Structure and Flow

and navigating the mess in between

“Be with it. Observation. Not judgment.” C responded last night to my expression of exhaustion. 

Just before, my business coach offered at the outset of our call: “You can let go, you can be held, you don’t have to manage perceptions, you don’t have to manage me.” 

‘Fuck’, I noticed, ‘she really sees me.’ 

At some point later she asked if I felt fear in my body. I realized no, I didn’t feel it really, but I felt that I was inhibiting my expression. I felt a band of restriction in my body. A long-time pattern. A big one. Unrelenting. “Will I deal with this pattern forever?” I wonder. 

As I  continued to speak and mostly listen, I tuned into my realm of being. Into what I was allowing. 

I was trying to feel calm and cool and collected and present and wanting so badly to maintain the structure I’d been working diligently to create, with all this breathwork, meditation, building structures for my business, honing marketing skills…. AHHHHHHHHHH. It was a lot.

So I let go a little bit and felt a quite unpleasant fluttering in my chest, behind my heart, in my ribs. All this tension pounding in me. I hadn’t allowed myself a release mechanism. 

A few minutes later it felt like someone’s hand was around my throat, choking me, making me gasp for air, gulp it in desperately, open myself wider wider wider to get the oxygen I needed.

Though the urge arose every few minutes, I couldn’t cry while I was on the phone. I kept overheating. I spent 30 minutes pushing, pressing, directing with my hands the energy that was stuck in my solar plexus and crowding my lungs. I pushed it into my belly, into my hips, into my ass, into my pussy. Into the core of my body. Into my pleasure centers. Into my womb. Into my fullness. 

My upper chakras have been T I R E D. 

Exhausted, as I shared with C. 

About two months ago, after a powerful tension release in my hip and a self-pleasure session entitled, “sudden realization,” we had this conversation:

Me: When I was touching myself I noticed how strange it felt to not be holding so much tension. Like I go searching for it. It felt before like it was missing and I had to bring it back

And then I remembered that I had the ability to let go

So I did. And it felt light, and subtle. The subtlety part is what felt profound to me. My thoughts feel a bit prismatic.

Something about the overwhelm too. My baseline was overwhelmed and now it’s not. I feel like I am experiencing an entirely different body for the first time. It’s weird. Like taking off a suit of armor 

C: Wow. In my experience with being part of people’s movement journeys, emotion stores itself in tension, and it can be a powerful release when the tension lets go. 

The good news is you’re a little bit more free. But there is actually a transition phase, since we grow comfortable with our tensions. Like bodily Stockholm syndrome. It becomes a lesson to be ourselves. 

And with that memory’s surfacing, I recognized the transition period I had been in was quite protective. I also realized it was coming to an end, this light and lovely layer of bliss to move through before the next phase which is, apparently, actually feeling. Feeling the layers and layers and layers of pain and exhaustion I’ve been negotiating with for who knows how long now. It feels like forever. If tension, then release. And then more. There’s always more coming. Why the fuck do I hold on so hard, knowing it is always coming. Knowing there is an abundance of experience available. That pain always comes, and pleasure always comes, and it never ends. 

C seems to be just the right pain, though. He said to me once, (in reference, of course, to my backside), “She shall be abused the way you want her to be.” That right there is Love. 

Bodily Stockholm syndrome is an interesting concept. Once we release the tension, it takes work to maintain the openness. True strength, to come back to the body and all that is present and available in the space that was taken by stories justifying, rationalizing, and intellectualizing holding onto the pain and suffering.

It takes work to continue letting go. To repattern the tissue. To open open open open open. To receive what is.

I’d been avoiding it. Not on purpose - not consciously. It was my inner protectors (you’ll know what I’m talking about if you’ve done any parts work). The ones who still believe I don’t know how to nourish myself. The ones who believe I’m not safe. The ones who remember only anorexia and abusive relationships. 

The protectors care for me; they want me to stay safe. They are highly untrusting of the people I love and the ways I want to open to them and the vulnerability I want to embrace and the yearning I experience. They don’t want me to keep letting go. So they drove me into work mode. Overwork. Too much structure. Not enough flow.

But last night, after noticing how bound I’d become, yet again, to the tension, I did let it flow. Ohhh, did I ever. I probably could’ve filled a gallon jug with the amount of salty water that poured from my orifices.

“I wish I could fall into your embrace,” I told C, a wave of hot tears falling from my face. “Hugging myself hard,” I continued.

“Hug hard then let go big. Expand. Repeat as needed,” he responded.

Despite the exhaustion, I couldn’t fall asleep until almost 4 am last night. My mind just didn’t want to release me. So I watched a million episodes of Lost Girl and passed out eventually. Today I didn’t get out of bed until 11:47.

“Are you resting?” he asked me this afternoon, as I sat outside with a thunderstorm looming above me.

I’ve always loved thunderstorms, and this one, especially, reflected my mood. So I sat and wrote a bit and cried a lot and waited for the downpour.