Sunday, August 16, 2009
Somatic Patterns & Reflections on Yin & Yang
It was April 2001 when I impulsively sold my condo in Boston and moved out to Utah for a new life with someone I hardly knew.
For a decade, I had been in the rock-and-roll high tech industry, with its Darwinian emphasis on survival of the fittest. Rapid prototyping--of software and business models alike--was in vogue, with plenty of clever experiments dying unceremoniously at the side of the ever-evolving information superhighway and promising new efforts being gobbled up by bigger entities.
For the last eight years, I've lived out west where the the pace is faster on the ski slopes than in business development and where I've focused more on personal development than ladder climbing or chasm crossings.
When I started training as an integral coach at New Ventures West, I had to look up the definition of "somatic." Little did I know that I would find the somatic stream of development one of the most fascinating or that I would base a lot of my coaching on cultivating somatic awareness and assigning practices to alter the somatic nervous system.
When I exploring different ways to work with the body, I had rolfing, neuromuscular, myofascial, and cranial sacral bodywork sessions. I studied neuro-linguistic programming and how concepts and imagery were linked to holding patterns in the body. I studied somatic coaching as it relates to leadership through the Strozzi Institute.
In those early days, I learned about a particular holding pattern in my right leg: my right quadricep muscle really didn't know how to relax! Not surprisingly, this muscle was in a perpetual state of readiness to spring into action. For those of you fluent in the Enneagram system, my personality is considered a double assertive type (challenger 8 flavored by enthusiast 7).
My friend, Linwood Paul, who is quite masterful at linking somatic with personality patterns, had me do an exercise where he asked me to fall forward (to see which foot I landed on). Indeed, I landed on my right foot, as he said, "The picture I have is that Cindy is one of those people who gets off on the 'right' foot' but that her instinct to do so is overworked."
I did a variety of things that relaxed this restless muscle but a couple of breaks to my right ankle, requiring months of being off my right leg, exacerbated another tendency, for my left leg to bear too much of my weight. I attributed the breaks to "not looking where I was going" and "moving too fast."
There's another angle on this pattern though, a lack of connection to ground, with a tendency to move "up and away" from feeling trapped by circumstances.
Of late, I've been musing on the Chinese medicine beliefs about yin and yang in the body.
"The lower part of the body which connects to the earth is yin while the upper body and extremities are yang and free to move."
Hmm. At New Ventures West, my first coaching assignments were all yin--becoming more empathic, cultivating compassion, embracing more mystery, and deepening my ability to be present with whatever is emerging in myself or my clients. And, my sometimes-challenging work with my Zen teacher, Daniel Doen Silberberg, was all about balancing my well-developed yang spirit with more yin qualities--sensitivity, kindness, as well as, that quality I have only started to make friends with, humility.
For me, both body and mind point in the same direction: balancing the energies of yin and yang in my life. In my relationships, I want more balance, the ability to move more fluidly between the energies of initiating and receiving. Playing tennis again, I am doing more drills that build balancing strength again in my right leg (open stance forehands, for example). And, a Qi Gong class I've been wanting to take is starting downtown in September.
At the Strozzi Institute, we study the embodiment of the ability to reach--for our vision, into our futures, as leaders in our own lives--as well as the embodiment of ground and center--the ability to support all the reaching and sustain the efforts.
Reaching toward and into the future has been the easy part in my life. But as Chinese medicine also states:
"If the body's yang is weak it will be unable to ward off the invasion of a pathogen. If the yin is weak there will not be enough nourishment and support for the yang and the result will be the same...Not only do yin and yang balance each other, they mutually generate one another."
Balancing inspiration (filling up) and expiration (letting go). Balancing extension (reaching) and grounding (support). Balancing the movement of longings (toward desires) and presence (being here). Wherever the polarity exists, balancing must happen somatically, in the nervous system, and not live as some to-do list item when facing burnout.
I encourage you to think about you own somatic patterns and how they create both possibilities and breakdowns in your life, and then reflect on how you can bring more mindful attention to these patterns. As Richard Strozzi-Heckler, one of my teachers reminds us:
"Energy follows attention. Choice follows awareness."
Check out Holding the Center: Sanctuary in a Time of Confusion by Richard Strozzi-Heckler for more on somatics and the concepts of embodiment of the self that we are and what is required for the self that we are becoming. Drop a line with your thoughts!
