Commonly, people associate well-being with the idea of being disconnected from themselves, from reality and from the body, they believe that in order to relax it is necessary to look for something outside, and often, they adhere to habits that leave their lives tiring, pressured, comparative and without vitality.
Gradually the individual understands that being absent from oneself, and distant from the body, brings sensations like a still river, without waves, stagnant. These waves are related to the individual's ability to move a load that brings movement to the body, which this load is present the emotions, feelings and mental structure, which follow or hinder the flow of our vitality.
Through the vitality we may manage to generate an intensity of charge in the body that facilitates the perception of being present in oneself, of being grounded. Without vitality there is no presence, and without presence there is no vitality. And without intensity, which generates vitality, there is no movement, as I bring in the analogy of the calm river.
Intensity is necessary to create a variation, which it will allow the individual to record a new experience, to achieve a new way of thinking, maybe coming from an emotional experience, where this generates a capacity to tolerate to feel and reprogramming the nervous system.
What I mean by perceiving a state of oneself is that not every day we are the same, not every day we have the same desires, we are impermanent living in a paradigm of search for permanence. And we don't always wonder if that's a good thing. Generating intensity in a permanent world can be threatening. And then, the brain registers the intensity as a danger, and creates psychological strategies to adapt to these threats.
On the one hand, society says that being intense is dangerous, or to feel can lead to drifting, loss of self and loss of control. And on the other hand, it is this intensity that we need to create a variation of movement, or body load to be able to inhabit, to feel, to experience the sensation without needing to unload, abandon, protect and be absent in oneself. Tolerating to feel positive or negative emotions and sensations without getting disorganized, it is about mental health.
"Presence is the ability to sustain the experience that begins with the sensations on my body."
Breathing is one of the tools we have to generate movement in the body, and it helps us to be back to ourselves, but the reality is, we don't always want to be with ourselves.
Giving movement to the body with ours's own intensity is dancing with life; it is accepting impermanence by dancing in and with who we are.
Bringing a point from my experience working with massages, the good conditions that are provided for the body to restore its vitality, it will take time, requiring constancy in effective practices, such as breathing, stretching, nurturing the creative life, express yourself in practices that make sense to you. And of course, get my body treatments. 😊
"Because of the pain, you have to work slowly with the body. It's like thawing a frostbitten finger or toe. Too much heat applied too quickly results in a back flow of blood into the area, which breaks down the contracted tissue cells and causes gangrene. The expansion of a contracted area, which is the equivalent of letting go, must not be resolved all at once, but gradually, in order for the tissues and personality to adjust to a higher level of excitement and greater freedom of movement of expression. However slowly one works, pain is inevitable, as each step of expansion or growth involves an initial experience of pain, which disappears as relaxation with expansion becomes integrated into the personality.
Emotional pain is often harder to admit than physical pain. The latter is localized, the first one is diffuse. We feel the emotional pain in our whole body, in our being. Emotional pain is always the loss of love." (Lowen, 1995).
Text by Juliana Lopes de Camargo
Picture by Sebastiao Salgado - Amazonia
Image description: a dressed man, with his back to the photo, holding a bow and arrow, inside a boat. He is looking down.
Bibliography: Lowen, A. 1995. Joy, the surrender to the body and to life.
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