Alchemising pain
Dear Creative,
last week, my favourite writing group Shut Up & Write Wednesday was meeting in a new Cafe across town. I was very much looking forward to going but almost didn’t because I wasn’t sure I could make it home afterwards.
Sometimes my body does this thing where my back muscles tense up so much that I cannot straighten up anymore which makes it really hard to walk or do anything. The pain can get so bad throughout the day that I have found myself in situations where I couldn’t walk anymore, hence the fear of not making it home that day. Also the posture makes me look like a 90 year old which makes it really hard to be a Cougar - here we go, my first written dating joke, not amazing I agree, but oh well at least I tried.
Throughout the years, I learned to get curious about that pain and what it is trying to tell me.
This time, the pain appeared a few days before the last class of the story telling workshop I was taking at the Beast Comedy Club with Albert and Ilektra. We were supposed to share our stories but mine wasn’t ready. In addition to the stress of not being ready, I thought my body was trying to tell me that expressing myself in public was not safe. Afterall, I did have the exact same experience doing Stand-up Comedy a few years prior and thought it was the perfect explanation.
The same pain showed up 3 years into my career as a Yoga Teacher and let me tell you, the 90 year old posture is not just hindering my flirting attempts with Gen Z but it’s also not great to promote a practice that is supposed to heal your back! How many times did I hear ‘isn’t Yoga supposed to be good for the back?!’ After a year of these kind of comments, I gave up teaching all together and started an early mid-life crisis but that’s a story I’ll tell another time.
Let’s get back to the pain and what I learned over the years:
to not fear it
to allow myself to rest and trust that things will get done in time
to be gentle with myself instead of forcing things
to focus on what’s important again or maybe start asking myself what is
to converse with it
to welcome it like a friend who comes over for the weekend
to see it like a riddle I need to solve so that the friend can leave again
this time I even decided to see it like an upgrade and thought if I can solve the riddle I’ll be taken to the next level!
What if we saw every aches and pains in that way?
The emotional ones included?! Or especially the emotional ones?!
And I know it’s not easy, I sometimes also just feel sorry for myself and cry because the pain is excruciating and that’s okay too! It’s a process. But if we can start seeing the body as an ally and incredible messenger, rather than the enemy or something separate from our mind, we’ll be off to a great start and healing journey.
I worked with Mathilde Le Cam to help me release the remaining blocks. She helped me figure out what my body was actually trying to tell me. Turns out, it wasn’t trying to keep me safe like I thought. It was just asking me to rest and have fun! It sounds simple but like everyone else, my productivity & perfectionism conditioning gets in the way. It makes me put a lot of pressure on myself, no matter what I do. That’s why I took a coaching session with Mathilde, to be able to move forward with ease as a creative and human. Since the session, the pain disappeared and I feel deeply at peace. I highly recommend working with Mathilde if you are experiencing any kind of Resistance while working on your creative projects!
P.S.: the Cafe was amazing and I’m so glad I went because a) well discovering new Cafes is my passion b) I felt on holiday because I had to cross the City and go to a part of it that is an international vortex, where everyone speaks English c) the Coffee was perfect! d) the staff actually wanted to be there compared to many other hipster Cafes. I did make it home that day, walking along the Rhine at snail pace and arriving inspired and content.
