A Polyvagal Story
I offer the story below as a way to understand some of the personal benefits of working with this amazing material. This then, can translate into your teaching in ways you might not expect over time. As you feel these states of the nervous system within yourself, you’ll be able to sense them more easily in your students. Join me on Sept 24th for my next polyvagal workshop if you can.
I was lying on the floor after a satisfying movement practice and was shimmering with energy, relaxation, and delight. I felt alive and relaxed, and rested there for some time. Suddenly I felt a kind of collapsing inside along my midline. I felt frozen, empty and any sense of agency I had ever had was gone. I remembered a remark Kevin had made a day or two earlier about having a number of projects around the house that were unfinished. Even as I protested, I knew he was right. And in this moment, in what had previously been a delicious savasana, I felt some of my personal history of “not finishing.” I felt the decades of training I got from someone in my family who rarely finished any project, leaving our house and our lives in chaos. I felt the memories of not having (or not thinking I had) a way of doing anything about that. I felt the many times I lost arguments and the feeling of giving up…again. I can feel that collapsed and hopeless feeling now as I type. It feels terrible, like life will never be OK again.
I’m guessing you know what I’m talking about—it’s part of what we call the freeze state in Polyvagal Theory. There I was, a fully capable adult, in a safe place, with lots of skills and support, feeling absolutely hopeless about my past and present life. This feeling can be very confusing to say the least. We may ask, “What’s wrong with me?” or, perhaps a more skillful question: “What’s going on here?”
I rolled over and got up and went over to my husband and cried for a bit. Then I was furious, more so than ever before, and I used very strong language about my memories. Kevin even commented that he had never heard me use those words before. Whew, the whole experience was intense and powerful, and I was so glad afterwards that I had the framework of PVT and some knowledge of trauma, to help me understand what was happening. I was not a broken person, but there were parts of me that remembered and felt past trauma that wanted to be felt and integrated.
The next day, without any kind of intention to do so, I looked at one of my unfinished projects and started finishing it. Easily. The challenges I had long anticipated did not arise and I felt great. Here is what I think happened: I think the part of me that had learned through many years and many disappointments, that things could not be finished, were felt, finally felt in the embrace of a powerful relaxation. These feelings were completely supported by the place, the person present, my new history and the aliveness of my body. There was a catharsis of sorrow and rage. This feeling of collapse is familiar to me, and I don’t know if I’m done with this pattern or not. What I do know is that now, what was frozen is thawed, or at least thawing and flowing. I also understand that I have a story along with this that feels different now. There are more possibilities in this new story.
I think because of the topics I have listed for this next PVT class on September 24, my system is giving me lots of chances to have personal experiences with freeze, so I have a fresh reminder of what it is and feels like. How it serves me in some ways and not in others. And how being with it fully, in a safe environment, allows me to move on later. There are different levels of freeze which we’ll explore in this next session along with more meditations and breathing practices. I’m always excited about these workshops and this one is no exception. I’ll offer just enough theory for your mind to hang on to and the rest will be experiential.
Workshop link is here.
Remember, you can sign up to be in person or livestream and if you want to receive a recording because you can’t be with us that day, sign up for the livestream class and you’ll get the recording.
