Body rituals are powerful cleansers. They can also be a deeply profound experience – moving your emotional state from something difficult to something with more ease, and getting you out of “stuckness” in your past grief, loss, relationship crap, abuse, health problems or difficult situations and getting flow back in your life.
What reminded me of this and what are some rituals that can help?
Yesterday I got my period. It was also my eldest son’s birthday – my firstborn child. That was also the day I had to have a caesarian after a long awaited and hoped-for natural birth.
At the time I was “mother-earth” and having an emergency caesarian, I felt like a complete failure. I refused pain relief and felt paralysed with pain for days. With superwoman tendencies, I also bashed my body trying to recover too quickly. I was tired. I got mastitis that felt like it was going to kill me, but I ploughed on through. That breast pain was unrelenting for months as well.
So today when it suddenly occurred to me that it was the anniversary of a happy event yesterday, but equally one that scarred me, I remembered how powerful body rituals are to help heal such wounds and such behavioural tendencies.
- So today I am honouring my body and that experience 17 years ago by allowing my blood to flow freely without tampons.
- I am allowing the emotions and memories of that time to be released in the way they need to. I am allowing myself time simply to sit and cry.
- It’s a day to say “no” to pushing myself hard, and simply allow myself to be with what arrives on my plate today, rather than attending to what is in my diary.
- As part of my ritual I will also shower, exfoliate and gently massage my caesarian scar and be grateful for the safe arrival of my baby and the way my body has adapted and allowed me to do the many amazing things I have done since.
- I choose to also dress nicely today – feeling pretty, feminine and soft. That is what my body s asking of me. It is also asking for slow and graceful movements, not rushed and frantic ones.
I am reminded too that anniversaries often bring us such insights about past stuff.
So when you are feeling a certain something – perhaps sadness, tearfulness, low mood, depression or even lethargy, don’t always look to those factors that immediately surround you like what’s happening right now in your relationship, what you’re eating, what the weather’s like or how your job is going. It could well be something of your past which is showing its cyclical nature and sometimes cyclical hold on you. I have seen this again and again in my coaching and healing work with women who have suffered losses and grief of the past, and the grief appears to “recycle” itself in a timely manner – which can be yearly, monthly, seasonal or even a menstrual cycle pattern. This “anniversary reminder” can give you an opportunity to let that “hold over you” go.
One way to stop that grief “recycle” or at least let something of it go, is to do body rituals. Here are 6 great rituals that may help.
- Immerse yourself in the ocean, deep bath or spa pool. Allow the water to cleanse and heal. Dry off the “old”.
- Exfoliate from head to toe, being grateful for each and every body part and how your body is so amazing.
- Sit – feeling the sun on your skin- doing nothing but being with your breath and the warmth and allowing any emotion, memory or ideas to float into your awareness. Just be with what comes up. Blow whatever you wish to away.
- Place your hand on a body part that hurts, was affected or is unwell. Ask your body what it is telling you. Act on whatever it is prompting you to do.
- Push pause today. Stop running around. Rest your body.
- Light a candle, remember an incident in your past that has pained you. Thank it for what it has taught you and then blow the candle out.
If this resonates, why not consider some coaching and healing with me? www.somebodybeautiful.com