From my research to yoga ...

I’m aware I haven’t written anything on here since New Year’s Day … apologies! Mostly, this has been due to the time demands of my therapy practice and working on my thesis.  I want to find more time to write again though as I move through the next steps of both my PhD / research journey and my personal journey; both of which are intimately interlinked …

I’ve also been practising yoga regularly since September and so have been spending time reading around yogic practices and philosophies.  Yoga is a practice I’ve dipped in and out of for many years, but hadn’t really found a teacher / school which compelled me to stay.  Until last August when I was introduced to ‘Forrest Yoga’ through an organisation called ‘Jambo Yoga’ …

Forrest Yoga is more physically intense than other approaches I’ve experienced and encourages an internal focus alongside the physical, which is partly what makes its philosophy so similar to my own.  It encourages its students to connect more fully both with their bodies and their authentic selves.  As stated on the ‘Forrest Yoga’ website (www.forrestyoga.com); “The practice challenges students to access their whole being and to use Forrest Yoga as a path to finding and then cleansing the emotional and mental blocks that dictate and limit their lives.”

As much of my PhD journey has been serendipitous, it seems that I was led to Forrest Yoga at just the right time.  My research was leading me to conclude how just how much of our self experiencing is situated in our bodies.  I was also thinking more deeply about the disconnect between mind & body, so commonly experienced by people with eating disorders and other disordered eating / body image concerns.  This mind-body disconnect is very prevalent in western society and I think it plays a huge role in the rising numbers of people we see experiencing eating disorders, obesity, disordered eating, body image concerns, etc.  Seeing our own, and others’ bodies as objects to be manipulated into looking a particular way is common practice in our culture; and this takes us away from our authentic embodied experiencing. 

In my work with eating disordered clients, I see how disconnected they are from their body’s experiencing.  Their body has become a ‘thing’ which they want to control or change.  They don’t experience it as part of themselves.  They don’t experience their body as their embodied self.  Their body has become the problem. 

I also find many clients, with no eating issues who are disconnected from their bodies and their feelings.  Our feelings tend to be experienced in our bodies; as sensations, as ‘feelings.’  But many people focus too much on what they’re thinking.  It’s amazing how often a question about how a client feels about something is answered with, “I think … “ 

Our bodies have a lot of wisdom and learning to listen to our body can tell us so much about ourselves.  Our body communicates in many ways; through its unique internal sensations, through its posture and movement, through ‘psychosomatic’ manifestations and much more.  Our body is what allows us to experience the world around us.  It’s what allows us to relate to other people and it’s from where we present ourselves to the world.

In a Forrest Yoga class, I experience myself as being fully in my body for the 90 or so minutes the class lasts.  My mind chatter stops and I can simply be fully in my body in way I don’t think I can be anywhere else.  I experience no judgement of my body from anyone else in the room; teachers or other students.  And nor do I experience any judgement towards anyone else or their body.  And more importantly, I don’t experience any self judgement or criticism towards myself or my body. 

For the first time in as long as I can remember, being in a Jambo Yoga class is the first time I have felt absolutely no self-consciousness about my body.  I experience no concerns about how ‘it’ looks; I step into my holistic (and authentic) embodied experience and out of the disembodied objectified experience of western society.  I experience the ‘assists’ offered by the assistants as nurturing and supportive and powerful in enabling me to connect even more fully with my own body and its abilities.  In short, I feel alive.

In that class myself and my body are one … authentically and without judgement.

I’m working on increasingly being this way outside of the yoga room, and also on finding ways to enable my clients to connect more fully with their embodied experiencing and authentic selves …

Embodying the Environment ...

My Counselling Room

As a counsellor in private practice I seek to create a warm, safe, inviting environment for my clients.  I think I  manage to achieve this as I receive lots of positive comments from clients about the warmth, safety and comfort they feel when they enter, and sit in my counselling room.

Lake District

I think that our environment can have an impact on how we feel about, and within, ourselves.  As I sit here writing this, I'm aware of various environments scrolling through my mind ... the sea on both hot and cold days, hillsides in Northumberland, the Lake District and southern Italy; places I've visited on holidays and days out.  And as I pause in my memories and reconnect to them, I'm aware of how differently I experiences those places, and more significantly, how I experienced myself within them.

I was thinking about this earlier today, sitting in a room where I provide counselling away from my private practice.  I was very aware of experiencing that environment as very different from my own personal counselling room.  I didn't feel as 'at home' there ... & I know that I'm not, in the literal sense of the phrase ... but I was aware of not feeling as much a part of that room as I do when I'm in my own counselling room.

It's almost like I meld into my own counselling room; the room and myself are part of the same package.  But in this other room, I'm aware of feeling separate, very distinct; a sense of having just put myself in it.  I'm still the same person in each room, using the same skills and parts of me; yet I experience myself very differently.

