Home Is Where Breath Is
Photo by Chris Koelewijn on Unsplash
Animals in the wild have the capacity to shake off their trauma. Sometimes they do it just by staying motionless for a while until breath gets them back into their body and they are ready to hop back into the wild. Sometimes they shake off immediately and quickly leave the place where their lives almost ended. They self-regulate so well that they will never avoid the place of incident out of fear it might happen again, nor hold grudges against those who almost took their lives away.
On March 8th, during the International Women's Day (IWD2021) in Chongqing, I used this analogy to talk about how we humans don’t use that innate capacity to self-regulate. Apparently, goosebumps are the way our body shakes the stress away, but sometimes it may take more than that. The reason it takes longer for humans is not because our lives are more complex or our traumas are greater than those of animals in the wild.
The reason is that our minds spin the story of trauma over and over again as if trying to overcome it by rumination. Unfortunately, this triggers the body to respond as if the situation is happening in real time, over and over again. Learning how to step out of the rumination cycle is probably the most important skill we can learn in a lifetime and by doing that we can learn how to better connect with somatic intelligence.
Conscious and Alert presentation for International Women's Day, Dalida Turkovic
(30 min)
Somatic intelligence is understanding how your body responds to danger and uses that knowledge of your own body to face adversity and cope with life’s daily challenges. It can also be known as the process of raising your own self-awareness, leading to a change in one’s behavioural patterns, typically for the better.
(Source: Maura Donovan, What Is Somatic Intelligence, University of New Hampshire URL: www.unh.edu)
I have been exploring somatic coaching and somatic healing work for some time now but you will probably agree that knowledge and real-life experience can be miles apart. After the excitement of connecting with deeply touching sharing from the speakers at IWD2021 under the theme #ChooseToChallenge, I found myself en route back to Beijing.
It all seemed to be flowing with ease until I realised that my COVID test result wasn’t showing on my Health Kit App. I felt my mask was suffocating me like the jaguar biting the impala’s face (see video) while I ran around the airport for two hours looking for a person who could tell me how else I could get my test results to prove that I am negative. Ah, should I mention that I got into a state of panic from interacting with masked people? Are they heroes or villains?
My mind was spinning and old memories of war and losing connection with my roots began to spin in my body. I had a moment of full compassion for the impala’s head flop when I decided to let go and admit that I was going to miss the flight and be late for the Mindful Self-Compassion class at BMC the next day.
“Breathing in, I know that I am breathing in, breathing out, I know that I am breathing out… take it slowly, one step at a time, one breath at a time.” The buzz of #ChooseToChallenge started to fade away. I could not challenge the establishment, the COVID status quo…“I am weaker than the system, I have to give up…” Ah, the sense of helplessness was never an easy topic for me.
Looking back on the experience, I realise that my absence created space for Laura and Charlene (assistant coaches supporting me during the Mindful Self-Compassion program) to share their wisdom of the practice and have their voices heard. Immense gratitude for togetherness, support and alignment with the practice we are sharing began to trickle into my mind and heart and release the experience of COVID 2021.
As far as my personal trauma goes, well, I am still working on it. I am gently holding my twenty-three-year-old part who felt so lonely and scared after leaving home and not ever being able to go back to Yugoslavia. I think she is longing to hear that this moment, this breath, this hand on the heart is where she belongs and that I will never, ever abandon her. She takes my hand and we sync our steps.
We are home, we have arrived.
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