There are many reasons for clients to come to sessions. Often their original reason is only their initial motivation, and usually it’s only that they are aware of at the time. I’m astonished over and over again to see how discomfort can become a message, which if we only knew how to translate it, could open unexpected doors into exciting journeys of personal development.
“Let go of your neck”, she says.
I take another big breath and let my mind tell my muscles to relax. I’m in a quiet room lying on a massage table with a blue sheet on it. Natural light pours in from the windows and her voice is confident yet soft. Her hands are warm and strong and I can feel the many years of experience they express. The knowledge that these muscles can be softened is a knowledge that I clearly do not share with her. Her fingers touch my neck and magically can find all of the spots that ache.
I think about the birthday present I’m supposed to buy for my friend later on and about the dress I wanted to buy but didn’t because it was overpriced.
“Breathe deeply and let go, as much as you can”.
I take a deep breath like I learned in yoga class. I remember the teacher of that course. She was a short woman with big glasses and great patience. She always wore pink leggings that were constantly fascinating to me. My mother never let me wear tight clothes, she said it was not appropriate and I still hear her voice whenever I dare to wear yoga pants. I should call her this Friday; it’s been a while since we talked…
“Do you hear me? Are you still with me?”
“Yes, sure. Sorry. What did you ask?”
She laughs. “It’s fine. It happens. Feel how you tense your neck when you noticed that you were not fully here.”
I’m doing my best to let go, to breathe and to concentrate on her touch and words. I hate it when somebody catches me unprepared.
Her hands are touching my neck gently. “Let’s do it differently” she says. “Notice what you did when you realize I had caught you off guard. What was your first response? Notice how your muscles were held together? Notice the tension in your upper back? The tension around your eyes? Don’t change it now – but actually try doing it on purpose. Do it out of choice this time. We can learn together what is it that you do in those moments – moments when you’re afraid that you made a mistake”
I do as she asks. I feel small, as if in a square box without an exit door. I’m trapped in my own body, my knees start to hurt and my feet become cold. I don’t manage to think anymore, everything is so dark. My ears feel funny as if somebody had poured water into them.
“Stay as you are. Don’t change it. How would you call this feeling?” she asks.
“Leave me alone” I answer, without thinking. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that you should leave me alone! It’s just that this is how I feel right now”.
Her laughter reassures me again that everything is fine. She didn’t take it personally. She understood me. What a relief.
“Hold it for a moment longer”, her voice is being accompanied with hands that seem to know where to go. She touches my neck, gently showing me where it is being held. She moves her attention then to my legs and shows me how my hips are being raised from the table. “Is this feeling of ‘leave me alone” familiar to you?”
“Are you kidding?” I manage to say while holding all of this unpleasant experience together. “This is more or less my entire childhood in one sentence”.
“What would happen if you didn’t try to push people away?”
“Everything would collapse” I said and found myself letting go of all the efforts my body was engaged in. My chest feels like it’s going to explode with old pain I thought I had already overcome.
Her hands again guide me. Let go, they say. You’re safe. You can feel that hurt today. You’re not small anymore. Let go. My breathing spreads to the sides of my upper chest, and I find more space inside than I thought I had. Her hands touch my neck again and I relax and let the tears wash my eyes. My heart can again accept that there is emotional trauma and that there are still some wounds to heal.
“We all carry hurts from our past. Let go of your tension here. Just let it be. Pushing it away creates more tension for you in your neck”.
I came to her because of the tension she just mentioned. I remember now. Thank you neck, I whisper to myself, to insist that I’ll take care of you. Now, because of that and perhaps by accident, I will be able to change so much more.
Many of my clients come to me because of physical discomfort they want to get rid of. From a bodywork perspective, their body is telling them that something has to change. My job is to look with them at what is it their body says and find ways to address it. By noticing their body, by letting their body speak its experiences, we are often able to learn together how much their discomfort is part of a bigger context. The parents of the client in this story demanded that she be different than what she was – better in school, better at home, more organized, less noisy etc. She wanted them to leave her alone, and as she didn’t dare to speak up, she eventually enclosed herself in a private bubble. She stopped listening, she held her jaw tight, she moved her shoulders forward and all of this created great tension in her neck.
She left her parents’ house when she was 18 and lived an independent life, and yet her neck continued to send the same message – push the world away! “Leave me alone” became an unconscious habit. She pushed away people who were close to her, even when what she wanted actually was more intimacy or connection. Teaching her to notice when and how she did it made her realize how automatic this was. Even more importantly, it made her able to choose to not do it, and – to let go. Each time she could identify the compulsion to close down or push people away and the way it manifested in her body and neck, she was able to let it be. She was able to instruct herself to relax and somehow change this habit. One of the things she noticed was that her friendships flourished. She recognized that people accepted her for who she was and with that her neck relaxed.
Our body communicates with us. Just like we should listen to a child that tries to tell us something – even if we don’t get it at first – we owe it to our body to do the same. Changing your life takes patience. If we can resist the urge to complain about the discomfort, or to have the patience to not want it to immediately go away, then we might be able to listen more and notice better what it tells us and learn what we can change.
