I invite you to look for wave energy from the ground, feet, and back to the front. You are pulling that bubble of power to move through. I want you to move that bubble through the pathways.
You are not moving that wave; the waves of energy and momentum move you back into space. You build power and bounce back. The wave moves from back to front and from the ground.
If you do it with a person, you can feel their support, giving and receiving, while you move that bubbliness through.
When you do that, something completes itself. There is a sense of satisfaction.
That is a way to feel, kinaesthetically, your strength and the support from the wall.
Thanks so much for being with me!
Let me know if you have questions and how this lands 🙂
There may be parts of yourself that sometimes feel stuck or trapped.
All these practices above are about ‘widening the river’ so energy starts to flow again.
These are invitations to show up in life and be in a relationship with more.
As you build the capacity to be more with what is happening in your body, you widen the river and the power to tap more into your life force.