As a young girl I spend a lot of time with being in the clouds, by flying away from discomfort and pain that I experienced in my body. „Flying away“ was my way of coping with daily life and challenging moments. I created my own Fantasy World where I experienced safety and soft coziness, just as if clouds were holding me. Later in life I learned that I was trying to self regulate my Nervous System by day dreaming. I also learned how hard it was to let go of my Fantasy World and the cozy clouds.
After overwhelming experiences and Traumas our Nervous System finds ways to self regulate. Many people self medicate with drugs and alcohol, or develop another form of addiction. I was addicted to clouds. I was not able to stay present at school, some class hours just passed by I didn’t even remember if it was math or literature. Growing up I conserved my Cloud World and used it when ever I need to check out. Sometimes I thought that the world I created was actually real, but the awakening felt just inexorable as a fall from the clouds. Nothing about the Cloud World was real, except the feeling in the body that I had when I was flying in it.
After I started my healing journey the moments in the clouds decreased but I still wanted to grab on to it. I was ahead of myself, ahead of the present moment and ahead of my life. My life didn’t play out the way I wished and pictured but in the Fantasy world it was like that. This caused many times confusion and cloudiness in my head and life. I tried to press my actual life into the fantasy image of my life. It didn’t work out.
I tried to land by flying away.
Then something very powerful happened to me. One night in the Maloka in Iquitos at Nihue Rao during a ceremony I heard the spirit of Ayahuasca telling me: „Open your heart for your own life.“
This message touched my heart so profoundly. Actually I realised that I was spending my life time with waiting till my life started, without realising that I am already in it. Bit by bit I started to engage more with my life and connecting with the beauty and the gifts.
Somatic Experiencing gave me the opportunity to learn how my Nervous System can regulate without flying away, by putting the awareness to the sensations in my body, by noticing what was present and what was happing in my body. This new way of understanding took also weight away from me. I am not my Nervous System. It is part of me but my personality and soul is not entangled with my Nervous System.
More and more the Cloud World faded, transformed into foggy veils till the present moments smelt like crispy fresh blue sky air. I felt I landed in my body and in my life. Also now there are moments that I feel overwhelmed and over threshold but I have the capacity to work through them. I accept that I have a rough moment but have the capacity to regulate and to land again.
Charo my dear Peruvian friend told me once: „Martina we need to live the emotions that life presents us. Don’t cling on to them, live them!“
Emotions and sensations make life pulse and evolve!
I have a new view of my life now:
Rather than move life, I let life move me.
Now I trust life as I learned that life is wise. It wants to be lived!
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