Inviting space to digest your life’s experience.

I’m sure one thing we can all agree on is that the world feels a little uncertain at the moment.  In the west, world events and circumstances are challenging our ideas of normality and adding an extra layer to a modern and western way of living that celebrates busyness and striving. This often leaves us with little time for our human need to rest, or to catch up with and care for ourselves and those we love or process how we feel about our every day experience.

My yoga teacher recently made me think about the philosophical idea of digestion in yoga and Ayurvedic philosophy.  How might it be to consider digestion as more than a physiological process of movement and assimilation of food through the digestive tract, but rather a concept of processing all that comes into our bodies and minds through our everyday experience?

Sometimes the effects of busyness, rhythms of working and modern life, everyday relationships and life’s inevitable ups and downs don’t have time to be processed.  We can end up with a backlog, possibly feeling tired, exhausted, in pain, emotionally out of sync and unable to connect in the way we might like to live our lives.  We might get to a point that makes it hard to flow with the pace of life that until now we’ve been able to keep up with.

How do we digest these elements that make up our lives? How do we make time to  take in what feels good, what is inspiring and allow ourselves to be with or find uniquely compassionate ways to move through things we find more difficult or don’t need any more?

We are always in relationship with the world - we cannot escape it’s effect but we can learn to consider how it effects us, how we feel about it and what we want to do about any difficulties or potential joys that arise in our experience of living a human life in this world.

What would it be like to pause, relax and find ways to care for your experience from a  place of rest and acceptance? Is it possible that this would allow your system the time it needs to take in what feels good, be with and begin to move through what has been stored as difficulty and come to some perspective that suits where you’re at and where you want to go?  What would it be to allow this process to be part of your rhythm, your self care? How could you allow this to happen in your own unique way and to trust that your body knows how to do this?

I love the potential of the idea that our bodies are always in a state of becoming. From this point of view life’s difficulties have the ability to change as our lives are forever moving and evolving.  Nature does not stop growing, seasons come and go, seeds grow into plants that bloom and wither to provide compost for new life - a never ending cycle of growth. Plants can become healthier with careful positioning, cultivation, care and love.  How would it be to trust this process in your own body and open to ways of caring for your own experience that feel uniquely right?

Whether it’s working with touch or being with your experience through body oriented coaching, the heart of what I do is to offer a calm, supportive and open invitation to come and land, rest a little in a peaceful place surrounded by nature and see what your body and mind want and have to say.   Maybe you might like to switch off and relax a little.  Maybe there’s something that needs processing. Maybe you’re curious about finding a way forward with something that isn’t working for you in your life.  It’s all welcome here and the start of an invitation to journey in to your experience softly or bravely and explore what you need to live well at this time in your life with the friendly support of another.

Welcoming, Landing and Listening: A doorway to health and wellbeing

Creating a calm, friendly and peaceful space for you to "land” safely in with however you are feeling or whatever you are experiencing is really at the heart of what I do. Throughout a session I will return to this concept again and again to ensure I am listening well to the moment-to-moment needs of your body and mind.

Welcoming “You” to Physically Land

For a number of years neuro-psychologists, scientists and therapists have been recognising the integral importance and benefits of safety, connection, friendliness and warmth to the way the body works on a physiological level. As mammals and primates this is part of our evolutionary heritage and when our unique needs are met for social connection and co-regulation our bodies and minds feel good.

The Journey In

Your decision to come and make some space for yourself can have real power. In booking an appointment there is a part of you that trusts that relaxing your body and mind’s tension is necessary or possible.

Communication and connection that feels right for you, taking time to arrive in the room and its environs together, is an important stage of the treatment. Landing in yourself through touch that meets your needs and is directed by the body’s requests all signals to your nervous system that it is safe to be as you are feeling and let go of your tension a little.

Arriving in Presence: Connecting with Rest and Repair

By focusing on welcoming, listening and landing through kind touch, together we are trying to influence your body to deactivate pathways of stress and activate pathways to rest and repair. Reaching this point allows you to calm your breathing and heart rate, increase digestion, let go of muscle tension and begin to feel a sense of rest, repair and positive experience. This signals to your body and mind that it is ok to feel safe, relaxed and responsive in connection to the environment and another person.

Meeting your Tension. Meeting you where you’re at

In our modern lives, connecting with rest offers a beautiful tonic to the demands that we live with daily. It can also offer a doorway into connecting you more deeply to what you’re experiencing, enabling you space to let go of tension, or a pause to notice habitual reactions and postural tendencies that may not be serving you anymore.

A slow and mindful pace aims to enable you to process and integrate what you’re feeling.

A lot of people leave a session feeling more centred, spacious, or grounded. Alternatively, they may feel more clarity about why they have been feeling the way they have. From this state of ease or understanding, they may begin to get insights into what will help them to live more happily in their body and mind in order to live well in their lives.

The gift of massage in winter

So winter is here and hopefully you're enjoying the novelty of wrapping up warm and getting outside in the beautiful cold weather.  Maybe you're savouring the pleasure of welcoming in the winter evenings inside a warm house with plenty of hot food and drink to nourish and comfort you.

However, the effects of the cold, short days, long nights and low light can be hard for some of us. Winter can lead to using our bodies less, or using more energy to stay warm and meet the continual demands of modern day life.

Maybe you pick up more bugs, suffer from dry skin, tight, sore muscles, stiff joints, or your mood feels lower and energy less vibrant. How ever this season affects you, massage can offer a supportive tonic to help you through the challenges of the season.

When thinking of the natural world in winter, we think of the trees letting go of their leaves, shutting down to conserve and restore energy, so as to be ready for the return of the activity and growth of spring. A treatment session can aim to compliment this natural inclination to rest, slow down and take stock at this time of year. It offers you an invitation to relax, encouraging your mind to become stiller and more aware of your immediate experience, enabling you to be more in tune with how you feel both physically and mentally. This can then give you ideas on what would feel good, in terms of ways to care for yourself during the winter, thereby positively influencing how you cope with it.

On a restorative note, massage is great for encouraging a sense of vitality, especially when energy levels are low. Touch that feels pleasant to you sends a message to the brain that it is safe for the body and mind to relax. The part of the nervous system in charge of rest and repair then activates, sending nurturing signals to the body to care for parts of it that may have been compromised by stress. This slows down the heart and breathing rates, increases circulation to the digestive system and skin and temporarily switches off the stress response, which if activated regularly can compromise the health of the body.

Massage stretches out and enlivens skin and muscles and increases circulation to these structures. This enables a more efficient supply of nutrients and oxygen to the muscles and skin and speeds up the removal of waste products.  These actions together reduce soreness in muscles and improve the functioning of both systems. Free and mobile skin also allows muscles to move more freely. An added bonus is that the oils used offer moisturising qualities, which is a much needed gift to the skin at this time.

Mobilising the joints not only stimulates the production of synovial fluid, bringing an increase in lubrication to them, but also aims to create a sense of space and encourage freer movement.

By moving the muscles, massage can increase the flow of lymph through the lymphatic system, which is responsible for carrying white blood cells that fight infection around the body, thereby having a positive effect on the functioning of the immune system.

If any of this resonates with you and you would like to come for some individually tailored massage treatment, please do book in.

With best wishes for a mindfully paced, restful and enriching winter season.

Megan

“Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home.”
Edith Sitwell