I feel very much more complete, more relaxed, more completely myself in my room, surrounded by my own things.  And in that place, I feel more able to be more fully me.  I guess my own counselling room is an external extension of my inner self.

I have no external factors to consider in my own room as I do when I'm in other rooms; rooms belonging to other people, to other organisations, with their things in them instead of mine.  And much as those external factors aren't necessarily visibly present in those other rooms, I'm increasingly aware of how omnipresent they actually are for me; constraining, restricting, limiting me, trying to make me fit them & the places & people who they belong to.  They hold me hostage; in stark contrast to the completely relaxed, complete me, I am in my own room, in my own environment.

And I'm sure that this must impact on the therapeutic relationship I'm able to offer clients.

It could be argued that, as it's the relationship which is the most important therapeutic consideration, that environment shouldn't matter.  I remember believing this myself when I first began working in different venues and was able to establish effective therapeutic relationships in each of those.  And to an extent, that is true ...

But ... having not worked in other venues for a short while and only this week going back to them, I'm suddenly aware of just how much the environment I'm in impacts on me and my sense of myself.

As I'm writing, I'm increasingly recognising how the environment I'm in impacts on me.  And I guess that that's because, no matter what environment I'm in, I become a part of.  The environment and myself aren't separate; if I'm in a place, a particular environment, I'm experiencing that environment and I'm also experiencing myself within that environment.

Cullercoats Bay looking towards Tynemouth

I feel most relaxed, most 'at home' in those environments in which I feel most a part of.  Those places in which I'm not constrained by any external influences and can just simply be me ... and for me, that's in my own home, my own counselling room, and being out in nature.

I feel more content, more energetic, more at peace, more motivated, more willing to take good care of myself and nurture myself, etc., ... in short, more me.

Reflecting on this in terms of client work, people often find themselves feeling 'depressed' when they feel stuck or trapped in environments in which they're not happy; not able to be fully themselves.  For example, jobs they don't like, relationships which aren't bringing them happiness, home environments which aren't right, safe or comfortable, etc., etc.

Our environment or situation in which we find ourselves seems to have a huge impact on how we experience ourselves and how we feel about ourselves ...

Melodious, Harmonious Empathic Connections

I've been sitting reflecting between clients today on a changed sense of self I'm currently experiencing.  I'm recognising it as an opening up, an expansion, and also a reconnection to a vital part of myself that 've suppressed over the last few years.

In my teens and early twenties, music was a huge and vital part of my life; a huge and vital part of mySelf.  Back then, when I didn't have a strong sense of Self, music gave me an identity and a way of expressing myself. I played guitar, a little bit of piano, sang, and wrote songs; and I loved it.

Leading up to, and during, my counselling training, I began to develop and connect with a much stronger sense of Self as an individual. Self awareness, personal development, psychological theories and therapeutic ways of being enveloped me. I found other ways of expressing myself. I became a 'Counsellor,' a 'Clinical Supervisor.' I became a 'PhD Student,' an 'Eating Disorders Specialist.' I became a 'Clinical Hypnotherapist' and 'NLP Practitioner.

But somewhere along this path, I forgot that I was also a 'Musician,' and a 'Songwriter.'

Sitting here today, I can see how blinkered I'd become, how focused my vision had become onto the therapeutic and eating disorders worlds. I loved, and do still love, that therapeutic world. I love connecting therapeutically with clients, exploring my own, and others' subjectivities, sharing deep empathic understandings and connections, being part of, and observing, the growth and change processes of others.

But, I also love music. And I think I've forgotten that at times.

For me, the connection that happens in the therapy room when working at depth with clients, is a similar sense of connection I feel when connecting with other musicians in a music room. And it's only as I write this now that I'm understanding that parallel. For me, connection is so important. That sense of retaining my own unique individuality (sense of Self), whilst connecting at a deep empathic level with others, is vital, and as both a musician and a therapeutic practitioner I'm lucky to experience that.

If possible, at times, the musical connection can feel even deeper than the therapeutic one. Playing an instrument or singing a song with other musicians, and hearing and feeling part of a shared whole (the song) is incredible. One retains one's individuality as the musician, but it truly is an experience where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It truly is empathic connection at the deepest level; embodied, through Self, through instruments, and through the music.

Embodiment has been a significant part of my PhD research. And I'm now really appreciating just what an embodied experience music is; both when playing an instrument or listening to live / recorded music. Music isn't just heard. It's felt. The bass line or drum beat that resonates through one's body. The melody or song lyric that causes the hairs on the back of one's neck or arms, to stand on end. The rhythm that your foot just can't help tapping along to. And when playing an instrument, the musician and instrument seem to merge. Watch musicians play, and just see how their body moves with, and around, their instrument. Observe their facial expressions as they lose themselves in the sound and the act of creating that sound. And when playing an instrument it can, at those times of empathic connection with the music, feel that the instrument truly is an extension of one's bodily self.

