I used to drown you out with words
Dear Soul,
photo by Andraz Lazic
Dear Soul,
I remember a time when I could barely feel you. It only happened sometimes when the pain signals were too loud to ignore. Otherwise I mostly drowned you out with words.
Words, immediately, upon waking - “Today, I’m gonna…”
And non-stop thereafter until bedtime. An incomprehensible quantity of words given how little was actually at stake. Yet, it seemed, I needed to explain to myself each little thing:
Why it was like this and not like that - and how different it would be if it WERE like that!
(But it couldn’t be like that because I was like this - and I was like this because…)
Thoughts about thoughts about thoughts.
Useless words that killed the silence, a constant mental hum hovering between myself and any other person. It must have felt like swimming through fog to get through to me back then.
Then there were those other sufferers with whom I spent my time, with whom I competed about who suffered most. At times, I was ashamed for being so ashamed of myself.
What about what THEY were going through?!
Sometimes the words in my head were so loud I thought the others must hear them. What would they think if they knew that I thought I was both better and worse than them?
Memories that make no sense now, movies I can hardly remember acting in. I used to scream at fellow drivers in traffic. It’s strange how little I knew myself then.
Who was that man?!
Yet you never left me, dear soul. You simply held this resonant space, patiently waiting.
Now I sit with you for an hour each morning, only listening. That road rager couldn’t possibly understand. Yet he and I are only different chapters from the same autobiography.
Little by little I learned to let the silence sing. I finally gave the words permission to rest. Now I can feel their energy long before they speak. Now I can decide to keep quiet instead.
My joints, breath and vision have opened again. Balance and harmony have returned to my inner world. I discovered the kindness I need to be a beginner.
It feels like the secret to mastery.
If your thinking mind sabotages your breathing body when your relationships feel strained by unsustainable complexity, Somatic Inquiry can bring you home to the ground of your being.
April 24 & 29: Cultivating Relational Harmony through Somatic Inquiry
Your nervous system is connected to the nervous systems of everyone else around you. Recognizing this entanglement is essential for untangling the knots that keep you stuck.