Autumn Morning Practice

Morning Practice

Autumn 2022 - Somatic Connection Focused

Over the years my morning (and evening) practices ebb and flow. I’ve seen my practice evolve across these seasons and I am definitely comfortable with sharing that I am a practice not a routine girl. If I require myself to complete the same set of steps day in day out, I feel detached from the freshness that a meditation practice can bring and I also find my self being punitive on the days I don’t necessarily deliver.

In giving myself that freedom, I’m able to create a seasonal focus. This season I am unpacking my relationship with my somatic experience.

My body and I have been through it together. My tendency to disconnect from my body started from a fairly young age. In the family I grew up in, there wasn’t exactly a surplus of emotional awareness and intentional interaction. We really love to avoid the experience where emotion bubbles up or conflict reigns. I learned early when to share how I felt and when it was time to button it up. I navigated charged situations differently based on who I found in the room.

Transitioning into adulthood, I believed my adolescence as a classic perfectionist and achiever served me well. I imagined myself thriving following a sexual assault, I boasted about my ability to make it through a 15 hour work day on only black coffee, I spent multiple evenings out at client dinners guzzling red wine or martinis and for quite a few years it felt really fun!

Until it didn’t.

A close friend and coworker encouraged me to create a meditation practice into my schedule currently populated by early morning spin classes, all day communication and late night dinners, so I tried. I dabbled with recorded meditation apps, intentional time, I held a vision of what it was supposed to look like and feel like and I wasn’t landing aligned to that vision.

Book List

Turns out, it took a couple additional years of therapy and a global pandemic to slow me down enough to realize I was living rooted in survival mode. Following a handful of major life changes, like a career shift, starting our marriage, and a home renovation - I felt like the human equivalent of one of the junker cars a monster truck barrels over.

In my experience, slowing down my day to day schedule allows me space to collect the scattered pieces of my mental wellbeing. I’m learning to pay attention to the interpretation of my experience that my body shares with me. I struggle to register physical sensations and somatic expressions of emotion, hunger, needs - I believe because I spent participating in avoidant attachment dynamics.

Now, I feel much more rooted in understanding. I can see my developmental years and their impact on my nervous systems and meditation evolved into a daily part of my life. Meditation helps me experience emotional expression more fully and creates distance between my activated state and how I respond to others. Your practice doesn’t have to be fancy and certainly doesn’t require any of the tools I use below, they’re simply tools I’ve found helpful as I continue to commit to this daily-ish practice.