Some of my clients walk across the abyss on the bridge of their imagination and take the plunge.
We all have different ways to resource, to bounce back from traumatic experiences, to palliate for the lack of holding at certain points in our lives.
This client allowed me to use parts of her stories in this blog as I wished to share their power, their beauty and their healing magic.
It started with a deep dive in the sea with a dolphin who showed her "how to play”.
At resourcing time as we were chatting I made sweeping movements with my arms when speaking about letting go of whatever she was taking on that did not belong to her. She could visualise that very gesture when swimming her inner sea with her dolphin companion as he invited her to just “go for it”.
And as it happened the fluid tide of mid tide exhaled, it stopped with a sudden jerk releasing its shock throughout the system from the diaphragm and it later resumed. A tightness around the left side of her neck emerged reminding her of her past seizure there when 13, a sense of “paralysis” that has recurred since childhood.
She is aware of it as well as of the inertia in her diaphragm and heart area, the on-off numbness in her left leg and the aches in her left shoulder, hip and left hand.
The dolphin’s invitation to “go for it” translates into engagement with the ineffable, the so far unexpressed in her system.
In the next sessions, the swimming continued and each time it took place her fluid potency lit up a little more and her system became more present, more engaged.
She understands what is at stake: it is about “reclaiming my body,” she says.
In one session at first she was feeling her abdomen as a dark, “hostile, empty space that was swelling out of proportion”, she felt disgust towards it and "like a whale".
But when I asked her to tune into this part of her as a fluid space for this amazing animal -- the most ancient mammal on Earth, the keeper of records-- to swim in as she had on previous occasions, she went in and “turned into a mermaid”. She saw a rose-tainted glow replace the uninviting darkness of her abdomen and as she travelled up towards her aching sternum and heart area, the mermaid flipped her tail and disappeared as the pain cleared.
When she swims within, she is in”negotiation” with her body, she meets her resistance. At the end of a session, she decides "to bring all the parts that are at the bottom of the sea together": there are different colours, indigo, coral, gold...
This manifests in her day-to-day life too as she is more "together" and able to enjoy living as well as more determined to meet her past.
In the next session, a horse turns up to help her revisit a very harrowing part of her childhood. She is normally terrified of horses, she says but loves them and this symbol of her fear is turned into courage to face her truth.
Another time, she feels rage trapped in her chest and she doesn’t know what to do with it but the whale she meets in her inner ocean tells her to “listen in to her own wisdom” and “transmute it” and suddenly a red ruby appears.
These tales of beauty and enchantment help her transform the deep suffering and entangled emotions in her system turning them into gems she can hold with awe and compassion, shedding a different light in the dark rooms of her past.
Each session ends with a sense of deep peace as another piece is found to resolve the puzzle and the process gradually unfolds as it should, in its own time.
The more I see this client the more in awe and inspired I am about her resourcefulness and resilience after years of horrifying abuses. She goes on what some would call shamanic journeys with animal friends that support her while I hold the space for her stories to unfold and heal.
As Ya’acov Darling Khan says in the Jaguar and the Butterfly, “When something is left in the dark and not given attention, it goes through all kinds of contortions to seek the light.”
Some could have been freaked out by these weird “visions” and she does feel slightly odd about telling them to me, there is a shame and embarrassment around them at first but I encourage her to embrace them as the wonderful tools they are.
As Ya’acov says, “I’ve had hundreds of experiences that I don’t understand. It’s quite possible that I never will. However, I’ve found again and again that if I’m able to build a bridge between my experience and the way I live and act, then the part of me that needs concrete answers to ineffable questions tends to quieten down.” (The Jaguar and the Butterfly, 2017)
It is indeed about reclaiming our bodies, and embracing life wholly, safely anchored within, at the bottom of the sea.
