Embodiment and the Middle Way
Working through neurophysiological pathways and patterns of trauma is anything but a linear, clean, simple process. The brain and nervous system require an immense amount of tending when we are working with our neuroplasticity. It’s not just changing old habits, instead it’s finding a new way of being through many realms of our experience.
Our habits, movement patterns, posture, thought patterns and the connected emotions, beliefs, perceptions; really all these things that make up our conscious experience are all interconnected and simultaneously functioning in this complex dance of being a human being.
Sometimes when I am dancing, I can feel the dissipation of some old neurological patterns that I don’t need anymore making themselves known to the frontal lobe of my consciousness where I can eventually put them to rest, for the time being, until they try to toggle themselves back in again, as old patterns tend to do. Eventually, I believe, they can fade when they are ready.
My personal and professional processes and personal learning often goes hand in hand. And lately I have become aware of this pendulation from one extreme of feeling completely out of control and vulnerable to being so overly rigid, controlling everything. Many of us with a trauma history experience this need to be in control in fear of being so incredibly vulnerable and helpless.
In Hakomi, we learn the first two strategies for adapting to painful experiences in utero to the first six months of life are the “sensitive withdrawn” and “sensitive emotional” strategies. Think about a tiny infant, so utterly and completely dependent upon others for safety and nourishment. The only two strategies the infant has to protect itself from an overwhelmingly painful experience is to either constrict, tighten up and withdraw, or to be so incredibly open and emotive in hopes that someone will come. Both are strategies to protect and get a need met.
Dr. Peter Levine talks about healing trauma as a titration, a slow fizzing of the pent-up energy in someone’s system. Allowing oneself to feel the pain, and slowly discharge some of that energy while being in a “window of tolerance”, essentially having enough inner resources to not become completely overwhelmed and retraumatized when allowing the pent-up energy to discharge.
This path of titration is, I believe, what the Buddhist teachings call “The Middle Way”, and it is ultimately embodiment. Being embodied, aka being consciously aware and alive in one’s body, is what I am learning as a beautiful secret to healing. Nobody can teach you how to experience this within yourself. You must come to know it on your own terms and in your own timing. Of course, we can talk about the human experience using all these explanations and labels, but until a person can take them from a cognitive understanding to an integrated experience in the body, it will always only exist as a concept.
Having an embodied, integrated experience is the beautiful “aha” moment that deserves to be honored and remembered. I like to think that our indigenous ancestors had all kinds of ceremonies and rituals to tend to these threshold moments that somehow have become so lost in our distracted, asleep, capitalistic, dominant culture where so many people’s potential sacred “ahas” have been unseen, disrespected, violated, or simply tossed away because the world doesn’t value them.
The first Tai Chi principle is to relax. Another one is to feel the connection to heaven through the crown of the head. This way of being relaxed yet alert is in essence, the Middle Way. Not being so relaxed and open that we are flaccid and completely out of control, nor being so rigid and tight that we cannot allow anything to flow. “Stand like a mountain and move like water,” so the Tai Chi masters tell us.
My own experience of this is that of calling forth my inner, embodied wisdom. Being neither in the world nor completely in solitude. The Middle Way is the middle ground between attachment and aversion, of form and emptiness, of being and nonbeing. It is the “Stillpoint of the Tao” to quote my teacher and Tai Chi master Al Huang.
My experience of coming to this stillpoint, this middle way, this inner knowing, this embodiment is that of moving stagnant energy. It is that of finding my voice, trusting myself, and utilizing the alchemy of fire, of anger, to transform fear. When a person gets to a place in their journey of healing trauma in which they can access their anger, it is often a transformative experience because a person moves from a place of fear to recognition that in some way their dignity was violated. When the anger of fire comes boiling forth from that recognition, and safely titrated to discharge, THAT is where the pendulum can finally begin to rest in the middle.
More on this soon. For now, I hope that your organic alignment toward healing is supported by your environment, your relationships, and most importantly with yourself. Remembering that self-compassion is the key. If you are needing some support, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Sending Love, and hope that this post is food for thought (and embodiment).
