To what degree can you sense and feel your body? What does it mean to be embodied and can you not be in your body? When we talk about being connected to your body, it can be something that feels comfortable and easy for you or, it may not be so easy. What does psychosomatic mean and why is it important to your healing?

Your body is a living breathing organism, and it changes with each moment, day and passing year. It is in giving to yourself the consistent attention and care that you need, that you can tune in, move and transform your energy. And life is all about moving energy.

Breath is happening in your body right now. And even though it is an automatic function that you don’t have to pay attention to, when we do offer our attention and consciousness to our breath, and breathe intentionally into parts of our body, we have access to this fundamental gateway into embodiment.

When I was in school on Kauai we had a teacher who went by Moon Doe. He was a hispanic man, and he had gentle soul. He was a doctor, and he was known on the island for treating people who could not afford treatments.

He brought a guitar in each time he taught our physiology class. Physiology is the study of all the moving parts of, in this case the human organism. We were learning how our parts are organized. So he would bring in this guitar and he would sing to us a song, and we began with the melody and each time he would ask us to harmonize and sing parts and rounds and by the end of the section we were so comfortable with our voices and each other.

You see our bodies thrive on movement. As he explained with each system, there is either movement which is life force flowing or a lack of movement that ends up stagnating these systems. He shared with us in a different way each class, the importance of clearing out our own energy using tone and vibration, frequency and sound.

How the lungs and the heart are married in a continual exchange, and how the blood circulation is improved with sounding. Breath and sound, moves energy and we want to keep the energy, blood and life force flowing. Sound and frequency are in and of themselves a tremendous form of healing.

Many of us are on the go, we have things to do, people to see, places to be. And so we are busy. What happens when we are busy, is that we get in our heads. When we are in our heads and thinking at light speed, our brain can start to prioritize production over health, the mind can take control and rule over us.

Our bodies then serve the mind and our hearts can get less priority and attention. Often times the mind is doing it’s best to keep us safe, fed, well cared for, and with the best intentions, these thoughts are coming from fear. Yes all the judgements, the categorizing, the classifying, even wanting to know and retain information to figure the next thing out can come from a place of being afraid of the future, of making sure you have enough, and these subconscious fears can have an affect on the body.

This simple act of breathing into the body and exhaling can help us regulate our central nervous system. When I do healing work with clients, I often take note of where in the body the breath moves, and where it looks like clients aren’t able to allow in the full breath.

While doing bodywork I invite clients to breath into their body where my hands are. To follow the breath, and slow down the breath to be full and deep. And immediately I can feel them breathing into their tissues. With breath, the tissue softens, the attention that is given to this part that we are working on, along with the breath releases the restrictions.

As clients participate in their own healing, they find a renewed sense of connection. It becomes easier, to feel the area, to breathe through the discomfort and to communicate to the part of you that may need to be brought back into the fold so to speak.

Our bodies store unresolved trauma, and although the tissue has the capacity to heal, the muscle memory can get stuck in the past. Trauma can look like tightness, moving pain, contracted, tense, swollen tissue, cysts, lumps, chronically tight muscles, tendons, ligaments especially the same ones, immobile, bound up, knots, adhesions and excessive scar tissue.

Sometimes we may not understand why we feel it in our bodies. We may feel the stress and it affects our hearts, our emotional or mental patterns, and these conditions can also show up in the body. We may become avoidant, or resistant to feeling or dealing with past memories because it can bring up things we haven’t had the capacity to deal with. We may have developed PTSD, disorders, symptoms that are coming from the memory of a traumatic event, or events, and because we are not dealing with it....it keeps reappearing. Maybe it’s in our work relationships, or our intimate romantic relationships.

Psychosomatic means you store your stress and emotions and negative thoughts/memories in your body. Often times this can result in respiratory, cardiovascular and digestive dysfunction which are more autonomic. Because your body houses your emotions and thoughts, it is possible to have access to this well of information, and to heal it.

When we resist, it persists. When you are held in a supportive presence you can effectively process your emotions and mental patterns so you can free up your physical body and create more space for what you want to create in your life. Freedom for new experiences.

We slow down to feel. We breathe, in presence to heal.

Myofascial Release the John Barnes approach works with the muscular fascial system to release restrictions in the fascia. This advanced technique that is gentle and safe and highly affective. Fascia is your connective tissue and holds every one of your cells. It is a tension structural support system in the body.

Angela treats clients who are looking for to improve their posture, gate, ability, comfort and pain levels. She works with athletes, and those seeking recovery from chronic and acute injuries. Angela is an MFR Therapist and an Injury Specialist.

She offers Presence Centered Awareness Therapy with MFR sessions to help her clients to create positive structural change that lasts. She works in Grass Valley at Sol Bodyworks.