How hands-on bodywork can help you re-gather and re-root
Life events and transitions can leave us feeling a bit all over the place. Often, these transitions involve some form of leaving and some form of movement from known to unknown. Often, it doesn’t matter whether it was a big change or a smaller change, the effect can take us by surprise and can leave us feeling unsettled and a bit all over the place. I am not immune from this as I discovered for myself recently when we moved from Surrey to East Sussex. I felt my world was tipped upside down and I was floating in some nether world of neither in Surrey nor anywhere!
As a therapist, I had enough awareness to look for a range of resources to help myself but I also knew I needed hands-on support which I could feel directly from my body. From my personal experience of weekly sessions since June and from delivering Biodynamic Massage Therapy to clients, these are some of the reasons why I think hands-on work is so effective in helping us regain feelings of safety and security.
Feelings are felt in the body
I think our sensory feelings, that is, what sensations we are experiencing in our bodies, are important components of what we call anxiety, overwhelm, scattered etc. Thoughts and feelings inform each other as a unified whole system. Perhaps in times of extreme stress our internal bearings get disrupted. Maybe extreme stress interferes with our interoception. In other words, our sense of disconnection is likely to be both a body-based phenomenon and a psychological one.
A feeling-sense of place from within
This is a kind of ‘landing’ of feeling fully here and feeling my body as solid and substantial. We say things like ‘displaced’, ‘I’m all over the place’, ‘I don’t know where I am’, ‘things are so chaotic right now’ as ways of telling others that something is ‘off’ internally. How this translates bodily, is, using my own house-move experience as an example: I came up with a ‘belly test’ which involved placing my hands on my belly. At first, I thought it might be a way of calming myself down but in doing that, I noticed my hands and belly felt fuzzy as if my skin was not all there. A couple of sessions later, I could feel my belly as firmer and more ‘here’. About eight sessions later, I could fully tell the difference between my hand and my belly and my body felt solid. The tissue was firmer and more filled.
A feeling-sense of safety from within
For me, the feeling of safety in bodywork is, in the first instance, conveyed through safe touch making the phrase ‘a safe pair of hands’ more than a metaphor. Safe touch has many aspects not least of which is the feeling of safety within the therapist and the extent to which they are able to tune into their client’s needs. As a massage therapist, my hands are often directly in contact with the client’s skin therefore, safe touch involves my ability to attune my touch so that the client does not feel it is too much (invasive) or not enough (too light). As a Biodynamic Massage Therapist, we refer to neutral touch as contacting in a ‘matter of fact’ way. This can be described as the therapist simply reinforcing ‘I’m here and you are here’ through touch. This way of experiencing contact where there is no expectation, no exploration, only affirmation of existence. I think this way of making contact may be particularly helpful in restoring an in-body feeling of everything being in-place and safe. This may well be a process within Interoception, an emerging field of research (Interoception: the hidden sense that shapes wellbeing | Science | The Guardian).
A feeling-sense of support from within by affirming touch from another
Some generic ways of holding the body or regions of the body or for example, ‘sandwich’ the upper back and chest often elicits an in-body feeling of support. However, a skilled body therapist can locate particular regions or a region of the body where suitable ways of contacting when provided, can be felt as particularly supporting to an individual. A highly tuned-in therapist will be able to find the most suitable form of holding that will give rise to a strong sense of support. It is this bodily felt sense of support that gave me a tangible feeling of being supported and because that was grounded in the actuality of someone’s presence and their hands holding me, it also helped me find safety and grounding within myself in the present moment and that in turn helped me regather the scatteredness and countered a strong feeling of isolation I had.
A sense of routine
Within the shadows of the pandemic and being in a totally new environment, weekly sessions formed part of the skeleton for building a weekly routine. This routine in turn helped me establish new connections and helped me familiarise myself with new surroundings. I found routine to be an important handrail to orientate myself in relation to time, place and space. Psychologically, since my new home is still in the making, the therapy space has become the safest space for me each week. These routine activities in turn provide a form of regulation within.
A time for rest and integration
Major life transitions take up a lot of energy so periodic rest to find still-points in the chaos is essential. While we rest, we are also allowing our whole being to resettle and integrate into a new whole. Each session allowed my body to get what was needed and after each session, I felt a marked shift in how I felt and a marked change in my capacity to deal with a larger range of challenges without feeling overwhelmed. This was often reported to me by my clients after their Biodynamic sessions too.