It's no wonder that for some musicians, their instrument becomes so precious to them.

I'm excited about reconnecting with my Musical Self. It feels as if my sense of Self has expanded, has opened up. My world is suddenly a bigger, much more expansive, expressive place. I think the 3 recent entries on here, and the song I've just written, are proof of that! An opening of my mind, and an expansion of my creativity, which I hope will also help me re-engage with my therapeutic and academic work in a much more expansive and creatively expressive way too.

  

Melodious, harmonious empathic connections, musically, therapeutically and academically are hopefully mine now ...

... to embrace the feminine

Immersing myself in the concept of my new website, ‘Embodying Change’, I’ve been reflecting on when the holistic, embodied experience first caught my interest. I’ve been aware for many years of the limitations of talking therapy … as someone who is naturally intellectual, I’ve always had a tendency to intellectualise things and try to understand everything via words with my rational, conscious mind. I realised though that this wasn’t always effective in understanding myself or trying to bring about personal change. I then discovered the importance of bypassing the intellectual level (the ego) and accessing the unconscious via creative ways of exploring and working … which has proved hugely beneficial for me.


And what this reflection has brought to mind for me is a workshop I participated in a number of years ago … it was a weekend workshop facilitate by Natalie Rogers (daughter of Carl Rogers, the ‘founder’ of Person Centred Therapy) based on her ‘Creative Connection’ process of therapy.

Across the weekend, we engaged in a variety of creative ways of connecting with our Selves, our bodies, and thoughts, feelings, emotions and memories, and our unconscious. Natalie facilitated us in using dance, drama, our voices, guided visualisations, story-telling, metaphor and the use of various art methods (drawing, painting, collage, sculpture) to explore the issues arising for us across those 3 days.


For me again, it was the power, or knowing insistence of my unconscious which amazed me. Someone I loved dearly had very recently died and consciously I’d expected to find myself accessing and illustrating those very present and raw feelings … however, my unconscious had other plans …

As each exercise led into the next one, I realised that the things I was creating in art form and accessing via my bodily expression were all about my sense of self as a woman … and more specifically, my sense of self as a women within my own female body. Prior to this weekend, and as a woman with a history of eating distress, this was something I hadn’t fully appreciated; to begin to access this acceptance and appreciation was hugely significant and symbolic for me.

Many people living with eating disorders live at a distance from their bodies. They become disconnected and aren’t able to easily access their embodied experience. The body becomes a separate thing, an object, to hate or to change or sculpt into a more acceptable (for the individual) shape or size.

Towards the end of the weekend, Natalie facilitated a sculpture creating exercise with clay. Using guided visualisation, we were invited to work with a piece of clay, moulding and sculpting it into whatever shape or form was right for us. This was all done with our eyes closed, so we could engage fully with the clay in our hands, fully experience it and allow our unconscious to guide us in our creation.

As we paused in the exercise and were invited to open our eyes, I was surprised to recognise the distinct shape of a womb, fallopian tubes and ovaries. With my eyes close, I’d had no conscious idea as to what I was creating. And of course, the sculpture fitted completely with the rest of the things I’d produced earlier in the weekend.

We were then invited to re-engage with our sculpture. I’m not sure now, but I think this part of the exercise was done with music playing in the background. As I worked in a trance-like state, I was amazed to watch my hands re-sculpt my creation slightly and work it into more of a heart shape with outstretched arms.


The final sculpture was, for me, very emotive. Not only did it seem an inevitable conclusion to the weekend’s exploration, but it also symbolised a significant state of self-acceptance for me, and of my body as a female body with all the privilege and magnificence that affords me. The (my) heart reaching out with arms open wide to embrace the feminine …

It was also yet another confirmation of my continued movement away from my earlier eating disorder. For many years (both before and during my eating disorder), a lot of my self-hatred and un-ease had been directed at my stomach, which, in my mind, was never flat enough. For many women, a rounded stomach is natural … a female stomach has to house the feminine reproductive system, the start of life. A female stomach naturally has a covering of body fat.

And I find it now so sad that many women fail to recognise this, especially those with eating disorders or body image concerns. For many women, their stomach remains a source of self-hatred … when really is should be a focus of self-love and a celebration of all that is feminine.

So not only was that weekend filled with huge personal significance for me and the privilege of working with Natalie Rogers, it also reinforced for me, the power of working in ways other than the verbal. Taking away words, bypassing my intellectual / conscious mind allowed me to access learnings I wasn’t aware were ready to be offered and integrated. And because those learnings came from my unconscious and were experienced and processed in non-verbal ways, through the engagement of my whole body in the exercises … those learnings were experienced in a very profound and embodied manner … in ways too profound and deep for me to express fully in words here …