Song of the Week

Listen to this song as you read to help open you up. “This is the part when I break free. 'Cause I can't resist it no more.”

Updates!

Inescapable attack is something I have been helping groups of people work with in their nervous systems for the past few weeks in Minneapolis while under ICE occupation in individual and group sessions. An example of what we are experiencing in more general animal behavior terms is when an animal is attacked, but the predator that attacked is still nearby, the animal that was attacked is hyper-aware of any movements that may re-trigger another attack. Remember what it’s like to hold your breathe during hide and seek once someone has found your trail? In this state we are put in a very difficult position.

We want to follow our impulse to complete our escape, run! Or to throw a punch and fight! Few, wouldn’t that be nice, it could be OVER! We all want the occupation to be over. Instead we are stuck between two active responses run/fight, and our freeze state which is an inhibitory state. Your inhibitory state that is a hold-your-breathe kind of state that Minneapolis and Saint Paul and the greater state of Minnesota is experiencing right now. Will ICE suddenly come down hard on us again, at any moment? Are we in the clear? No, we’re not. Yet I have been seeing more Latino and Somali folks in public, thank god. Are they/we in the clear yet? No, not yet, but things have shifted, and we are still in a defensive orienting at the same time. Holding your breathe is a very intense energy consuming physical and psychological state to be in.

It is incredibly helpful to, with support, assist your body to slowly and intentionally re-engage your more active states in order to work towards completion. This is what I spend a lot of time doing in sessions with folks I work with. I emphasize that doing this with support is incredibly helpful because without support we can accidentally reinforce/deepen our freeze state. That can prolong and intensify a state that is damaging to our bodies physically, spiritually, generationally, collectively, you name it.

The moment of dominance and supremacy culture we are experiencing is in fact, at least partially because we are experiencing ripple and tsunami like consequences from the people who came before us who remained frozen in this trauma state and craeted a trauma-culture which was born out of these states and over generations. The impact of this culturally, culturally, as in the place where we grow our nutrients and soil for life and future, the lessons we pass down to our children, and the lessons we receive from our elders, is immense. This can become a place where serious beliefs and life-lessons take shape, impacting the stories we tell, the books we write, the way we love— or withhold love.

So if your beliefs and life-lessons are growing from/within a place of self-blame, believing that human nature is inherently bad, that safety is impossible, that the only good life is a life where your lineage have and others lineages do not have, and the idea of abundance is a far fetched hopeless dream for naive losers…well we know how those kinds of cultural beliefs and cultures can coalesce, firm, and harden. That’s why self and collective care is an investment in the future.

At the group workshops I’ve been holding, we’ve been using some gentle titrated mindfulness practices to release some of this freeze and shock in our systems together. Not all of it, just some, noticing what’s there. People are giggling, crying, laughing loudly, and it’s gorgeous to witness. Being around awesome people is medicine, the best medicine in fact. If you can do only one thing this week, be around people who are medicine to you.

Your homework this week is to:

• Move your joints, notice your joints moving. Dance to the song I linked to above! Enjoy your joints movements if you can.

• If you feel like you are in a inescapable attack, it’s because you probably are. Validate yourself, don’t beat yourself up. It’s energy intensive and exhausting time we are in. Be kind to yourself and others. It is temporary, it will end, know that.

• Be around people who know how to love. If you don’t know those people, reach out to people who do.

• If you want, come to me and Aziz Bisanz and my Embodied Support Workshop March 4th from 6-8p New City Center. $0-25.

• If you want, come to Aziz Bisanz and Kay Cohen’s Embodied Support Workshop March 18th from 6-8p New City Center. $0-25.

Schedule With Me!

OTR/L, BA, MHP, LMT,
she/they) Integrative Therapies

I offer individuals and couples trauma informed somatic therapy/coaching, craniosacral therapy, Swedish massage, Thai bodywork, myofascial release, group workshops, and healing through art, play, and connecting to nature. Free 15 minute consultations can be booked on my website if you’re intrigued or have questions.

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xoxo Eiko