The Great Softening (Of The Core) - A Continuing Journey
My journey with pressure related issues in the abdomen and pelvis and what I will refer to as “The Great Hardening” (of the core) began as a teenager during trampolining at school when I thought it was hilarious (always the clown) how I would wet myself every time I jumped and would have to run off to the loo. Don’t get me started on schools and putting your hand up to go to the loo!! It continued in to my 30s when I lost control of my bladder during an ‘Insanity’ exercise class doing tuck jumps.
I danced and did gymnastics as a kid which is very much tuck under and straight spines. Solid cores all round!!
Little did I know that that was the start of me putting my body in to stress/threat voluntarily and was the cause of every single symptom I have ever experienced just because I was holding on to my belly for dear fucking life.
Not to mention the toxic load I was exposing myself to daily completely unwittingly all in the name of beauty but that's not for now.
When I speak of threat/stress what I’m talking about is the response of the central nervous system when the body doesn't feel safe. More commonly known as fight/flight/freeze or the sympathetic nervous system (labels made to confuse and distract us from what it really is). The part of you that helps you to NOT die.
My history of pressure related issues stemmed from body image. I remember in school not wanting my bloated belly to show and all the talk of "muffin tops" (belly hanging over your trousers) being so NOT on ‘trend’ and so I held it in. It wasn’t until I started sharing about my bowels and bloating with friends (thank fuck for my over sharing or things would definitely have been a LOT worse!) that I even knew I had problems. And I had absolutely no relationship with my menstrual cycle to track any of my health apart from that I was miserable most of the month, in a lot of pain and discomfort daily and had more injury’s than a crash test dummy. No one ever taught me to embrace my menstrual cycle. It definitely was not on the curriculum at school or even a hot topic with friends. It’s all been self learning or extra curricular if you will.
Studying physio, what we were taught was that injury’s didn’t really ever heal anyway (only bone, skin and muscles to a point but never like it was pre injury). Gross underestimation of the human body, bullshit information that they are probably still spreading.
I Had a lot of episodes of tonsillitis growing up and so had a fair few encounters with antibiotics. In Egypt when I was 19 I had a literal close call with Lady Death from a parasite I ingested and was blasted with some more antibiotics triggering more sympathetic dominance and killing my immune system even further. If you're in sympathetic dominance (which I was and we all are really) your immune system is down and so you’ll just believe it’s common place to get sick a LOT and they’ll always just shove you on antibiotics which is further death of the immune system.
During university I was terrible at rest. I drank way too much alcohol, had too many late nights and spent little to no time outdoors and so I plummeted further in to stress/threat response which looked like 3 stone in weight gain. That’s protection right there. Fat is your body giving you a well needed HUG!
My body rejected any medical aid with my menstrual cycles (thank fuck) and so I was left dealing with it all in my own way and trying to find "alternatives". It makes me laugh now that anything natural is deemed alternative and anything chemical/medical is deemed normal/healthy and is mainstream. Real head scratcher!
It also interests me that we can believe a mother will make medicine through breastmilk but can’t seem to even fathom the possibility that we continue to make medicine within ourselves until we cease to exist. If we didn’t we would cease to exist a lot sooner trust me!
It wasn’t until really recently that I realised what all that weight gain was. I blamed my hormones, food and not moving enough and yes, that plays a role but it's definitely not the whole picture (naturally as the whole picture is the whole picture which, when you’re talking of individual systems and only a part of the exposure of the self, it isn’t).
Interesting now to see how little time or effort I put in to my physical appearance because I care less (I.e. no gyms or running these days) and I don’t give a flying fuck about what I eat except for YUM that I have been blessed with the "body" I've always dreamed of, the ability to get high off of my hormones, digestion and sleep are a literal dream and I am forever turned on by myself and my life!
I did, however, lose my big juicy bum when I thought food was the issue and began starving myself to skinny but I know that could change if I wanted to go to the gym and lift some heavy things and maybe I will in the future….
I became aware of more pressure related issues when I started teaching pilates during a few years of doing physio with reformer machines and had really noticeable doming of my abs. And so I learned to pull my belly button in harder and switch my “core” on more. I was teaching the usual physio cues of "belly to spine" etc but the back pain and doming just got worse.
I started working with a friend of a friend in London Bridge who opened my eyes to this concept of ab gripping (being switched on in the six pack/abs/core completely unnecessarily all the time) and how we don’t need our abs to be "on" all the time but most people have learned this way of being due to the amount we breathe and the way the brain learns. My first lean in to “soft in the middle”.
I was up for trying anything at this point and so I started letting my belly go. In all ways. Which was perfect timing as I'd been working on my thoughts about my body image for 4 years and so was happy to let it go. It was good further practice to embrace my belly just as it was. Ever changing. It took me nearly 2 years of daily awareness for my abs to fully switch off and for my brain to learn this new way of being. But what I got in return was EVERYTHING I had been needing and searching for!
BTW… It takes a baby 9 months at the very least with no distractions and focusing purely on walking every day to get there (walking) so if you think you will pick anything up or heal fully any faster with less practice in this life of pressure you'll be disappointed. There is no such thing as convenience or fast when it comes to the body unless your brain is there which it can’t be as toxic as we all are!
This curiosity in to softening in the core expanded on a training weekend about female athletes and how we are massively changing the pressure management system of the abdomen and thorax by encouraging this strong, solid core in women. It was very science driven but fully sold it to me!
As my core physically and spiritually softened my observation of this in myself and other women expanded. My hormones shifted and so did my perspective. It still is. My connection to my Self and therefore every woman I came and come in to contact with became more potent. My whole perspective on what it means to be a woman shifted and my whole experience as a human being shifted along with it.
The pressure in society as women to be everything is affecting our ability to just be which is making us forget that we already are everything. We were born that way. And I get the privilege to see baby’s regularly to see this in full swing. Have you ever watched a baby breathe? Have you ever regulated your nervous system with a baby?
Believing that we need anything outside of ourselves as confirmation of our greatness as women is changing the potential potency of our hormones (medicine) and getting in the way of our wildness (healing, softening, strength and expansion). This belief that we need to keep up with anything outside of ourselves and our worlds and the implications of this on our systems, our whole being, is all encompassing and we blame the body.
We cant keep up. Its impossible. And therefore our bodys will always be letting us know we need to slow down. Go back to basics. Reset to factory settings. Remember what we were born with. What we were born as. Pure perfection. Needing only what our body and the body of our mother creates. The medicine that is and always will be inside of us until we die. The medicine that we regulate with out breath.
This is the reason we don’t observe healing in this society. And this is the reason I teach breathing now to all Women. To let go of the pressure to be anything other than what you are NOW. To let go of all of the restrictions and limitations placed on our abdomens that have built up over the years within our ancestry. To shift our perspectives on what our bodys do as Women and the power they hold to constantly create and renew life. Allowing us to die and be reborn over and over. To surrender to it all is to fully heal.
Come join me as we embark on a journey through the Pussy Portal and in to The Self. I will be guiding you back home to Your Self using the breath. You will leave Feeling Your Self. Come with all of YOU. Any and all symptoms. Any walk of life. Any era of the female journey. The only thing missing is and always was YOU. Let me give you back to your Self so you can Rest In Peace while you are still living and enjoy the SHIT out of this wild ride called Life without distraction!