(10 min reading time)
Over the past year, my male parts have been working at full speed. I have laid the foundations for my business and mastered many technical challenges with toughness against myself.
Over the past year, my male parts have been working at full speed. I have laid the foundations for my business and mastered many technical challenges with toughness against myself.
Whether I could have achieved this differently, I'm not sure, but that's not really the point.
In the female way
I am not a man, but tick very feminine in most areas of my being. Over the past year, I've kind of gotten away from myself in the way I've handled my tasks.
My head very rarely came to rest, lack of sleep and my inner drive burned me out.
I actually felt very little like a woman, was only rudimentarily connected to my body, and had little muse for pleasure and letting myself go. Everything was Optimization thought subjected. I wanted to get as much done as possible in the time I had, allowing myself a break only in emergencies.
Everything had to be done quickly. Eat fast, quickly to work, quickly to the bathroom, quickly shopping, quickly making love, quickly to kindergarten, quickly home, quickly playing something, quickly eating, quickly in and out of the bathroom,
Everything had to be done quickly. Eat fast, quickly to work, quickly to the bathroom, quickly shopping, quickly making love, quickly to kindergarten, quickly home, quickly playing something, quickly eating, quickly in and out of the bathroom,
quickly to bed, quickly read stories and then quickly do some work.
It is useful that I can be disciplined when it is needed, but that this way of life does not make me happy and can only be a short phase, I realized
at some point. My body didn't feel in tune at all, it was itching in all sorts of places. A constant feeling of subtle discomfort.
This year, I am in the process of returning to a way of being that I already knew and I want to experience this being more deeply than before and cultivate it in my everyday life.
There is a huge longing in me for slowness. It feels so good to do something, anything, slowly and almost ritually.
The energy you bring to the actions plays the critical role in what effect they will ultimately have.
To me, it feels like something deeply feminine to do things slowly.
Why? Well, I think because slowness requires trust. In trust lies the great power of women. We need this trust in the most diverse phases and situations of our lives. It is inherent in us and is also often damaged and buried.
For example, I needed and had this trust during two pregnancies and through two births. The uterus and our heart are physically but also energetically exactly the places where it is at home in us.
Living from the pelvis
As it is often the case, the right information comes along at exactly the right time and so it happened that last year I first saw the film "The wisdom of trauma" about and with Gabor Maté, and then something in me began of its own accord to deal with my childhood traumas. It was a peculiar process that took place in the second row of my consciousness almost independently. Often I cried, and could not have said what exactly about.
In addition, I discovered a woman on the internet through whom I learned that trauma is mostly stored in the body in the pelvis, neck, and jaw, and no matter how much therapy you do, you eventually come to a point in the process where there is no progress unless you engage the body as well.
Yes, exactly that. I have several years of past therapy experiences that have had a significant positive impact on my life. Nevertheless, especially in the course of the
last year in particular, I had the feeling that, contrary to what I thought, I had not yet come to a conclusion with these issues. I could feel something working its way through me, pushing from the very bottom to the surface, and I knew that words would not help me in dealing with it. So far, I can't even put my finger on exactly what it is. It is an accumulation of old pain, gathered from different experiences, balled up into an opaque tangle in my subconscious.
My body senses this and gifts me with a wide variety of symptoms, mainly in the form of severe tension and headaches.
And so I now do somatic body exercises every day in order to slowly release the emotional tangle stored in my body.
For me, living out of the pelvis also means walking differently. I am known for my jagged, quick stride, but just today I noticed that my efforts to teach myself to walk slowly are beginning to bear fruit. I'm actually walking slower than I'm actually known to walk, and it feels pleasurable because my hips are swaying and I can feel my pelvis doing it. And again, walking slowly for me means knowing that I will arrive on time, whether at the tram station or in life.
With one foot still here, with the other already there
A few weeks ago I told a healer in the preliminary talk of our treatment about my feeling of brokenness in me. About the fact that I hear myself saying to my beloved that I would actually like to be single again and live in MY apartment with MY thousand velvet pillows in purple, pink, red and orange. Everything the way I want it and above all without all this responsibility for children and partnership.
In the course of the conversation, her words helped me understand the in-between state I am in.
In-between state, this word refers to both my physical state and my mental state.
I am now 46 years old, my hair is getting whiter, my cycle irregular. My body is getting older and my inner self is calling for freedom on all levels! Here a 5 year old child is asking for me as a mother, there I am clearly on the way to becoming a wise woman. Not only is this woman wise, is like a wide open bowl of water- benevolent, loving, granting. She also has fool's freedom and does and lets what she wants. She is sexually free, no longer has to worry about any liabilities that may arise from sexual liaisons. Her children are grown up and she can go wherever she wants.
Not so with me. But the desire for it is already strong in me and I can at least acknowledge it for now and not have to wonder why I feel the way I do.
How to do something
So the change process I'm in touches on very different issues. But I have found that they all call for the same thing.
You can put in an incredible amount of effort and still things don't go as planned.
The effort and work I put into a project says nothing about whether I will be satisfied with the outcome. If I ignore my needs through effort and discipline, it prevents the flow that all things need. And the flow is what matters.
If I'm angry, dissatisfied, or anything like that, I can stop working, whether I'm sitting at the computer or painting on the canvas, because I'll only create more obstacles and adversity from that state.
The river does not flow, without inner peace. Not on the canvas, nor in my personal life. I try not to let stress arise in the first place, if possible. To do that, I often have to let go. For example, the idea of getting this and that done quickly. I make an effort to stop working in time to still have time to do something good for myself and get on my way at a quiet pace. Quitting is really hard for me. It also means listening to my body's signals. It means not tensing up against strong adversity, but letting go right then and looking for the path of least resistance. Because, one thing I know by now, the path to success can also be quite simple, at least much simpler or simply different than I thought. Most obstacles dissolve or point the way in a better direction if I can free myself from my obsessive thoughts to devote myself to some practice that just fits and allows me to come to rest. To rest is to trust, to trust is to know that I am lifted up and embedded in the greater whole. So, for example, I go for a walk, do yoga, a breathing exercise, dance, listen to loud music, lie down, close my eyes, my hands on my heart and belly.
I practice acceptance, of situations and of feelings that are there. And then I look for the opportunities to do good for myself, because I put my well-being in the very first place with the beginning of this year.
Sometimes I have to realize that I would only make some deadlines by disregarding my physical and emotional needs. Because I don't want to do that, I let go and trust in the next good opportunity or tear it down at lightning speed on the path of least resistance with little effort. Both of these things happen.
I really don't want to seem like I'm suddenly some kind of unstoppable Buddha. My temperament is still impulsive and in the small family everyday life there are many opportunities to fall into frustrations and to lose the calmness completely.
It is a path, sometimes narrow, sometimes wide. But a path that I see and walk.
Are you concerned about similar issues? Share your perspective with us!
As always, I look forward to your comments!
from the bottom of my heart
Claudia