frozen

photo by me :)

I hear my voice dull, sometimes, disconnected. It frustrates me. It's like I speak as if no one is inside. I know I'm here, and I want to express that but that doesn't change anything. The part of me that thinks I need to be guarded to be safe creates that voice. Why can't my body understand what my mind does? Why do these moments make me feel trapped in things I don't believe anymore? It's not only my voice that becomes detached and frozen, my body wants to cave in, it can feel harder to breathe, my whole body expresses this fear of being unsafe, fear of showing emotion, not being enough, repeating mistakes, and strangely enough, lately, fear of what happens now that I finally don't feel so broken inside. Weird right? I feel more myself and somehow that seems foreign. I want to stay whole, and don't want to go back to being broken. I'm afraid that I will take a step forward and "mess up" this new feeling. Even though I trust I'll move forward and remain whole, my body hesitates.

This feeling of fear shows up in my body and I'm reminded of when I was 19. I had been snowboarding for a couple years when I took a trip with my family to Vermont. During our last day, I went over a jump and landed on what turned out to be a non-existent layer of snow covering a large area of solid ice. Deceiving. My board went spinning. Before I could get control over the board, I was sent flying backwards down the mountain hitting my head on another patch of barely covered ice. Everything went black. When the next year rolled around, I didn't really give the fall a second thought. Falling happens. When I got my board on and got on
the chairlift I felt my body begin to freeze up. It seemed a little weird but honestly the chairlift exit was still not something I really looked forward to and it was the first time of the year. Once it was time to make my way back down I totally froze up. My legs locked up and my belly felt tight. It didn't make any sense so I just made myself go down. Big mess. Or at least it felt like it. It was like I had never been on a snowboard before. I would know what I needed to do but my body refused to respond. So I tried again and again until I was completely confused and annoyed. I told myself it must be this mountain. But it happened again, on a familiar mountain. Curious, confused, frustrated, I got a private lesson and told the teacher "this might sound crazy but I fell last year and I'm not scared mentally, but I think my body is. Can you even help with that?" It felt like such a ridiculous question at the time. I couldn't even understand how that would be possible. Turns out she had a similar experience and totally helped me through it. We just went step by step together which allowed me to work through the fear that had resided in my body. I'm so grateful for her understanding and for my love of snowboarding to encourage me to move beyond the fear.

This happens to all of us. Things that have been stored inside still exist in our bodies if we don't deal with it, even with the knowledge that the fear isn't the truth. There can be layers of fear, and emotion that need to be worked through. At times that frustrates me because I find myself wanting my body to see what my mind does. The mind and body don't work the same way. What we know to be true in our minds might take acting on that truth so the body learns too. Continuing to relax and take steps while feeling supported and safe until finally the body begins to ease up and allows us to fully move with ease and grace. The movement, forward motion, in both body and mind and trust are what seem to help. Otherwise, we sit in the stagnant energy of fear in our bodies continuing to allow it to control our actions, our feelings. The desire to grow or move beyond the fear has to exist to motivate this forward motion. If snowboarding hadn't been something I wanted to continue and if I wasn't so curious about why my body was stuck when my mind wasn't, I don't think I would have gotten on another snowboard. Motivation from wanting to continue to create what I'm passionate about allows me to move through the physical feelings of fear that arose recently.

Think about it, a block of ice doesn't thaw out immediately. It needs a warmer temperature and time. In that same way we need to be compassionate towards ourselves, to nurture each step we take and to trust and be patient as our bodies receive the new message we are sending.