Coming back into your body
Original Blog written by Tara Ocenar
This Past March, I have embarked on some deep healing for myself. I committed to consistently connecting with my body daily. This may sound a bit wild because we live in our body…there is no way to be alive without our body. This is true and also most people that I know are disconnected from their bodies. How can both of those things be true?
Have you ever spent a good period of time busy with something or relaxing even when you did not get a drink of water or stop to use the washroom? And then at a certain point, you realized that you had to pee and you were so thirsty? There are times throughout the day when we are not actively listening to our body’s cues. Why does this happen? There are so many reasons that this may happen for you, for me the main reason is possibly out of habit. I can remember times in my corporate career when this was my norm…I would not eat drink or go to the washroom. I was so focused on my task and getting things done. There were definitely a lot of triggering conversations and situations that had happened in the building that I worked in over the years and my mind was primed to dissociate from all of the feelings that arose when I approached the building. I spent years dissociated from my body without really knowing or understanding that this was a possibility. I was driven by people pleasing as a form of personal protection. As you may have heard before I was not listening to my body whispering for the nurturing that it needed so there came a point where it had to start screaming…I may have been confused by the screaming and did not know what to do with it. Then my body just shut down. This was in 2021. I had a complete shutdown and a forced reset.
My biggest fear when I was recovering from this body-forced reset (burnout) was that I would repeat the cycle all over again. I can confidently say that I did….kind of. The universe is great like that, I wound up in situations that had some aspects of the same old patterns and I did catch myself people-pleasing and feeling the exhaustion creeping back in. I was more connected to my body than ever before in my life so I was able to listen to my body’s cues and make a pivot.
There was a time recently when I had the realization that that woman, the one who ignored and dissociated from her body for her own safety….she does not exist anymore, I do not need to hold that fear anymore. I have a deeper connection to my body than ever before in my life than I can remember.
As March began I had reached a new level of awareness in my body. I could feel tension in my back, this was the first time that I remember being aware of this tight rigidness that existed all down my spine. There is a deep knowing within me that this has always been true for my body. This is tension that I dissociated from a long time ago. I offer my clients spinal energetics sessions to help them come back into communication with their bodies. I am also on my journey of receiving sessions for myself and my own growth. I realized how coming back into your body happens at different levels of awareness. We connect only as fast as we can handle.
I began this journey to bring more love and flexibility to this area of my body, this tension existed for a reason. I have held space for myself daily to connect with this area of my body and ask what messages it has for me, and what messages have been held in this area that I need to recognize and hold love and space for. The goal is to hold space and connection to the degree that your mind feels safe with. After years and actually, decades of disconnection there is no need to rush the process of reintegration. Just a little bit of connection every day can go a long way.
I am a major advocate that this work of connecting with your body needs to be filled with love and compassion to create more trust and grounding in your body and to avoid any new trauma. I am always looking at healing spaces to see if we are bringing hustle culture into healing. Are we trying to do too much based on past traumas? I am also a firm believer that we are never behind, we are here to learn and grow at a pace is that individually right for our bodies and our souls. Please honour yourself and your body if you are also on this journey of reconnection and reintegration.
