The spaces in between hold so much
On the transitional moments that offer us internal resources & spaciousness to meet ourselves more fully.
Ok, Audio option round 2! The audio version also has a little practice suggestion to assist you in building your capacity & ability to access your felt sense. That part is not included in the written essay. If you would like to skip ahead to that, you can fast forward to minute 14 :)
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The spaces in between hold so much.
Liminal moments where we are not where we were, but we are not yet where we are heading.
It’s the transitional moments that we often pass by without much notice. A lot of time just waiting for the next “thing” to arise. The next “thing” that has a clear marker. We have learned how to tune out the in-between. We label it as boring. As if it was meaningless. As if nothing resides there for us so might as well just check out.
It also so happens that some of those mundane transitional moments are the ones I see my clients cling to or recollect as internal resources during moments of distress. It is those moments that feel like containment to them. That space becomes a lantern when they are in their darkness. Floatation devices while they’re treading their deep waters. Fuzzy blankets when their soul needs comfort. A constant. Something reliable. Something true and real.
I look around at the construction of my life and realize that it’s these transitional moments that are the ones that always bring me back home to myself. I think I may have constructed my life in a way that makes transitional moments even more obvious. Even more spacious. Even more prominent. So they can’t be missed. So they arise strongly and blatantly. Ready to hold me in all of my moments of deep joy, love, sorrow, and grief. The transitional moments are also the ones I utilize in moments of intense feeling. In confusion. The transitional moments are like pause buttons, holding me and allowing me to regain my bearings and feel back into my center so that my next step isn’t one out of alignment.
Sometimes those liminal moments are direct nourishment for my spirit.
Seeing proof of my existence in the spaces I inhabit.
The way the sun pours into my room.
The uninterrupted sounds always slipping out of my pugs (snores, snorts, sneezes, farts)
The shelves and shelves of books that have pulled me into them.
My plants. MY PLANTS. My god, the plants.
Food that I picked out for myself.
The actual fuzzy blankets on every surface, ready to welcome me into them like warm open arms.
But also the way the breeze moves the tall wild grasses in my yard.
The smell of wisteria and honey suckle coming from my neighbors yard.
The birds singing in the morning.
The frogs sounding off at night.
The tall trees starting to bud as they begin to ascend from their winter expression.
All of this is always already right here for me.
All of this is always already right here for you.
In the moments of going into my own depths, it is these things that my spirit clings to. They are life affirming. They remind me that peace, slowness, and consistency exist. But often in the places we forget to look for it.
Sometimes the liminal moments are indirect nourishment.
Space for me to rage.
Time for journaling and allowing some of my internal thoughts to come out & be witnessed.
Crying freely.
Feeling sorry for myself.
Being honest with myself about my missteps in the safety of my own mind.
Witnessing the intense emotional thoughts I’m having.
Naming the emotions present and letting them fully inhabit my body.
Stewing. Ruminating. Letting my internal child have a tantrum.
So much of Somatic Experiencing is about cultivating the practice of awareness of what is real and true. This is how I approach myself in every moment. What is real and true baby? It’s why I always ask my students every time I see them “What is real and true for you right now?” That question demands pausing to collect data. And it is almost never answered by sharing thoughts about a situation. It is almost always answered by naming the emotions and sensations present within them. I think because somewhere somehow deep down we realize that our thoughts aren’t the best place to find truth and realness. What is brought forward instead are sensory information, emotions & sensations.
I’m feeling frustrated.
There’s tightness in my body.
I’m feeling calm and relaxed.
My throat feels clenched & there’s anxiety in my chest.
The sun is shining.
The rooster is sounding.
I am overwhelmed.
But how do they know that?
How do you know that you are feeling what you are feeling?
Again this question is often a question that is hardly ever answered by expressing one's thoughts about a situation. That always intrigues me.
How do you know you’re feeling anger? I ask them.
Well I know because there's tightness in my chest. I feel heat in my arms and throat. I have an impulse to yell. I feel my body bracing.
These answers don’t come instantaneously.
They take a few seconds.
They often shift their eyes away, out, or down.
As if searching.
I love this part. I love giving them space in silence to explore. They’re feeling. They’re exploring their Somatic (BODY) Experience. They are waiting for information to be revealed. They are pausing with outstretched arms for their internal witness to receive more understanding.
