Having someone's back
No man is an island. This is a truth. As much as we might try to not have needs, we do. And those needs are not just about food, water and shelter. We also have needs in regards to love, safe touch and connection. A study conducted in a French orphanage in the 1950's demonstrated that children could suffer the ill effects of failure to thrive, which includes being severely underweight, cognitively and/or physically delayed, or even dying, from a lack of touch. These children had food, water and shelter, which were considered to be the essentials. However they were not picked up and held, touched, massaged or cooed at. This was the time that behaviorism was becoming an accepted theory (remember hearing about the scientist, Pavlov, and his experiments with dogs?). So it came as quite a shock that these children were not doing well. They were failing to thrive. Some died.
From this experience we learned that touch, the sense of being loved, held and protected by caretakers, whether that be parents, grandparents, friends, or neighbors, is just as important as food to the development of a child. That the developmental concept of "nurture" is just as essential as biological concept of "nature."
Recently I was fortunate to be part of a "Women and Leadership" workshop created and facilitated by my office partner, Suzanne Roberts. The workshop was largely somatic, meaning that experiences were created where our psycho-biology could feel what disempowers us and what empowers us, allowing for awareness and choice rather than unconscious reaction. One of the most meaningful experiences for me was the concept of "having your back," or someone having yours, which can be figurative or literal. It is the experience of standing with the kind of support that allows the central nervous system to relax, moving out of the fight/flight/freeze stress response and moving into the deeper connection of the resilient core and its authentic power. We each took turns placing a firm and compassionate hand at the sacrum and/or back of the heart of another participant while they faced the embodiment of an old fear or belief system that diminished and disempowered them in some way. With that support we were each able to experience these old unfounded fears melt away as the body reorganized around its core essence, strength, passion and truth.
I have had the honor this week of giving back some of what I received from that workshop. This past week I was in Florida with Vijay (Dr. Jain), Michele and the rest of the Healing Arts staff providing yoga, yoga nidra and individual yoga therapy sessions to the participants of our annual panchakarma program. The program is designed to release undigested material, whether that be food or experience, from the body. It is truly transformational, as I can attest, as I was a panchakarma participant last year. A piece I felt that would be helpful to facilitate this process was for each participant to receive individual yoga therapy sessions to aid in the digestion of issues, especially emotional, that may arise as the physical toxins are released. From the feedback, it appears that these sessions were useful and so will continue to be part of the ShivaShakti Synthesis panchakarma program in the future.
The most profound healing occurred when I stayed present and had "someone's back” during a yoga therapy session. Sometimes they were lying on the ground and I would be moved to bring my hands to the back of their heart. Tears of grief would flow, the old pains would surface to be healed, and a new sense of freedom, well-being and lightness would emerge. If a false belief system arose we would welcome it, identify it, look at how it once served the system and why it was no longer needed. Out of this a deeper truth emerged. Panchakarma is not just about detoxifying, it is also about replenishing with what the body's intelligence craves. We came to standing and they would take Warrior pose. I would place one hand on their sacrum and the other behind their heart while they spoke their truth. This felt embodied experience empowered them to understand more fully who they are when they remember their spacious fully alive sense of Self. What I offered involved no tricks or special tools. It was the simplest and most profound offering - presence and having someone's back. It is our greatest gift. And it does transform the world.
