These thoughts came to me during my acupuncture session today…
How can one be both human and zen?
I ask this because I am coming up against my own body in my pursuit of zen-ness. I used to have anger, and looking back at my marriage, it is no surprise. Over the past few years though, I have managed to embrace non-attachment. While I am far from completely unattached, I feel that my emotions are much more stable, much less labile.
Ultimately, if we are unattached, we only feel love and not anger (in a perfect buddha world, anyway). We can live a life of compassion, and truly love all people, even when we may not like them. BUT, what about a severe hurt in your psyche that has been buried deep within your physical body?
When someone has been wrongfully violated and has not dealt with the hurt, anger, grief and confusion, what then? How is it that even after years of working on understanding the ego and its downfalls, and coming to a greater awareness, understanding, and surrender, I am feeling this rage come up?
When one is truly violated, and not just in one’s ego mind, something happens on a deeper level. I am realizing that so much of my life has been guided by this anger I was not even aware of. The pivotal events have not crossed my mind often. When they did, I did not have full memory, and I felt no emotions, yet the pain from them etched a trauma response in my body and mind.
My psoas has been bothering me, to the point of causing sciatica that prevents me from really dancing again like I wanted. The psoas is the muscle that contracts in response to perceived threat to curl us up into a ball and protect ourselves. Under long periods of stress and recurrent triggers of the traumatic event, the psoas can become tight and shortened, causing low back pain and a myriad of other physical and mental issues.
I just found a site that explains the link between psoas tightness, low back pain, and the trauma response. This is what I have been looking for!
In order to move forward, I need to go backward. I need to go back to those events and work through the feelings, thoughts, and physical responses I stuffed down. This is the only way to move past the feelings, thoughts, and physical responses I now have hardwired into my physical body.
The mind alone cannot resolve it because the memory of the trauma also resides in the body.
After the past few days, I am convinced that even the most self-aware people have traumas of all levels etched into the fabric of their being. Can one be truly aware and free if that knot has not been released from one’s fabric? If I had not been to a hypnotherapist that specializes in trauma response, I don’t feel I ever would have realized I need to deal with this. I would venture to guess that most people have not seen someone such as a counselor/hypnotherapist that can bring these monsters out into the light.
For a better understanding of the link between the body and these responses, I found THIS SITE.
Do you find yourself reliving the same relationship mistakes? Do you give up your power too often? Have you been a victim of rape, domestic violence, or physical assault? Do you suffer from anxiety, lower back pain, headaches, insomnia, depression? Do your emotions range from one extreme to the other?
If you answered yes to any of the above, maybe you could benefit from some regression healing.