The spaces in between hold so much.
In SE we have a model that we tend to use within sessions.
The model is an acronym.
SIBAM.
These 5 letters represent the 5 ways our experiences affect us. 5 ways we are impacted by our lived experience. We are taught that the more channels we can bring into the session, the more online and active the nervous system is. The more ready our body is to unravel our stress & trauma. It’s more hands on deck.
Sensation
Imprint/Image
Behavior
Affect (emotion)
Meaning
Some of us have more access to some of these than others.
It’s completely normal & fine to be able to really rely on some and rely on the others a bit less.
I like to work with clients in expanding their capacity to rely on and become a witness to all of them more equally. Like in yoga. We aim for balance between sides. If you stretch in one direction, you must stretch in the other. Why? To help the body maintain balance. To make sure all sides are strong and flexible. So that the body works in a more harmonious way. So that one part doesn’t have to carry more than its share of the weight.
I like to think of this model in similar terms.
The more we can recognize how our experiences affect us, the more readily the puzzle pieces will appear that help our bodies reorganize in a really coherent way. In a way that disarms long standing survival cycles, bracing patterns, and habitual reactions to stress. The more tuned in we are to these 5 experience channels, the easier it is for us to recognize when they shift. When they shift from survival to ventral regulation. When they shift from regulation to dysregulation. From regulation to hyper- or hypo- arousal. From rest to vigilance. From ease to resistance.
These signals, much like those sacred resources found in the space in between, are always already here for us to tune into. And they hold pieces of the map forward. Those pieces are only revealed in the ((slowing down and listening)). In the spaces in between. Where we pause to feel them. And we watch as their identity begins to come into form.
Oftentimes I think what we tend to do in our lives is wait for our brain to make sense of things. We let our brain collect data. We let that data run through our database of our personal history. We let our brain inform us of what is familiar about the experience we are having. And we then let our nervous system run with that story and react from the data from the past, in present time. This all happens before we ever consider that maybe what is happening now is not what happened then. And maybe what’s happening now might require something different from us.
This is how the past perpetuates itself into the future.
There is another option.
And it takes discipline.
It takes curiosity.
It takes being willing to question your own internal processes.
It takes waiting. Listening. And feeling.
What is true and real for me right now?
What can I absolutely know is true and real?
I love watching new Meaning appear.
Meaning is the last of the 5 channels.
When I'm exploring with someone in a session, I am always amazed how when we explore, make space for, and do not dismiss the internal images, emotions, and sensations that arise from an experience, the meaning evolves.
Meaning is our brain's best attempt to make sense of a situation. And meaning is VERY malleable. How we make sense of an experience is very dependent on our state. How memory is stored and then subsequently transformed every time we access it is VERY dependent on the state our nervous system is in when we experience it or when we recall it.
When we are talking about an experience we had, and we pause to receive more data through our felt sense, we are giving our nervous system more pieces to the puzzle. We are accessing our own humanity, and our consciousness is expanding to take in the bigger picture. How we make meaning will shift as we receive more information about what is happening inside of us.
There is so much there in the space between experience & reaction.
There is so much information there, always already waiting in the wings to be received and plugged into the bigger picture. And the beautiful truth is that within that information lies the keys to undoing the trauma or stress caused by the situation.
What was out of focus, overwhelming, or misplaced, now can get settled into a place within us where it doesn’t sit off kilter. Where it can’t get snagged anytime we “walk” past it (in neurological terms, anytime we have an experience that fires neuronal networks too close to those tangled up ones).
What I love about this is that our body knows what to do with it. It just needs space, time, & our loving witnessing eyes to make space for it to complete its process. Our central (brain) and peripheral (body) nervous systems are partners able to so beautifully process the experiences we have.
I truly believe that the next big leap in human evolution now lies in our uniting body & mind. In deconstructing the obstacles that stand in the way of our intelligent system unraveling our challenging experiences so that we no longer experience trauma as a species.
There is so much here.
In this space in between.
What emotions are you feeling right now? And how do you know?
Whats your most favorite emotion to experience? What do you like about the experience of it?
What is the hardest emotion to experience? What makes it so hard?
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Thank you! I feel like I'm in the car all day with work and transporting my teen so I appreciated the audio
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