The other night I couldn't sleep. My neck was hecka sore. I was deep into the trance of what might be called a movement meditation I was slowly writhing on my bed finding positions that felt OK and positions in which I could feel connections between the sore places and the rest of my body.
I do this sometimes when I'm still awake at
an indecent hour but don't want to get up. I know the sleep experts say
to get up, but it's cold at three AM. And being vertical is such an
effort. For what? No one sends me emails at that hour, and I'm not fond
of solitaire. I usually have a pain somewhere and if I'm lucky enough to remember to work with it and really settle into the process it becomes quite engaging.
The point of this pursuit is to find the muscle tensions I don't know I
have and relax them. Then I feel what is occurring when those are out of
the way. Sometimes autonomous movements occur. Not usually. But
sometimes if I'm fortunate and really focused in an odd sort of way, I
can feel deep muscles engage that I can't usually access by themselves,
either by sensation or by intention. And this feels right, like I'm
letting my body show me something, give me something, that I can't
predict or define.
So as I watched myself squirm and observed correlations between the positions I found myself in and my breathing, my feelings, my thoughts, I stitched my impressions together into something of a narrative. That's what we humans do, no? Make story? Might even be what life does - create meaning from intercepted data. Even if my conclusions are wrong I'm in good company.
Anyway, the neck and upper back. The thoracic inlet. Places I have chronic constriction and pain. Working to relieve the pain in my neck I noticed that when I found a position of diminished discomfort, my in breath rose higher in my chest. I wasn't trying to push the air into the top of my lungs. I wasn't thinking about my lungs or my breath. It simply happened. My upper back uncurled a little bit. Hmmm, how did that occur? As a singer, I am always looking at what postural shifts or other tricks might allow me access to greater quantities of air and more relaxed steady effective use of the air I have. And this felt significant.
So while I continued to track discomfort, I put some of my focus on the unforced movement of the top third of my ribcage, the ebb and flow of air in my upper chest.
Now comes the part that is going to sound like new age hoohah and overly prescriptive standardized interpretations of bodily symptoms.
My breath slowed way down. I fell into a pattern I have noticed before in which my exhale gets hugely attenuated, as if I am holding a stillness and waiting for something to happen. On the odd occasion this has happened over the years it has seldom if ever felt like I have become still enough to find out why I'm doing this - I keep feeling like I haven't gone deep enough.
When I'm with a bodyworker and this happens, I imagine that they think I'm refusing to breathe so that they can't see whether their work is affecting me. But the respiratory stasis 's not volitional. I'm usually in deep trance, and the experience of this stillness is deeply compelling; there's something for me to find if I go into it far enough. Some tension I am holding that I cannot let go of until I find it, and I need to be profoundly still to find it. And every inhale breaks this stillness and I need to start over.
Now, translating that paranoia (they see me, and they see bad things
about me) into a daytime and verbal state, I don't see the stillness and my compulsion to go into it as
hiding from my therapist. In fact it's the safety I occasionally feel with my therapist that allows me to explore it. There's a fear that I'm going to see bad things if I go there. In daylight consciousness it seems more a view into a possible restraint on my own experience. That's what chronic bodily immobility is. It hurts when I move there, I'm not going to move there. It hurts when I'm visible, I damn well am going to be as invisible as I can manage. If in some nonverbal state (Infancy? Injury? Severe pain?) I experienced a constraint on my breathing, it becomes habitual. And these immobilities are created through the muscles. Now I am working to find these habituated immobilities and relax them enough to let my neck stop hurting. But often that seems to involved relaxing enough to find out what they are protecting.
So there I was, at the far extent of the exhale, letting myself not inhale until the impulse comes from somewhere unfamiliar, sinking as far as I can into the relaxation of all the muscles I engage when I take in air. And suddenly a feeling of disgust rose up in me. And a bitter taste in my mouth as if I had been taking in something noxious and it wouldn't go away. That's interesting. Disgust that resides in my patterning, my stance, whose object can't be noticed because it's always there rather than coming and going in response to conditions and situations? Coloring all my thoughts and experiences because I'm not aware of it and can't complete the bodily movement into and then away from it? Not impossible. Not even unlikely.
So I was working between these two poles, of full settling at the trough of the exhale and full expansion at the crest of the inhale, both in as relaxed and unguided manner as possible. And at bottom I am finding disgust/antipathy/some feeling I don't even have a word for. Eep. I really don't want to feel this, but at the same time I am just relaxed and tranced enough to be dispassionate and let my curiosity look there a little.
Like I say; no name. Horror sounds way too dramatized. Self hatred is one aspect but not the whole. It's akin to feeling like I have made some horrid mistake and am about to experience the consequences, whether natural or personal. I guess that could be characterized as dread. Dreadful. Yes. And trapped.
At the other pole, having my upper chest spontaneously open felt like the location of the
feeling of joy. All feelings and emotions have bodily correlates, of
course. Without the body changing there would be nothing to feel and
nothing to feel it with. It seems to me that "joy" is an aspect
of what happens in the body when the upper chest opens. In my body, that's where it seems to be centered.
Now this doesn't mean I can switch from dread to joy just by breathing into the top of my chest, although sometimes it helps. It doesn't even mean I can breathe unimpeded into my upper chest just by wanting to. The learned posture of decades is not overcome in an instant. But it does motivate me to gently work with my neck and back to allow them to find a new alignment so my breathing can flow more freely.
And here is the tricky part. Homeostasis is created through feedback loops, right? So I get stuck in a positive feedback loop of fear and revulsion leading to poor posture (I want to get away but I can't get away so I'll curl up) leading to injury to the upper spine, leading to immobility of same, leading to inability to feel joy, leading to diminished engagement in life, leading to further curling up and so on. But if I can shift at some point in this cycle, even a little, it can relieve not only the fear or the pain or whatever unpleasantness I am directly working with, it can affect the entire loop. A modicum of pleasure in what I can create leading to an uncurling of the upper chest leading to less likelihood of neck pain leading to an easier time doing the things I find satisfying leading to a slight bit more pleasure in what I can do, et cetera.
Now this isn't always apparent, and often sounds like bullshit. But occasionally I have an experience such as the other night that brings it back to my awareness and supports me through the odd experiences that go along with this kind of shift.
My neck? It seemed worse for several days as different parts hurt while something shifted, and I wondered if I was being some kind of Pollyanna ascribing pattern and benefit to a bunch of random and meaningless discomforts. And then I went to see my bodyworker, and with her help shifted into a more grounded, more open posture that feels really different. And I feel very centered and a great deal less inclined to hate myself. Now that the disgust is not present, I no longer need to apply it towards myself and look for external remedies. This may only last a while, but I am glad for the respite.
