I am slowly and steadily wrapping up the year and inviting in a calmer and more still energy into 2024. I can feel things shifting and so I am preparing my energy to take up whatever comes my way.
This is not a usual path for me. I definitely never managed my workload or to do list in any way. Fired up and ready was always my route forward, but things have changed this year. Some self-love and self-care and setting some loving boundaries for myself and my life, which has been incredibly uncomfortable for a woman that has spent all of her life looking after others.
Giving to others always came easier than giving to myself. After working quite deeply over the last few months I realise how much I have used this as a defence for so long. If I can help the other then they won’t ask me what's wrong - it put me in a place of separateness.
This and other defences is something I have been working with this year, releasing my armour.
These defences I built up over my life to protect me, to keep me safe, to stop me from being hurt.
Our body’s store every experience we have ever had. We may have felt we have had to repress our emotions and keep them “held in” and this can show up symptomatically in the body.
Muscles can become tight and feel hard when we feel we have to defend ourselves. This is literal physical armour and protection we build. Muscles become contracted and we often scratch our head why it continues, but if we are living in the same cycles then it becomes the body's pattern too.
Think about times when you want to do something you love. How does your body feel?
Then think about doing something you hate doing or you feel you have to do. How does that feel in your body?
One should feel expansive and the other may make you feel contracted and tight.
Think about your own life experiences. You may have learned you couldn’t say “No” or to ask for your needs to be met or even express you have needs. You may have been taught to fit in or comply because it was easier than making “a fuss”
For me, my armour built up because I felt so exposed by my experiences. But that safe armour kept people out and at arms length and that’s not how life is supposed to be lived. My body found a way to speak and let me know what was happening and it still does.
I try now to sit with my armour and understand why I felt I needed it. I try to listen to the defence mechanism and the person inside that is hurt and vulnerable and needing to be seen. I try to work with the parts that feel they are imperfect and allow them to be seen and heard just as they are.
And this is also the work I offer you and slowly and gently we peel off the armour together.