There are reasons we dissociate from the direct experience of our bodies—our entire culture didn’t retreat into our heads just for fun, there are very real reasons, and we should pay attention to them so they don’t come as a surprise later.
We all hold tension and emotional history in the body—we suppress it there, letting the body feel it so that we don’t have to. There’s nothing to be ashamed of in this, “defense mechanism” is not a dirty word, it’s often a matter of survival.
This does, however, leave a backlog in the body. When we first get around to feeling that backlog, it can be overwhelming for some people.
There are some techniques and ideas that help with this (eg- Pendulation and Titration from Somatic Experiencing), and I’ve included some helpful exercises in this course to ease the burden—but that doesn’t mean the challenge isn’t real.
Some people might never feel a strong sense of backlog—for others, it might be overwhelming. Wherever you are, take things at your own pace, allow your soma both the activity and the rest it needs.
Desirous Turbulence
Among those things we hold in the body, along with trauma and tension, is desire. More precisely, desire can be repressed and held in the body precisely when it is inconvenient.
One of the more visible examples of this phenomenon is the oft-recurring story: “I was working my office job for years, feeling trapped there, but continuing because the money was good and I assumed everyone hated their jobs. Then one day I snapped, couldn’t take it anymore, and I bought a plane ticket to Bangkok.”
We can repress and repress our sense of desire and resonance for quite a long time—but it will break free eventually. When it does break free, it will often reveal to us that many of the choices we’ve been making are odious to us, completely unsustainable.
This is good in the long run, but can be very turbulent in the long-run. After getting in touch with their bodies, with the soma, with their own sense of desire, many people discover very abruptly that Rilke was right: “You must change your life.”
I mention this because this “desirous turbulence” is very real and necessary—but that doesn’t mean its anything to shrug off. There are very real consequences to it, and you should prepare yourself for what that might mean.
Light Medical Paranoia
With increasing body awareness comes an increasing ability to notice minor discomforts, pains, and aberrations. The worry that comes out of this tends to be transient, but it’s still worth mentioning.
After I’d been meditating for awhile, I started to notice some light friction in how my eyes moved in their sockets. I was seriously considering going to a doctor, worrying that something was becoming more viscous or more pressurized in the area around my eyes—but instead I waited. And after awhile, I came to realize that for most of my life I’d just been numb to the physical fact that my eyes move in the sockets, of course there is friction. Now, that sense of friction rarely even registers, unless I specifically focus on it. (Or unless I write a full paragraph about it, apparently. #!*@)
You may have a similar experience—noticing things about your body that were always there, but suddenly feel new and threatening. These tend to pass, just remind yourself that you’re engaging in more somatic awareness than usual, and such things will happen and then unhappen.