How does healing actually happen?
My coaching client is standing in front of me, glowing, vibrating, as she shares with me her celebrations.
She’s feeling super energized having created a new system to track her growth and transformation around her current goals and longings.
She’s made this beautiful G**gle form that she fills out each morning, noticing when and how often she’s choosing things like joy and courage, what made it possible to make these choices, how she felt in her body before, during and after, what was happening when she wasn’t able to choose or act in the direction of her longings.
I’m totally stoked and celebrating with her. I feel warmth and bright energy in my own body, and expansion and aliveness across my chest and face especially.
I love the genius of custom-creating her own tracker (she can then create pie charts and graphs from the data she inputs daily and see movement over time). Oh, how I love nerding out about healing!
Even more than that, I love seeing (and feeling!) her aliveness and her transformation.
I love seeing her growing self-trust and her growing self-awareness. And, the increased access to choice that grows from there.
She is a shining light confirming again how change and healing can happen - that is, with consistent embodied practice that includes growing somatic awareness, plus compassionate accountability and support along the way.
What’s so beautiful and enlivening is that this kind of change and transformation are possible for all of us!
This doesn’t just have to happen through coaching - we can call in other loved ones to be in practice and accountability with us. We don’t actually need experts to heal.
And, coaching can be a rich and generative container to call in for yourself. By prioritizing the time and resources towards our longings, it can be a potent step towards them. More on opportunities for coaching with me if you keep reading, for those who may have interest!
Another client I am working with is exploring their deep longing for more intimacy and connection in all of their relationships. They keep noticing, however, that whenever they start to deepen into connection they inadvertently pull away or put up a wall.
It’s incredibly frustrating and painful to see this pattern that they describe as self-sabotage - they keep getting in the way of having what they actually want!
And what a human sort of pattern!! Can you relate?! I know I can. And it’s a cycle I see with so many of my coaching clients.
There’s some kind of automatic response happening that’s getting in the way of us actually choosing what we want to choose, of actually moving towards the actions and futures we long for.
When a response is automatic and conditioned, by definition we lose our choice and autonomy.
The good news is, we can reclaim it through awareness and practice! And the first step is slowing things down enough to catch the automatic response, to notice how it starts to happen in the body unconsciously.
And then we can thank it! Thank this shape, this move, this habitual response that was developed over time to take care of us in some way. We can honor the ways it was trying to protect us, and all the moments when that has been very effective.
And, we can notice with gentleness and self-compassion the cost of this habitual response when it’s not actually what’s needed in a given moment.
We can also get curious about what sort of tending this shape may need from us to soften and release and make space for something new or different to happen.
For my client longing for more connection and intimacy, this looked like slowing down in those moments of getting in their own way long enough to notice what was actually happening in their body.
They were able to connect this self-protective move to deep layers of trauma and to their fierce commitment to never let that kind of hurt happen to them again.
What a beautiful gift from the body, this move of protection! This client was able to develop care and gratitude for this part of them, and to find other ways, over time, to meet some of these needs for safety and self trust.
From there, we can get curious about what a new action or choice might be. What might better serve our purpose in this moment?
Once we have some ideas about a new choice we’d like to try on (remember this is an experiment! We don’t need to get it perfectly!), we can intentionally practice it.
The key here is doing so when we are NOT in the moment of pressure. So for example, if the habitual response you are trying to interrupt is a fawning, appeasing tendency, like saying yes when you don’t mean it, and this shows up especially with, say, your boss at work, or a particular family member, DON’T focus your practice on live interactions in those relationships.
Instead, especially to start, try out the new move when there’s nothing at stake. This could mean trying out saying no or maybe more often - like “do you want a bag” at the grocery store? Or, “would you like fries with that?”
Try out responding with a “no!” or a “let me think about it!” What do you notice?
You can also ask a friend to set up a little role play with you. Have them pretend to be your boss (or whomever you want to practice with!) making a request of you, and try out responding in different ways. What do you notice here?
Or just say it outloud with yourself , noticing how it feels, noticing what comes up in the body that may need some tending.
How does this practice then allow you to show up differently in the actual moment of pressure?
This sort of change through somatic awareness and practice are possible because we’re neuroplastic. Our brains have the capacity to change! This is how we grow new capacities in our brains/nervous systems, rewiring new pathways through practice over time.
It feels like a miracle to me, and one that gives me hope.
Change is possible. Healing is possible. And we can support each other in it right now.
If you’re looking for some support in your own healing work, here’s a resource for identifying and creating your own somatic practices that comes from the brilliant somatics and neuroscience teacher, Amanda Blake.