Searching for the sleepy and forgotten places

Illustration by Sophie Bass

You’re searching for the places in your body that you’ve rejected, gone numb in, abandoned, become sleepy in, or where you’ve given up.

Look for and tally up these places and begin to breathe life back into them. Fill them up with your consciousness, with your life force, with your heart, with you willing co-creation and participation in your existence. And what else is your consciousness other than... ✵you✵!?

I have a bunch of sleepy places now in my body, and they kinda like being asleep! I have a few in my feet of course, which were pinned for almost 5 months. I tried to stay with them during those months but it was too painful, emotionally. It was a confrontation level I just could not handle. Now I have to make amends and welcome them back again and again to the whole of my body, as everything is indeed attached to everything. The meridian systems of Chinese medicine is a good map, so are the sinew paths or anatomy trains, but if you have some movement practice, the maps will reveal themselves to you on their own.

You can think about a place in your body that may for a time have been too painful to breathe or inhabit. This is where we begin to make amends and welcome ourselves back to our selves.

Of course if the intensity still feels like too much directly on that spot... take the scenic route and make friends with another less sensitive places... the spinal column is always a fantastic place to begin.

As you build this practice, the knots tend to unravel themselves... you don’t need to push right into the deepest scar if its not time yet.

I really like these words by Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, they quiet the mind and take me into the experience:

“You cant release what you dont feel. Instead of thinking about it, feel it”

As I tell my students always, the practice of yoga is pervaded with love. So explore with kindness, curiosity and love my dears 💜 this is a long-view practice, no quick fixes available. Like a good friendship, your deepening relationship to the Self will only grow richer with time.

love,
Natasha

Hips, Heart, Head: Stimulating spinal and energetic awareness

An interesting exploration is to work to line up the back of your hips, back of your heart, and back of your head in every single yoga posture for the duration of your practice.

This movement meditation has a ton of cognitive, proprioceptive, and energetic benefits - however done repetitively over time will also grant you a more subtle and delightful access to the energy within your inner body and spinal column.

This practice is very supportive and healing to the mind, while stimulating the governing vessel meridian, bladder meridian, core, and Shushumna Nadi.

Try it if you feel called, see if it makes a difference for you.

🔹 turn inward first, to locate and spend time with your wise and quiet self within. connect to Source within you.

🔹 then expand your awareness back into your body from a focused, breath-aware, intentional and caring place.

🔹 feel the back of your sacrum, back of your heart, back of your skull line up with each other, use a wall at first if you need it (you can also use the centerpoints of these 3 places if you have access to internal sensation).

🔹 begin your yoga practice finding this alignment in every pose. Some poses to try out are:

• table-top pose

• downward facing dog

• standing mountain/ tadasana

• cobra pose

• warrior 2, side angle, triangle

• crescent lunge

——-

To add a little more power, leverage, and peace to your yoga practice, add the following additional steps:

🔹 make sure you are registered to vote and that you properly research who is running for office locally, what their interests are, who is endorsing them, and props on the ballot - so that we can have the best chance for a better future than what we’re seeing now.

🔹 seek to understand others before seeking to convince them of your perspective - so that you can give to others the experience of respect, compassion and interconnectedness that our world so desperately needs right now.

🔹 as best as possible, fill the environments you move through with kindness, sparkle, and love in spite of differences. This is a tall order these days, be sure to do your practice regularly to replenish a sense of patience, awareness, discernment and strength 🤗💕

Breath and love,
Fully in the shock and struggle with ya baby cakes,
Natasha.

You are Loving Awareness

“If you don’t become the ocean,
you’ll be seasick everyday”
- Leonard Cohen

You don’t “have” awareness, you ARE awareness.

The pull towards polarity is strong right now. remember that you become what you hate. It’s not worth it, and its a long way back to “home”.

There’s a bigger picture at play.

You are whole, and holy.

Remain centered in ✵loving awareness✵ of all that arises for you in this journey: the feelings, emotions, sensations, fears, desires, reactions, compulsions - rather than getting lost in, or controlled by them.

You can reside in the space where you are the awareness of the emotion, sensation or thought - not the emotion itself.

Awareness always 𝒊𝒔, no matter what.

💙

𝑂𝑛𝑙𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑛 (when you identify with loving awareness rather than sensation), will you be able to discern and follow through with right action, which is both contribution and evolution.

There’s a lot of decoy messaging right now. There’s a lot that’s not real or true. Especially on social media and devices. There’s a lot that’s simply designed to destabilize you. Stay close to your practice and to those whose vibe brings out your best, most loving and natural self.

There is no happy ending promised on this planet, only opportunities for healing, learning, and growing. This planet is like middle school - you’ve got other places and things to get to after this ✨

Hold the compassion you preach.
Be disciplined in your speech.
Take care of your mind, energy and soul.

All sides are in a state of fear and suffering right now, recognize this.

The heart breaks so that more love can enter it.
The heart breaks so that it can expand to encompass more.

Rise more. Above the pettiness, delusions, and noise. Hug your loved ones lots. Tell them you love them. Make them yummy food. Forgive misunderstandings and interpret their words generously. Give them space to be awkward and clumsy through this difficulty. Be willing to compromise.

Giggles and beauty are medicine to the soul in trying times.

We are learning.
Theses times are ROCKY.
We are shaken.
Uncertainty everywhere we look.

Come back to loving awareness.
All experience is occurring on the ocean of loving awareness.

Don’t get sent back to repeat this grade, cuz this one BLOWS.

Love you,
you’re ok even if you’re not.
N 💙

The role of yoga in trauma recovery

Transcription 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘢𝘯 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘸 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘋𝘳 𝘉𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘭 𝘝𝘢𝘯 𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘒𝘰𝘭𝘬, 𝘢 𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘳 on 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘶𝘮𝘢 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘯-𝘣𝘰𝘥𝘺, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘵𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵:⁣
⁣
“See our culture is not a culture that is very focused on self-regulation; but there are other cultures, like the Chinese or Indian, where you can really learn to control your own physiology. There are age-old Chinese and Indian methods where you can learn that by controlling your breath and controlling your movement, you can manage your own physiological arousal. ⁣
⁣
The only one of these that I have done research on and studied is yoga, I haven’t really studied TaiChi or QiGong, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t do the same thing: You can actually learn to manage the housekeeping of your body, which gets so disturbed by trauma, by engaging in a regular yoga practice and really learning how to move and breathe in a way that makes you feel calm and safe. ⁣

The mainstream culture in the west is very much: “if you feel bad take a drug”. So we send these very contradictory messages to our kids, we say “don’t take drugs, but take these drugs for your ADHD” - but what we don’t really teach kids or adults in our culture is that you can actually regulate your own physiology. Every school should teach kids how to regulate their own physiology. It should be a basic skill, that all of us as humans should learn.⁣”
⁣
𝘚𝘰 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺?⁣
⁣
”You start every day doing yoga or qigong, you start by sitting still, focusing on your body, activating the interoceptive part of your brain that impacts self-regulation. You pay attention to how you move and how you breathe, you notice how your⁣ breathing patterns change your thinking patterns and moods, and you really become familiar with your own internal experience.”

You can listen to the entire interview here:

JOIN OUR EMAIL LIST: http://www.successpodcast.com Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk is a Boston-based psychiatrist and The New York Times best-selling author of The B...