Grief can happen when you least expect it

Yesterday I went to a nearby forest preserve for a hike.  I thoroughly enjoyed the feeling of sporadic sunshine on my skin while surrounded by trees who leaves have transitioned from dark green to orange, yellow and lime green that gently rode the wind down from the branches to the ground.    The uneven squishy earth on the trail was a welcome change on my feet from hard cement city sidewalks and sounds of birds and running river water was music to my ears accustomed to sirens and traffic.  I was present and soaking in the yummy.

While on this glorious walk, all of the sudden my thoughts started racing.  I found myself urgently planning my future. Thinking, " If I do this then I can this".  Exploring all of the possible scenarios and choices that I might make in the future.  Then, in a moment that seemed totally out of the blue, I got very sad.  Tears formed in my eyes and a familiar heart ache formed in my chest.  I paused my walk and began to notice the sensations in my body as the emotion came like a wave.  Tears, sound, chest pain, then tingling down my arms and legs.  I let myself ride this wave of emotion for about 60 seconds...then it was gone. 

I began walking again, slow and steady. As I walked,  I started to reflect on what just happened. I noticed that right before I felt that emotion that I am now calling grief, my thoughts were focused on what I'm going to do in the future and they felt urgent.  Interesting.  I don't know what the grief was about and I don't need to know.  What I do know is that that pattern of thoughts is very familiar and its a sign from my body telling me something needs to move through.  Now this is powerful information.  Knowing the signs that your body is telling you, "I need a minute to digest something".  Now I can really listen for that sign, pause and give my system a minute to digest whatever is there.  So powerful.

Healthy nervous system patterns look like riding the wave of emotion and then coming back to being present, just like I did on my hike.  Because what is extremely damaging and dis-ease producing is stuffing emotions or experiences down or feeling too much and getting stuck in them.  It's so common to stuff or ignore what we feel.  It's what we've been taught and it explains a lot of the challenges we face now.

When you've lived a lifetime of not feeling OR feeling too much, you develop low ability to fully feel the full spectrum of emotion.  It may not have felt safe in your family to express how you felt and it certainly isn't well received in our culture. Now, you're anxious, depressed or stuck and you know you need to learn how to feel emotions to completion but it just feels like waaaay tooo much for you to handle.  The fear is you might rage on someone or get lost in depression and never come back.

I intimately know these worries because I lived it for many many decades and my clients talk about it in our work together.

Here's what I know to be true.  Your nervous system wants to come back to regulation and feel safe and at ease.  When you provide it the education and experience of safety in feeling, you can more easily ride out your emotions and then settle in a regulated space.  When you do that you have more energy, feel open and receptive, feel safe, curious, creative and able to listen to your gut.  And when you feel an emotion, you can move through it and get on with your life. 

If you feel ready to learn these skills, go here to book a 30 min consultation to talk about somatic therapy.

Do I have to live with more pain as I get older?

I want to share something with you.  Every single day I talk to people around my age (turned 50 in January!) and you know what I hear most often coming out of their mouths....all of the health challenges and the pain they are having.  Yes, we have turned into our parents and grandparents.  

But here's the important thing.  I know, in my heart of hearts that you don't HAVE to surrender to pain in your body.  And this is how I know.  I have struggled with lots of different health challenges MOST of my life and the truth is, NOW, 95% of the time, I have NO PAIN.   This isn't to say that I don't have challenges, I do.  However, physical pain isn't one of them.  And as a yoga teacher of 22 years and as someone who has tried lots of different approaches to health and wellness, as well as serving hundreds of people,  I know you can find a way to tend to your health where you can feel better as you get older.  Do things change, yes.  Is it a shift of lifestyle, yes.  Is it easy, no.  Is it worth it, ABSOFREAKINGLUTELY.

I talk a lot about emotional health and the nervous system but did you also know that your nervous system also affects your physical body?

