Gnosis of the Body

"That quiet little voice that comes as a feeling....Yoga helps us inhabit that space of our body where lots of information exists" Alex AmorosiDropping into Yourself at Time of Crisis: Stories of how and why we get drawn into our body and to retreat from the world at times of crisis and flux in our lives. We explore healing of burn out, grief & mourning and the wisdom coming from our subconscious leading us through silence and sensation from dissociation to reconnection. The surprise of finding profound spiritual connection when we feel at the end of our rope, broken or disconnected. Using her own story as case study Katherine discusses with Alex Amorosi (Buddhist meditation teacher, master yoga teacher, reiki practitioner, trauma informed life coach) why and how deep dives into yoga can come as a call from psyche to come into our bodies to fix the broken parts of ourselves and reconnect to our own deep sense of knowing and Self.https://www.alexamorosi.com/

Mushing together learning mediation, Western Vs Eastern conception of God, Developmental Psychology, trauma release and healing via Eastern Body practices as seen by today's established psychology "hero", Bessel Van Der Kolk and the Archetype of Initiation by violence through mythic figure of Persephone... all using my personal story. I cover what learning Eastern meditation has in common with the baby learning to self soothe, as seen by Developmental Psychology. I compare Western and Eastern conceptions of relation to the Divine, to a baby hoping for an outside source of comfort to respond to their crying and this carries on into our adult years and what this had to do with the emergence of my spirituality after years of detesting religion. What learning to sit in silence, and its discomforts taught me, how it pushed to me edge, how Eastern meditation pushed me over the edge in spiritual breakthrough and what the angry meditator has in common with the crying baby having to learn to self soothe in the crib. Ending with discussing how Eastern body and mindfulness practices can bring about healing from trauma, using a quote from Van Der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score and sharing my own story of healing. Using my education in Developmental Psychology, I compare how the essential developmental step of the infant learning to self sooth is an edge that is met again in learning meditation and mindfulness. We develop coping mechanisms as adults (we rage, we exercise, we use substances, we over work, we over sleep, we freakout) and how in meditation we meet silence, stillness and are confronted the limit of those inadequate self soothing habits, which forced me to reach for something deep inside, and surprise, I found the infinite, and had a major cosmic spiritual experience. I break down how the Western concept of relation to the Godhead, as it had been preached to me by Christians and priests, where it was taught as “Divine power outside yourself, greater than “little unworthy you” created spiritual and embodied separation from Source for me; and how the doctrine and teachings of Yogic Philosophy created union and oneness with the Divine, and truly healed my split created by a false idea of unworthiness and sin, how the Western religious concept of separateness from the Godhead was reorganized by Eastern teachings of the relation to the Divine during my experience of training in yoga. I discuss how this experience of union brought through somatic traumatic memory and healing, and how trauma can be a form of initiation to embark on a Hero/Heroine's Journey to go forth and become a Seeker. I raise Persephone as a mythical archetypal figure of initiation by violence. I then bring in the text from The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk to explain how psychology and science see the healing power of Eastern body practices for the discomfort in the body of traumatised people.

Show notes:Tammy B episode:Rave to healFrom Raver to Healer Reenactment English CBT and play therapist, Tammy Brett shares her wisdom and stories starting from the glory days of raving in Manchester in the 1990’s to healing her trauma from abusive relationships in body based therapies such as breathwork, myofascial release and EMDR.Starting out with a spoken word ode to 1990’s UK and raving in the spirit of the witch, diving right into ritual, body and archetype, and the role of dance in coping with and healing from abuse, PTSD, eating disorders and trauma. We discuss how subconscious knows the needs that were then met in the raves. Tammy reflects on essence of dance and rave environment of places like the legendary Hacienda and warehouses, use of ecstasy and the collective needs for rebellion and coming together of violent gangs in the raves.Mythic elements discussed are the orgiastic, ritual Dionysian aspects of raves and the collective need to experience rebellious, bodily release in ritualistic times and spaces. We dive into how nightclubs are spaces where our bodies reexperience in womb like environment in sensation. How collective trauma is healed by movements of dance, as in poly vagel theory, we discuss women's groups where dance for women of all ages is a healing ritual. Katherine explains the “Shakeout” she uses in teaching trauma informed yoga that has the benefit of discharging anxious energy and taking the system to parasympathetic nervous system; tammy ties this into her TRE trauma therapy work. In later half, Tammy shares her wisdom from practicing therapy with children with ADHD and the role early infant environment can play in subconscious held aspects in the body later in life. Identifying as a witch, Tammy, shares how connecting with nature and its wisdom in ritual and retreat has played a role in her healing journey. Through her evocative spoken word poetry, Tammy tells stories of her raving days and ends with one about returning to feelings of safety in the body.We end with another of Tammy’s poems of which tells what feeling safe in the body feels like, what is the feeling of conscious healing. Contact for Tammy [email protected] https://www.facebook.com/tammy.brett.5http://www.soulution-events.com“A ritual is the enactment of a myth. And, by participating in the ritual, you are participating in the myth. And since myth is a projection of the depth wisdom of the psyche, by participating in a ritual, participating in the myth, you are being, as it were, put in accord with that wisdom, which is the wisdom that is inherent within you anyhow. Your consciousness is being re-minded of the wisdom of your own life. I think ritual is terribly important.”― Joseph Campbell

Sexual repression, porn, retreat to sacred space, shamans touching men... Matthew and Katherine pick up the discussion on the role of the body in modern society. Spirituality is now the taboo sexuality was for the era of early psychiatry and psychoanalysis; Matt and Kat unpack our cultures modern "hysterics" and their collective "somatic symptoms" manifesting through our bodies.We start with concept of body as block to spirit in West but mode of divine connection in the East, how the Gods are now present in our bodies (in Jung's view) as the body is what is real to us, versus spirit and how trends (yoga, breathwork, spiritual retreats, etc) of returning to the body is an urge to return to ritual, and bring spirit in via the body.They explore the rediscovery of importance of retreat to sacred space for release of trauma, just in ancient times there was the return to cave to leave society, echoed now in the therapeutic space where the therapist holds space for transformation. We touch on retreats and healing for women versus shamanic healing for men where touch is so forbidden for men.Katherine explores how pleasure in the body was so damaged by legacy of the protestant church and work became the main purpose of the body, and the pleasure of practices like yoga versus being good and forcing body into a desk all day. WE return to exploring the the imbalance of masculine and feminine in current society in sexual fantasy, manifesting in the literature and TV where the "monster" is the object of sexual desire, where the feminine transforms the monster. As a clinical sexologist, Katherine explores current sexual opposing trends: interest in Tantra and sacred sex versus pornographic sex. Then we explore the role of pornography as symptom of the culture attached to the image of perfect, potent, powerful magical sexuality that is unrealistic but sought after. Works referenced: Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction by Judith GriselWe reference the C curve position of hysterics studied by Charcot, teacher of Freud's, in Paris at Hopital Salpetriere in late 19th century.