Tag Archives: therapy

Somatic Recovery

Leave a reply

Yesterday I tweaked my back. It was not a full crash, but the pain was intense and my mid left back was giving me both pain and warning signals that told me I was in for a world of discomfort in the coming days. However, I have house guests, and Servaas Mes is a somatics expert.

What is somatics?

Somatics is studying the body from a first person perspective. Medicine is from the third person. It is about mobilizing awareness: both movement and emotions.

It is about moving from movement without awareness (somatic amnesia) to movement you are aware of. Somatic movements are based on innate movement patterns evolved when we were young.

Injuries, surgeries, stress, trauma, or habituated movements, are examples of things that create somatic amnesia in our bodies. So the process of mobilizing awareness is to recalibrate our authentic movement patterns. This is foundational for healthy aging.

But for me at this moment is was about injury recovery. Servaas put me through several gentle exercises to get me both moving fluidly and thinking about my movements as I did them. I’m used to deep muscle manipulation and focusing on individual muscles, but these movements were about using muscles in combination, and stopping myself from using my muscles in isolation.

I had a session yesterday and went from pain and limited mobility to discomfort and greater range. After a session today I was pain free. I won’t pretend I didn’t feel my back a few times during the day. I won’t tell you that I’m ‘fixed’, but I’m on a path to recovery that would usually take 1-2 weeks and it’s the day after I triggered my back crash.

Now it’s up to me to continue with the exercises. The hard part for me is twofold. First I need to connect physically, even emotionally, to the exercises, recognizing how my body wants to cheat and avoid full range of motion. I need to stay aware of how my body wants to move versus how it should move, and I tend to struggle with this kind of awareness.

Secondly I need to wrap my head around the gentleness of the movements. I feel like I’m not doing enough, or that these subtle movements aren’t worth doing because the effort is more intellectual than strenuous. Yet, I can distinctly see how one side of my body moves so much easier than the other during these stretches.

I am aware that I’m on a journey to move better; to improve not just my flexibility, but my ability to use my body more freely, more childlike, and less like an old man who can trigger a back spasm by taking a large breath. This is a somatic journey, and one I’ve only just started.

Greater choice

In a conversation with a friend today we were talking about healing and therapy. We came to the conclusion that if therapy prescribes a specific outcome then it’s probably unhealthy and unsustainable. But if it empowers you with more choice, and if it provides you with new and better choices, and better still, if it creates the conditions that make it easier for you to choose better choices… well then that’s good therapy.

Empowered choice is where healing really begins.

Luxury, therapy, and a good day

Today I splurged and had a relaxing massage that was purely for enjoyment. It was a deep tissue massage and I needed to ask the masseuse to go a little deeper at the start, but then I just sat back and let her do her work. Normally I spend an entire hour with my therapist’s elbows in my back. Today’s massage included arms, hands, legs, and feet. There was time before hand to sit in a hot tub and do a couple cold pool dips (not something I plan to repeat soon, but glad I tried).

Then the massage room had quiet music playing and between camomile and lavender scent, I chose the lavender. It was so nice to sit back and relax, being pampered without thinking about therapy and having to breathe through intense pressure on my back. It took a mindset shift to just enjoy and lap in luxury.

I read a great quote in James Clear’s weekly email newsletter yesterday:

“The question is not: will today be a good day? 

Every day is a good day. 

The question is: how much good will you get out of today?”

I enjoy my therapeutic massages because I suffer with regular back aches and pains, and I could easily have gone into today expecting a similar experience… and I would have been disappointed. Instead I just appreciated what I had. Admittedly this is a lot easier to do, choosing luxury as a mindset, but it’s a good reminder that how we frame things matter.

Today has a lot of good to be found. Tomorrow will be good despite hours of travel time. Regardless of the day, regardless of the challenges, regardless of the unexpected circumstances, we have opportunities to find good in every day.