Will you stand up for me?

I’m entering my healing movement session with the intention to move authentically and engage my inner witness. The prompt that I gave myself prior to this session was appreciation of my body but that doesn’t seem to be in the cards for me in that moment if the goal is to be authentic. In fact I’m quite angry because of something that just happened that made me feel like there’s no space for me to exist. 

Starting to feel uncomfortable in my body. The upper back feels tight. It has been feeling tight for a while now. It feels like all things “bad” live there. All the things that I don’t like about myself. I’m mad at it. I know I’m “supposed” to bring acceptance to my body but I’m mad. Starting to pound on it with my hand. “Come on! Soften up!” It feels like it’s the wrong thing to do but doing this eventually brings up some sadness. I’m noticing that part of my body is under attack and a part of me can empathize. The throat is tightening.

A thought comes to me: maybe there’s a reason why it’s so tight. The inner guide says to go deeper into the tightness, to embody it with sounds, gestures and movement until something new comes out of it. I’m using my voice and my entire body to play this out: bound movements, stuck, unyielding, creaking, blocked, tight, hard, rigid, unmovable, unarticulated, there are no joints, no individual vertebra, one block. It doesn’t feel or sound very pretty. 

Using my voice starts to open my throat which gives permission to the tears to come. Emotional release. Energy in motion. 

Folding the body in two on the ground like in child pose. Upper body rests on the lower. The inner guide says that it’s time to let my upper back have a voice. It says: “I need to protect, I need to defend. There’s no one else to do it but me”. There’s a body memory of how hard things were back then and a realization that the upper back went into this frozen structure in order to keep the little one safe. The heart is right in there and it needs protection. “Besides”, the upper back says, “there’s no support. I need to do all the work here”. Crying for my upper body. It’s so lonely. 

I start to become more aware of the lower body. The upper back is still resting on the legs. The legs are starting to rock the torso in that folded shape. It seems like they too want to say something. They are not ready to make a full statement yet. They are just telling me that they are there. It seems like the torso wants to engage the lower body in a conversation: “I can’t feel your support, are you willing to do your part and help me support this body, support me? Will you stand up for me?”

The lower body is entertaining that thought but is not very eager to grant the upper body’s request for some reason. The legs are a bit more engaged but they feel like the pelvis and the core need to recruit some more strength. They do have the ability to do it when they are being called upon.

I feel like I need to play mediator between the upper back and the lower body. I’m asking “Why is it that you don’t always feel like helping out, lower body?”

“It’s my history. I’m not sure it’s safe”. It says. “I couldn’t be as firm as I wanted to be. I couldn’t stand up for us. There was some danger in that. There was a danger in being assertive and knowing what I want. That didn’t go down well. I had to become weak and groundless in order to survive”.

That’s really sad to hear. Tears are here. Trembling and shaking too.

The inner guide is trying to figure out how to move forward from here. The thing to do is to talk to the lower body and say: “we need you but we get that you don’t always want to show up because you’re afraid.  We would like to remind you that it’s not dangerous anymore. There’s no real threat in the present. You can be strong. It would be super helpful as much as you can remember to be here firmly, with your strong presence. When we stand, when we sit, when we speak, think, walk and dance. Should we try that now? 

The last thing to do in order to close the loop is to physically feel it all happening in the body in real time so that the lower body can remember its strength and the upper body can feel supported and let go a little. We’re sitting on the floor. with no external support. I’m reminding everyone what their role is. I can feel the strength underneath and there’s no tension up above. It seems like this can go on for a while. I’m making a gentle request from my body to record this moment.