Have you ever had the experience of going somewhere or meeting someone that you just instinctively knew was bad news?
What did that feel like? I’m not talking about what you thought about it, I mean what did it really feel like?
We’re created with a variety of sensations that can tell us when things are amiss (and also when they’re really good, but more on that in another article). We’ve created a vocabulary around these sensations, but we’re often not really aware that we actually do feel these things. We think they’re just expressions. Often, that’s because we’ve learned to numb out that extra felt sense that our body is trying to direct us to, and we “think” rather than acknowledge the sensation. Becoming aware of our felt sense is what this article is all about.
Have you ever noticed… There are these phrases we use for feelings and sensations that we think of as throw-aways as if they don’t mean anything. Statements such as “He Gives Me the Creeps,” “It Broke My Heart,” It Was Gut Wrenching,” “That Makes My Skin Crawl,” and “What a Pain in the Neck”(or nether regions).
Have you heard and used phrases like this? We think they’re just expressions, just a thing we say. But they’re actually a description of physical sensations that we often don’t pay attention to as the warning signs they are.
We say them because they’re expressions in common use, but they come from real, physical sensations. And often, especially for trauma survivors, the reality and the intensity of the physical feelings are numbed out.
This is important because, with more awareness of our physical selves, we can respond more quickly and accurately to situations that used to baffle us.
The good news is that it’s something we can work to change. Creating more awareness and connection to our felt senses will tell us when people or situations aren’t good for us – before we’re faced with a challenge. When we learn to connect and pay attention, we’ll walk the other way instead of running head-on into a problem.
I call this the ICK Factor.
When it happens, it feels, well… icky! We’ll instinctively know that there’s a problem. We won’t need to think about it or figure it out. We just need to believe our instincts and remove ourselves from the situation.
The challenge is that feelings like these were common in our childhoods. And, we had them about people that society or our friends and families said we should trust, so we stopped noticing them. In fact, you may have numbed them out completely – because to know and acknowledge those feelings about members of your family or others around you made you feel unsafe… and wrong (in the eyes of friends and family), even though you were, most likely, right!
You didn’t want to feel that way, so you just stopped feeling.
But those phrases are accurate descriptions of physical sensations. So, what if you could re-learn how to connect to your physical sensations, and your felt senses? And what if, instead of trying to escape feeling your felt-sense, you started embracing it as the warning, the red alert, that is actually akin to a secret power?
Wouldn’t it be great to reconnect with your senses and be able to rely on your own felt senses to keep you safe?
Yoga can help us learn to re-awaken that felt sense. Not yoga as we tend to think of it these days, with music and lots of people and acrobatic poses. What will help us as trauma survivors is therapeutic yoga, which offers ways to reawaken the senses and connect the body, mind, and spirit.
You can relearn the connection to your body and the felt sense that will always tell you the truth. Reconnecting with your senses, your spirit, and your inner strength is the work of yoga therapy. Yoga therapy creates more awareness and connection to our felt sense that tells us when people or situations aren’t good for us – before we’re faced with dangers we can’t control.
If you’ve been living with anxiety and fear, this may sound too good to be true. I get it. I’m a survivor of childhood trauma too. I’m really grateful that I found my way to yoga, and that I had yoga therapists to work with and to train me.
I was lucky. I learned how to heal my body, mind, and heart with yogic practices before childhood trauma was fully recognized as the epidemic we now understand it to be. We didn’t have a name for it then, but the practices of yoga therapy worked with the symptoms – anxiety, depression, dissociation, emotional dysregulation, and de-personalization that are endemic in society today.
But here’s the thing: yoga practitioners understood trauma 5000 years ago. They knew how to heal it and how to deal with the symptoms. Yoga therapy can help us to untangle the threads that “tie us in knots” inside.
If this resonates with you, or you know someone who needs to read it, pass it on. We CAN heal.
This is the first part of the practice that will increase your sensitivity and create inner awareness: empty your lungs of air. Let it all go. Relax your belly, take a full deep breath in, and then exhale everything. Repeat. Continue.
With Gratitude,
Celeste Mendelsohn
C-IAYT Yoga Therapist
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