I LOVED recording this latest vlog for you, because it tied in many different topics (plus I got to read a passage from one of my favourite books!).
Today I dive into topics like the importance of expressing physical pain at the visceral and primal animal levels. I also talk about the traumatic consequences of being forced to do things that we don’t want to do as a result of our current medical models, and I use what my mentors have called ‘the medicalization of birth’ as one prime example (this is where that favourite book comes in).
Plus, I get into how darn important it is to express our life force energy and healthy aggressions so we don’t suppress our physiology, which when left suppressed and stored up internally can lead to what we term ‘depression,’ and in today’s special case, something all too common in ‘civilized’ society, postpartum depression.
Click below to start watching.
A few extra notes on expressing our sensations
Contracting and resisting pain and discomfort is what gets us into trouble.
Feeling the pain and being with it, breathing with it (but not to suppress it), screaming out its heat, expressing the growls, hisses, scratches and hits – these are some ways to work with pain so this important internal information can be brought in, up, and out of us. Now, compare this to clamping down and tensing when we feel it come, or hating it, and cursing at it. This latter scenario will stop its expulsion, and the flow of this intelligence will stick and the pain will get stuck.
** Bottom line: do the former.
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Resources I Share In The Vlog:
BOOK: Travels by Michael Crichton
VLOG: The Stiff Upper Lip Phenomenon & Healing Our Humanity
VLOG: Functional Freeze Explained
Somatic Experiencing, the work of Peter Levine: https://www.somaticexperiencing.com
Gabor Maté’s work, in reference to anger and dis-ease: https://drgabormate.com/preview/when-the-body-says-no-chapter-one/
Resources for Anger & Healthy Aggression:
- Long-form Q&A: https://youtu.be/fWB1ODtz
- Special Topic Lecture: https://youtu.be/RljnDLOJwd8
- Article: https://irenelyon.com/2016/08/23/anger-medicine-cure-self-sabotaging-behaviours/