End of Winter into Spring: Contraction & Transformation
We’re at the juncture of late winter and early spring. We’ve had some of our coldest days this past week. Still, I hear the birds sing the most excited songs each morning. I can feel the hope and possibility of new life. There is a stirring of energy within me. A reawakening after a long sleep. Almost a restlessness. Some important things are percolating and yet the tiny green sprouts of this new life have yet to pop up and through the earth. I feel constricted in anticipation. Ready.
The energy of late winter feels almost like a caterpillar in her chrysalis. Some important changes have happened deep within the cocoon of winter. Spring harkens a transformation. The rebirth means we’re in a sort of labor. Our bodies, our homes are so tight, too small. Our bigness and vastness wants to expand. We’re building the energy to make one last push. To crack open our limiting beliefs and the stories we tell ourselves that keep us in fear. Small and safe inside these prisons. It’s almost time to leave our old skins behind. But, not...quite...yet.
With the Spring Equinox on its way on March 20th, it’s a beautiful time to ask ourselves….
What have I learned this winter about what keeps me small and contracted? What is really important to me? Not what society or my friends say is important, but what I deeply, truly, authentically, know is meaningful to me.
Where in my life am I ready to expand this spring?
In order to break free, what do I need to accept, let go of, and heal?
What gets in the way of doing so? How can I commit to what matters and give one good push to free myself?
The Prisons We Live In
I recently listened to a podcast episode by Brene Brown on Unlocking Us called Brené with Dr. Edith Eger on Recognizing the Choices and Gifts in Our Lives. Edith Eger is a clinical psychologist who survived the Holocoaust and went on to help us better understand trauma.
“I am here to tell you that the worst prison is not the one the Nazis put me in. The worst prison is the one I built for myself. Although our lives have probably been very different, perhaps you know what I mean? Many of us experienced feeling trapped in our minds, our thoughts and beliefs determine and often limit how we feel, what we do and what we think is possible.”
The answer, Eger proposes, is to remember that we have a choice. We don’t choose what happens to us, but we do have the power to free ourselves from our mental prisons once the trauma has passed. This winter, have you noticed a tendency to get lost in a story or label about yourself that was given to you by someone else? How does it feel in your body? Does it make you feel trapped? Tight? Constricted?
Constriction and White Body Supremacy
One example of a giant chrysalis that many of us are trying to break out of is white body supremacy. In honor of Black History month in February, I dove into Resmaa Menakem’s book My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathways to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies.
“Trauma is also a wordless story our body tells itself about what is safe and what is a threat.”
He bases his work on the theory that almost all Americans hold trauma in our bodies from white body supremacy that has been passed down through generations. Somatic abolitionism is the process of healing the trauma and one way to recognize it is to notice when and where we constrict.
“The deadliest manifestation of white fragility is its reflexive confusion of fear with danger and comfort with safety. When a white body feels frightened by the presence of a Black one—whether or not an actual threat exists—it may lash out at the Black body in what it senses as necessary self-protection. Often this is a fight, flee, or freeze response triggered by the activation of the ancient trauma that began as white-on-white violence in Europe centuries ago.”
As the bearer of a white body, I have been reflecting on the impact of my whiteness. Such a long history of violence, death and stolen power. For white bodies, Menakem traces the trauma back to extreme white-on-white violence all the way back in the middle ages.
“All of this suggests that one of the best things each of us can do—not only for ourselves, but also for our children and grandchildren—is to metabolize our pain and heal our trauma. When we heal and make more room for growth in our nervous systems, we have a better chance of spreading our emotional health to our descendants, via healthy DNA expression. In contrast, when we don’t address our trauma, we may pass it on to future generations, along with some of our fear, constriction, and dirty pain.”
Once we begin to notice our survival responses held in our nervous systems, we have the choice to free ourselves from that prison. The first step toward healing, Menakem suggests, is to learn to anchor the body back into the present moment (as opposed to the trauma response from the past).
Getting Present in Our Bodies
I recently came across this beautiful NYTimes article by Gia Koulas called ‘Slowing Down to Feel’: Moving Our Minds Around Our Bodies. You don’t have to live in a tiny NYC apartment to feel constricted in your body this winter.
“Dancers know that how you are in your body relates to how you are in your mind and how you move through the world. Most New Yorkers live in cramped quarters that now often double as workplaces, too. Our bodies are constricted. And though we aren’t back to a complete shutdown the way we were in March, as the pandemic drags on, it’s getting harder and harder to find moments of release and wonder.”
Whether you are noticing constriction in your body from social distancing. From the prison of a story that’s not yours. Or, from ancestral trauma rooted in white body supremacy. We have the power and the choice to heal and come back to the present moment by shifting the state of our bodies.
“We can use movement as a way to look inward. Through stillness and slowing down, we can create a rich sense of space by moving our minds around our bodies. Slowing down can feel like freedom — and, for me, that’s a good antidote to dusk.”
I’m coming to realize that the gift of the end of winter is a great awareness of what is keeping us tight, constricted, small, and bracing against the present moment. It is time to witness what happened to us with compassion, connect to what really matters and the power of choice, and challenge ourselves to release and expand. We are retraining our animal bodies to better discern safety from comfort and danger from challenge. When we soothe our nervous systems, we can open ourselves back up to community, connection, difference, learning, curiosity, and love. Maybe when we start to feel contracted and tense, we’re ready to transform. As we harness the energy of our own discomfort, we can break through the chrysalis. To me, this is the spirit of spring.