However You Are Healing Makes Sense
However you are healing makes sense. However you find safety makes sense.
Nervous system regulation is a skill. It can be learned and developed. Your preferred path to safety right now might be found outside yourself: you might reach out to a friend for comfort, or go out to participate in community. Or, you might go within: maybe light candles and crawl under the covers and self-reflect. Our neurobiology, psychology and somatic experiences are endlessly diverse. There's no wrong way to try to orient to safety in our own body-mind system. But, being competent in both helps.
It took me for actual ever to learn how to find a feeling of safety in myself around other beings. (I practiced first with feral cats, a therapist and massage practitioner.) I'm happy to say that my baseline now is relative ease in my body, a calm mind, and genuine desire and increased capacity to engage with a small circle of friends and my clients— something I never thought possible for myself.
Trauma-informed massage therapy offers both attunement with a safe other, and more self-connection and awareness of one's own internal state. That's why I love it as a supportive modality for people living with C-PTSD, anxiety, depression, OCD, sensory processing issues, chronic illness, and more.
For many of us, the stillness, peace, warmth, safe touch and nourishment we long for is buried under a history of neglect and trauma stored in the body's tissues and cells. You don't just rush in with crude tools and start digging shit up. This is mind-body-soul archaeology so the quality of our approach is reverent and we take our sweet time. We go at the pace of your nervous system. We bless the vessel that has held such heavy burdens, and we invite it to release what it's ready to. And, if it's not ready yet, then we celebrate the protection those tense muscles and contracted breath are trying to provide... just lay loving hands on and wait.
The approach is part of the healing. The blessing is part of the healing. The invitation is part of the healing. The celebrating is part of the healing. The waiting is part of the healing. Whatever you need is part of the healing, and it all makes sense.
