Aging, Injuries, and Healing with Mindfulness

Getting older is a fine balance between the wisdom that can only come from experience and the frustration of not remembering what I was about to say or do a moment ago.

Going slowly and being fully in my body, moment by moment, have been among the greatest gifts of aging. I am still working on both of these practices, and I get distracted by busy-ness more than I would like. But the more I stop, and breathe, and feel, the easier it gets - mostly because it feels good.

Somatic Experiencing (SE) - which I mentioned a couple posts ago - has become an invaluable tool for settling in and noticing subtle energies and staying with them, just noticing and nothing more, as they transform just through the process of attending and watching.

Sadness becomes relief, then anger, then power, then excitement, then joy.

Fatigue becomes grounding, then settling, then calm, then alertness, then presence.

This may sound like meditation, but it's more than I've ever learned in meditation classes. There is no effort to stop thinking. Thoughts happen. There is no concentration on a meditative object. Sensation is the meditative object. And maybe that just works really well for me because I am at the super far end of the kinesthetic spectrum.

One of the main reasons I decided to learn SE was to see if it would help reduce physical pain, which I've long suspected my body holds as "emotional trauma in suspended form." In several of my SE experiences, I've noticed the feeling of my shoulders and back melting - as if old armor is gently falling away. It's a delicious feeling, and one that I hope will eventually become a new normal for me. What I didn't expect, is that SE would follow me out of the classroom, and out of my therapy office into my daily life. Specifically, it has shown up in my footsteps.

In March, I twisted my left knee, and it's felt twinge-y and wonky ever since - not painful, but not quite right. I don't think it's a coincidence that I also have bunion on my left big toe, and that my left foot has been growing progressively weaker over the last few years. So I did what we all seem to do these days; I scoured Google for everything ever written about knee injuries and bunions and muscle imbalances. Several articles recommended walking barefoot.

Then, in June, I ran into a friend who was wearing Vibram FiveFingers on her feet. I had a pair once. I got them right after reading Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. But I was much younger then (only 44). And I had only just begun learning about slow and gentle living. I didn't know that in my mid-forties, my body would begin to rebel against being pushed to hard. I didn't know the wear and tear that my earlier traumas, and the resulting tendency to dismiss and deny my body's pain and fatigue signals, was catching up to me. So I put on my new barefoot "shoes," and went for a run, giving myself a muscle spasm (in my left calf, of course) that lasted a month. I blamed the shoes, cursed the book, and went back to supportive, orthotically correct footwear. And I watched my bunion grow. And I felt my foot continue to weaken.

Fast forward to June. Now at the wise and sage age of 49 1/2, I listen to my friend describe the slow, gentle process of moving from shod feet to bare feet. She wore her FiveFingers an hour a day at first, only at home after work. Then on little trips, grocery shopping. Then, adding more time as her body grew accustomed, she eventually started wearing them all day, just walking, sitting, driving. Now, she says, she is "addicted to them."

There is no definitive information about whether barefoot living will fix my knee or my foot. Anecdotal evidence points both ways - it really helps or it really hurts. Though in scouring blogs and message boards, there is one theme that recurs over and over. If you transition to barefoot, go very, very slowly.

Yesterday my new (and surprisingly cute compared to the last pair) FiveFingers arrived. I wore them for two hours, mostly sitting. Today I wore them for three hours, sitting, sweeping the floor and taking a short trip to the store. When I took them off, the angle of my bunion-y toe was less pronounced. My knee is still wonky, but it also feels like the muscles of my foot, calf and thigh are more activated and more stabilizing.

What's really wonderful though is the mindfulness of each step. As I walk, I am keenly aware of the sensations in my feet and legs and knees and hips and back. I am feeling my gait from inside. I have no idea what this will lead to, if anything. And the blessing of SE and of getting older is that it's soooo okay with me not to know. I am happy watching, waiting, trusting my body's signals and discovering what the next step feels like, and then the next one, and the next.

And I am relishing the loving feelings that come with all of this self-care. The armor continues melting, and as it does, the love and joy that is my birthright (and yours too) grows full and bright, a little sun rising in my chest.

Emotional Eating and Hypnosis

Even though I'm trained in hypnotherapy, I've always resisted applying hypnosis in my work with compulsive eaters. Most people who want hypnosis for weight loss are stuck in a trance of self-hatred, and helping someone lose weight from that place just feels so wrong.

Then, a few months ago, I sat with a client who has become adept at self-acceptance, and who now wants to become attuned and dependable with her self-care. She wondered if we could use hypnosis to help her recognize when she was turning to food and remember to comfort herself instead? What a great idea!

In trance, we visited a recent memory when she wanted to eat, even though she wasn't really hungry. We were able to pause the memory like a movie, going frame by frame to listen to her body's signals.

"I feel a tension in my stomach area. It's not hunger, but it's a lot like hunger," she said slowly, reliving the experience in slow motion.

"Keep the movie on the screen," I suggested, "and start another movie from a time when you felt real hunger."

She started the second trance-movie, again going in slow motion, and feeling the sensations in her stomach that came from physical hunger. Then she went back and forth between these two paused memory-movies, feeling the similarities and differences between real and emotional hunger. "They're in the exact same place," she said. "And they are both a kind of tugging feeling. Physical hunger is colder. Emotional hunger is hot. Physical hunger stays in my stomach. Emotional hunger moves up into my chest. Emotional hunger always happens after dinner. Physical hunger usually happens before dinner time or lunchtime."

We hypnotically anchored her awareness of these differences so that the awareness would stay with her. Then I asked, "What would you like to do for yourself when you are emotionally hungry?"

"I want to take care of myself. I'm usually tired or overstimulated from my day. I want to lie down away from my family and away from the TV and the electronics. No buzzing, no artificial light. I want to rest my eyes or maybe read something fun. This is like when my kids were little. When they got overstimulated, I would lie down with them in a dim room till they settled."

"What are you seeing?" I asked, noticing her facial expression moving into deeper concentration.

"I see me taking my younger self upstairs, into the dark, closing the door and relaxing. It's like this younger part needs a parent to pull her away from the family. She doesn't want to miss anything. But I know she really needs to rest, even for five minutes."

"What's it like for her to go upstairs with you?" I asked."

"Even though she wants to stay and have fun, she's grateful someone is making her go. She needs this, even though she is fighting it a little."

"What would make it easier for her?" I wondered out loud.

"Knowing that the family isn't really doing anything she likes. They're watching boring television. They're playing Angry Birds. I don't really have any interest in those things" she said.

"What is it like for your little one to remember that?"

"Good. Very good. She can have what she needs and not have to miss anything important."

I helped her anchor her awareness that taking her inner child to a quiet space for a while would feel good. Then we wrapped up the session and she went home, wondering if anything we did would make a difference.

It's three weeks later, and she reports that she has gone upstairs to rest three to five nights each week, sometimes falling asleep, sometimes just closing her eyes for five minutes and rejoining her family. She is turning to food less as she becomes adept at nurturing herself and helping her inner child feel comforted and taken care of.

I can't wait to try this with others!