Do you want to feel more?

I take weekly somatic classes with FlourishSomatics.

This week in class Jess said something that stuck with me and I’ve been pondering about it ever since.

We practiced feeling our front and back whilst standing and moving in the room. And then we trasitioned to lying on the mat. So Jess said: “Do you want to feel more? Or you want to check out?” As there was a possibility of feeling more – from the contact with the floor…

I think we often face this choice: feeling more vs. non-feeling – whenever we derail from the default mode, whenever there is a possibility for growing excitiment. We can then choose to stay with the increasing wave of sensations, currents and vibrations that flow through us, allowing the shift in our state. Next to it, there is always the possibility to narrow the wave, to shut down, to abort what has just begun. The choice we make has something to do with our elasticity, with that capacity I wrote about earlier.

I often cry in ropes. It rarely comes from bad pain (crying then looks different anyway), and most of the time, it comes from my heart opening and the growing wave of feeling more – so much more – than before.

This is probably not a correct anatomical description of the process 🙂 but this is what i experience: my heart is expanding trying to fit all of it, all of the love that I am experiencing at that moment. It feels like if it is almost pressing against the ribs, against the solar plexus from the inside (and there are usually more ropes) so the expansion does not get completed and relieves itself with crying and softening…

I think next to this, there is a possibility to check out at this point. To not allow the shift. Maybe there is a fear hiding, fear of being too much. Maybe there is a fear of pain. Maybe there is a fear of vulnerability… And maybe – there is also lack of practice. 

We know that checking out is an intelligent mechanism that’s there for a reason, and it was probably helpful at some point in our past to protect us from something bad that we didn’t have a choice about at the time. So our bodies found a way to deal with it by getting us out of the experience.

But now, whenever you have a choice, take a breath, and make a choice for feeling.

And I will keep inviting you to exercise your aliveness. I will keep inviting you to feel more of yourself.