“Postural tone is the foundation of our resting state and our readiness to engage in life.”
Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen 2022
Just beginning an online course with Bonnie on muscles, and very much looking forward to learning a thing or two about embodied movement and muscular diversity.
As I descend again into another round of trauma recovery work, I find myself revisiting old patterns and constructs. I am looking at the same internal space with eyes, a little less clouded. I am making more connections and having the courage to rearrange the floor plan, crack open some doors, possibly open a window or two.
In relationship to my terrible posture, I am discovering that the art of correcting it, lies in not one or two linear movements, but possibly twenty or so, connected subtle shifts, all the way from my pelvic floor to my jaw and the top of my mouth.
When I play with my neck and what is called “forward head”, I first have to shift my pelvis and lift my pelvic floor muscles, then my abdominal muscles need to rearrange themselves, the thoracic spine elongates and flexes, my shoulder roll back, the lungs expand, a cervical spine straightens out, my jaw drops and my head actually lolls back- Voila! a sort of straight posture emerges. Whew. Now, I ask myself, how do I feel here? Can I hold my center and keep a boundary? For a second or two this works and then I fall apart and everything in my body goes slack and super constricted simultaneously. It is learning process.
Come back to my breath and try again.
The same process of learning to hold boundaries in my world, when for the bulk of my life, I have been so stuck in a state of trauma that I really don’t know if I could have paid attention to anything. It is surprising that the frontal lobes of my brain could learn facts, retain information and regurgitate details. I could actually do that but as I slowly awake from the spacey trauma state that I knew as home, I am honestly impressed with myself for being able to get through school.
Now I get these glimpses of learning that come from my body, from my inner knowing, from all sorts of vectors not just the front of my brain. I deeply grieve when I understand this, I had my worth all tied up in how smart I wasn’t and I really couldn’t relax or trust enough, that my learning was sufficient in the form that it takes for me. This happens to so many people, trauma back rounds or not, (yes, I know that you are laughing, how many people are with out trauma?). We are trying to squeeze a nation of learners into a box, to do it one way, and the rest of the people are labeled as failures. Even in special education and learning resource rooms, the focus is on catching up with the pack. The brain is a mysterious organ and it can re-pattern and reroute itself, there are plenty of documented cases of this phenomena. I wonder if a way to accomplish neuro-diverse re-patterning of the mind, is to keep people in the same educational box? Possibly making some kids feel stupid and telling them if they work hard they will achieve what their peers may do just naturally? We know this doesn’t work, it is one of the urban myths we all invest in, there is not just one way to learn or to do things. There is much more diversity than that within the human nervous system and how it processes information.
I have a suspicion, that the acts of information gathering is way more dynamic than we can comprehend. Our access to information of this kind has been restricted and bullied out of us through conventional education models. Basic subtle exploration of internal movement in our selves, that open some of these blocks and allows for our own self healing and discovery, aiding us in re-emerging from a trauma state.
One thing that crossed my mind the other day, we invest so much praise and worth into the so call “normal” people and we dismiss the rest of the neuro-diverse population, unless they can prove to be extremely talented and remarkable in a creative field. The people that deal with information from a different part of their nervous system, that have struggled with how they move through the world, this is a remarkable characteristic. I wonder why they are not valued and praised more within this culture? Innovation, mutation, and resilience come from this population, that is exactly the kind of creativity that what we need in the world today. It is a trick of sorts, that which is called for to support the population in surviving, is what is shunned and driven into suppression. The amount of pain caused by this pattern is remarkable and terrifying. It is something to ask yourself and look into your body, deep in your neuro-psyche for answers and guidance. Listen to yourself.
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