For a decade, I had been in the rock-and-roll high tech industry, with its Darwinian emphasis on survival of the fittest. Rapid prototyping--of software and business models alike--was in vogue, with plenty of clever experiments dying unceremoniously at the side of the ever-evolving information superhighway and promising new efforts being gobbled up by bigger entities.
For the last eight years, I've lived out west where the the pace is faster on the ski slopes than in business development and where I've focused more on personal development than ladder climbing or chasm crossings.
When I started training as an integral coach at New Ventures West, I had to look up the definition of "somatic." Little did I know that I would find the somatic stream of development one of the most fascinating or that I would base a lot of my coaching on cultivating somatic awareness and assigning practices to alter the somatic nervous system.
When I exploring different ways to work with the body, I had rolfing, neuromuscular, myofascial, and cranial sacral bodywork sessions. I studied neuro-linguistic programming and how concepts and imagery were linked to holding patterns in the body. I studied somatic coaching as it relates to leadership through the Strozzi Institute.
In those early days, I learned about a particular holding pattern in my right leg: my right quadricep muscle really didn't know how to relax! Not surprisingly, this muscle was in a perpetual state of readiness to spring into action. For those of you fluent in the Enneagram system, my personality is considered a double assertive type (challenger 8 flavored by enthusiast 7).
My friend, Linwood Paul, who is quite masterful at linking somatic with personality patterns, had me do an exercise where he asked me to fall forward (to see which foot I landed on). Indeed, I landed on my right foot, as he said, "The picture I have is that Cindy is one of those people who gets off on the 'right' foot' but that her instinct to do so is overworked."
I did a variety of things that relaxed this restless muscle but a couple of breaks to my right ankle, requiring months of being off my right leg, exacerbated another tendency, for my left leg to bear too much of my weight. I attributed the breaks to "not looking where I was going" and "moving too fast."
There's another angle on this pattern though, a lack of connection to ground, with a tendency to move "up and away" from feeling trapped by circumstances.
Of late, I've been musing on the Chinese medicine beliefs about yin and yang in the body.
"The lower part of the body which connects to the earth is yin while the upper body and extremities are yang and free to move."
Hmm. At New Ventures West, my first coaching assignments were all yin--becoming more empathic, cultivating compassion, embracing more mystery, and deepening my ability to be present with whatever is emerging in myself or my clients. And, my sometimes-challenging work with my Zen teacher, Daniel Doen Silberberg, was all about balancing my well-developed yang spirit with more yin qualities--sensitivity, kindness, as well as, that quality I have only started to make friends with, humility.
For me, both body and mind point in the same direction: balancing the energies of yin and yang in my life. In my relationships, I want more balance, the ability to move more fluidly between the energies of initiating and receiving. Playing tennis again, I am doing more drills that build balancing strength again in my right leg (open stance forehands, for example). And, a Qi Gong class I've been wanting to take is starting downtown in September.
At the Strozzi Institute, we study the embodiment of the ability to reach--for our vision, into our futures, as leaders in our own lives--as well as the embodiment of ground and center--the ability to support all the reaching and sustain the efforts.
Reaching toward and into the future has been the easy part in my life. But as Chinese medicine also states:
"If the body's yang is weak it will be unable to ward off the invasion of a pathogen. If the yin is weak there will not be enough nourishment and support for the yang and the result will be the same...Not only do yin and yang balance each other, they mutually generate one another."
Balancing inspiration (filling up) and expiration (letting go). Balancing extension (reaching) and grounding (support). Balancing the movement of longings (toward desires) and presence (being here). Wherever the polarity exists, balancing must happen somatically, in the nervous system, and not live as some to-do list item when facing burnout.
I encourage you to think about you own somatic patterns and how they create both possibilities and breakdowns in your life, and then reflect on how you can bring more mindful attention to these patterns. As Richard Strozzi-Heckler, one of my teachers reminds us:
"Energy follows attention. Choice follows awareness."
Check out Holding the Center: Sanctuary in a Time of Confusion by Richard Strozzi-Heckler for more on somatics and the concepts of embodiment of the self that we are and what is required for the self that we are becoming. Drop a line with your thoughts!
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