The Lost Key
Context
Lately I've been working with a client who likes to write and draw as part of her integration process. After a series of one-to-one sessions I asked her if she would like to write something about her experience of the treatments for my blog. Here it is in her words:
The Lost Key
I had participated in one of Ali's somatic movement workshop, including BodyMind Centering techniques, and was amazed what a powerful tool it had been for me to release some of my spinal and neck trauma I had neglected to address after a fall on my head during the Summer. This experience set the impulse to book a 1:1 bodywork session with him. Now, after completing a circle of six treatments, I revisit how I had arrived tense and fragile at my first treatment. Partial insomnia for months, a nearly immobile right shoulder, with a body and mind that felt as if constantly driving over the speed limit on a busy motorway since far too long. I could feel that I had somehow reached the point of breaking which I continued fighting, leaving me somehow rigid. That hindered my ability to heal, let my creativity flow and to focus in order to deal with the day-to-day challenges at a time of loss, grief and great transition. I was surviving not thriving.
The sessions always begun with a conversation about any sensation that I had noticed in my body. This was the starting point for Ali’s work. I noticed particularly upon arrival to the first two sessions how nervous I was to drop into the silence of just being, no pushing, no pretending, not having to be, to think or to be anything other than here and now in my body. I felt great comfort arriving at each session by being offered and finding the earth as my solid companion beneath me. "If I could stretch out", I thought sometimes, "I would stretch all around the globe until I reach myself again. Solid ground, I am breathing, I am." Held softly and safely between the warm earth and the moving frontiers of Ali’s hands who were conversing with that deep knowledge already existent inside me. Maybe saying: "It is ok, relax, rest. You know, you know, you do know! I am just here to remind you of all that you have arrived with. Wake up. Let go. Flow.”
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A time and place where I can allow to just fully be, vulnerable, strong, soft, body shaking, tears flowing over, the sound of my chattering teeth, my jaws closing tightly. There was space for all of it.
The first treatment broke down a barrier of fear and panic, especially in my sacrum and shoulder. I was a little scared of the intensity I felt in it but the space was open to freely express: “I feel…”. Perhaps that is the beginning, or at least for me, this very simple and yet so profound ‘I feel…’, ‘I allow the sensations to flow…’ without judgment in the space. The dialogue Ali initiated was one between myself and my body. This body who has absorbed all my life’s stories, all the joys and sorrows, isn’t it the living tapestry, the container, the vehicle and the witness of myself?
The treatments do not ask for details of the story. I do not have to share the details of the emotional pain, doubt or fear that has manifested itself in my tight hips or painful shoulders. The treatments did not necessarily lead to me reliving the vividly lingering, hidden, denied or old forgotten stories my body has stored in its bones, muscles, cells, facia and the pumping heart.
Yet, it felt to me that my body was somehow re-opened like a book to myself. Each chapter, each page handed gently to me to read anew, to stroke lovingly over the letters or just flicking through it as if the individual words do not matter any longer in the presence of Now, in the vastness of my own being. A time and place where I can allow to just fully be, vulnerable, strong, soft, body shaking, tears flowing over, the sound of my chattering teeth, my jaws closing tightly. There was space for all of it.
I was guided and reconnected to my body’s own instinctive knowing of opening, breathing in to, letting go, allowing my body to let it all flow through and to heal itself because that is what my body really wants to do and CAN do - if only given permission.
image by Sam Bloomfield
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The process it initiated for me is that of a magical opening of a tightly locked gate which lead my path back to that river flowing deep inside me, life bringing, creative, constantly moving, renewing itself, wondrous, healing and thriving.
Gently and knowledgeable I was reminded of my bones. These are my legs, my hips, my spine, my shoulder blades, this is very simply my skeleton, this is the natural flow of my body’s fluids and energies, all of its beginning were formed inside my mother’s womb – what a miracle!
Ali’s hands became like those of a cartographer, mapping out for me the edges of this bodily territory of my existence, from and within I move, knowingly and unknowingly. The wonder of discovery, the being brought back into the full awareness of my body without having to do anything, connection, where no thoughts need to be thought, being felt, feeling and being seen, begun to fill me with tranquillity and appreciation slowly spilling over into my mind.
So, what is this somatic bodyworker
I wonder? An electrician rewiring the cables behind the walls, a plasterer straightening out the rugged surfaces, a ferry man rowing the boat safely to the other side, an arbitrator initiating a solution finding process between oneself and the body, a reader, a messenger, the meeting point of softness and strength, perhaps a knowledgeable landscaper passing, lending a hand and making one aware how we ourselves can transform this garden into a place of full bloom or a Japanese potter who helps us appreciate what we have got and teaches us to fill the broken pieces with pure gold?
Over the last months’ treatments I journeyed from feeling unsafe, fearful and weepy at times to reconnecting to my softness, acceptance, melting; yes, rigidness evolved into yielding. Oh, glorious yielding! Yielding into the earth, into the process of guided release, soft and powerful yielding into the dark corners of tension and stretching into lightness.
image by Sam Bloomfield
What do I have to bring to benefit most from the treatments? My body, and the willingness to drop deeply and thoughtlessly into trusting, without doubt, in renewal and possibility because nature never is stagnation but constant movement, however still it may appear from the outside.
Ali applied his skills, that require lengthy study and acquisition of concrete knowledge, in a place of safety, listening, being heard in respect and openness and surprised me with his intuitive knowing of the body's language. Overall, the process it initiated for me is that of a magical opening to a tightly locked gate which lead my path back to that river flowing deep inside me, life bringing, creative, constantly moving, renewing itself, wondrous, healing and thriving.