No matter how things are going for you in your life

[Eva Libre]

Art by Krista Marleena

No matter how things are going for you in your life at this time, you can start right where you are. For very short periods of time, surround and contain the achy life as it surges for integration.

For just one second, enter into the fire and infuse it with presence, compassion, and holding. Renew your vow: I will not turn from myself and my vulnerability. No, not this time. I will not abandon myself.

Two seconds. Then rest. Then three. More rest. In just a few seconds a new pattern is born, a new groove is laid down.

Ask the earth to hold you, to share her soothing water, shade, and safe haven, and stay near as you open.

Find a friend, therapist, lover, deer, ocean, moon, star, or holy owl to bear witness as you turn into the raw alive somatic world.

The seen and unseen ones are always here to help us, to reveal the way home. To illuminate the pathways of darkness and of light, each containing a particle of the mystery, a strand of love as it comes alive here.

Matt Licata

[desmond dillon]

thank you both..

[Eva Libre]

  Hi Eva, in this context, "somatic" is simply referring to bodily-based experience, raw sensations in the body rather than thoughts, beliefs, behaviors, or even emotions. Sensations such as contraction, expansion, freezing, speed, pressure, aliveness, numbing, and so forth - as well to the body-based components of more complex conditions such as anxiety, depression, trauma, etc. For example, in a moment of trigger or overwhelm, with anxiety, despair, hopelessness, or grief, it can be helpful to set aside these words and scan through our immediate experience and bring attention, curiosity, and warmth to the various dimensions of our embodied world, in a very particular and specific (rather than abstract and generalized) way, for this material will play out uniquely for each of us.

For example, we may discover an emotional quality or mood and underlying that are one or two core beliefs about ourselves, others, and the world. We may also be aware of certain impulses to take action, to find relief, behaviors that we historically engage in to try to get us out of the intensity. In addition to the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral material, there is also often quite a lot happening in the body at the level of raw sensation. Most of us were not trained to attune to this level of experience and it can take some practice - the idea here being that there is important information and data in the body that is happening during these moments when we are triggered and it is both wise and also kind to tend to them as part of our inquiry.

Matt Licata

[Eva Libre]

Matt Licata is a psychotherapist and I asked him. Waiting for an answer now.

[desmond dillon]

this looks ok eva but I wonder about the word 'somatic' and its meaning... maybe you know?