The intentional pause helps us to feel into the whole bodily, sensory landscape of where we are.   It is a way of coming to the surface, coming up for air.  It is about being in the midst of doing.  This fall, as the light faces more each day, as the colors leave the trees, I have been pausing a lot.  I want to breathe in the glory.  I also want to feel myself more fully.

During the past two years, I have been studying Somatic Experiencing – a profound and embodied method of working with the ways in which our bodies hold our histories.  It is “a potent psychobiological method for resolving trauma symptoms and relieving chronic stress.with old patterns of behavior, of bodily holding and reactivity in ourselves and in others.”

What this work is giving me are other ways of “surfacing,”  of swimming out of the waves of worry, preoccupation, and bodily constriction.  What I like about it is that it is a way of embodying more deeply the practice of pausing, of stopping and orienting outwardly and inwardly more fully.  It helps me notice when I am activated, when something has landed in me creating a cross-current of tension and holding.  It is a powerful and elegant way to breathe, to open.

I am integrating this work onto my somatic movement therapy practice with individuals and into my creative work.  For more information, contact me here.