Your nervous system lives inside your fascia which is the connective tissue of your body.  That system is a system of nerves that looks like roots or branches and it is designed to keep you alive and protect you.  It’s always sensing danger or safety and then shifting your system into different states to help you protect (fight/flight/freeze or dissociate) when there’s a threat and regulate (feel safe, at ease, open to possibilities, excited, play) when it feels safe.  When we’re in a state of threat there is going to be more tension, tightness, hypervigilance, and sensitivity to pain OR the opposite side of the spectrum, hypermobility (too loose in joints) which can also cause pain.  

If you have stuck stress energy in your body from current or past experiences that is called Trauma.  And the stuck energy can cause these protective responses and patterns to turn on causing chronic pain patterns in your body, sciatica, shoulder pain, back pain, knee pain, neck pain, migraines, and chronic fatigue.

In order to shift these patterns working with the nervous system in a gentle systemic way is crucial in repatterning how your system responds to stress

ALSO, your physical movement routine will also help with your nervous system.  More exercise is not always the best approach.  What I have found over the decades is that doing the same type of exercise all the time can have detrimental effects.  For example, there was a time in my life where I was doing strong 1-2 hour yoga practices 4-6x/weekk.  Right away you might think that is impressive but I will tell you, I had lots of pain.  I had a chronic shoulder injury, chronic neck and shoulder tightness, and sciatica that would flare up the more I practiced.  Too much of a good thing becomes detrimental to your health!

Now, I’ve found a rhythm with exercise that keeps me pain-free.  One of the most amazing things I’ve done is mixed it up.  I’m going to share what works for me but it’s likely NOT what works for you.  The point is to continue to experiment with something for a bit and let your body tell you if it’s too much or not enough.  Like, if you have pain that won’t go away or chronic tightness patterns etc something needs to change.  Keep experimenting and checking in to see what your body says to you.

I do:

Yoga (1-2 x)

Bowspring (1x)

Long walks (almost daily)

Dance class, Salsa or Bachata, or choreography  (1-2x)every week.  

The variation is so so important and so is doing LESS.

Need to add something different into your routine?

Join us for a class this week

Wednesday 9:30-10;30am Bowspring

Satruday 10am-11:15am Yoga

Class recordings available if you can’t make it live

Register here and I’ll send you the recording link

With LOVE and Regulation

Dorie

I'm Feeling Emotions My Mind Doesn't Understand

You're sitting at dinner and all of the sudden your chest gets tight and you feel like you want to run out of the room.  That's weird, you think.  There's nothing specific happening that would evoke such a big emotion but yet your body is screaming at you, "get out of here!" 

It's confusing and your mind wants to figure it out.

You feel exhausted but you had a good night sleep.  Why am I so tired.

You are spacing out but you've had your coffee.  Why am I so spacey?

You're irritated at everyone you come in contact with today but you don't understand why.  Why am I so irritated?

Let's make some sense of this.

Your Nervous System's Memory bank:

Once you start to connect that what you're experiencing is in your nervous system, you realize you don't have to figure out why you feel the way you feel.  (A relief, right?!?!?).  What you're feeling might be from something that's happening in the moment or it could be that something that's happening in the moment is reminding your system of something that happened in the past.  Your Nervous System has a memory bank and it remembers everything you have ever experienced, some say it can go back to conception and even generationally. 

Ultimately the goal is to feel different.  Here's how:

Instead of trying to figure out why you feel the way you feel, shift your attention to your Nervous system which you can also think of as your body's brain.  Identify what state your NS is in, then use tools to regulate and digest any emotional charge that's in your body.  This is a moment-to-moment process of being in a relationship with your nervous system which is honestly the longest relationship you're ever gonna have.

Working with your nervous system is the quickest way to shift out of feeling anxious, stuck, depressed or overwhelmed because your nervous system directly affects your thoughts, emotions, behaviors/impulses.

You ready?

Reply to this email with "I'm ready" in the subject line to schedule your