It was just before Christmas, the weekend had been full with a family trip away, ending with a Women's Circle on the Sunday morning on zoom, from my hotel room. I'd then jumped on a train to my friend's house, arriving with just enough time to finish planning our final Wheel of the Year Ceremony of 2021, before delivering it that evening.
And so when I awoke at 8am on Monday morning, with a dream group scheduled at 10.30am and not yet having done my dreamwork for it, I thought I'd better get on with it before my supervision... scheduled for 9am
Reading through my 2nd year ministry training self directed project on embodiment (part of my dreamwork) it hit me... I could combine my dreamwork and my supervision!
At the time of writing up the project on embodiment I'd had this idea that to get in my body, to fully embody was a challenge (I guess that's why the project had come up in the first place!), but that if I asked someone to 'hold' me, i.e. energetically or in some kind of session, as I did it, it might be easier. I'd forgotten that! Then I remembered that part of the reason I'd chosen my wonderful supervisor, Catherine, was because of her work with the body. It's she I dance with in the Movement Medicine class each week.
And so... I brought grief and embodiment that morning to Catherine. I shared with her a situation that was bringing up deep grief and she helped guide me deeper into my body. The more I dropped in, the more I was able to feel it. Catherine invited me to move my body in whatever way felt right. I swayed forwards and backwards as I sobbed, noticing this felt like 'keening'... I stood to take in more breath... I swayed from side to side... circled my hips... felt pain in my pelvis, my lower back, akin to period pains... childbirth even.
And then something weird happened. I went really cold down my right side. Chilled. I felt really creeped out, like there was someone there breathing down my neck and in my ear. Again I followed what my body wanted to do. I put on a scarf and a shawl to warm up. At first I shrank away from whatever it was on my right, but then I stood my ground and pushed it (the energy, the sense of someone there) away, quite violently, using some force with both my arms and legs. Afterwards Catherine guided me to reach out in all directions, to set an energetic boundary around myself.
The chill eased, I felt more settled and I continued to follow my body's lead. I stood on one leg and then on the other, transferring my weight between my left and right. It felt like a rebalancing in me between the masculine and feminine. 'The masculine in me has persecuted the feminine in me' I said, with a sense of hearing myself saying the words... like they came out of nowhere... but when I considered, it did kind of fit with the grief laden situation I'd brought to work on.
And then my body wanted to twist, left and right, left and right... Letting it, this felt like an integration of what had just happened... I said 'it feels like yin and yang'. Somehow the masculine now part of the feminine and the feminine part of the masculine.
Wow! I wasn't sure what had happened but it felt enormous... powerful... intense... I felt some healing had occurred in the movement... in the moment... something had shifted in my body. I knew I was right to have asked Catherine for holding in the embodying... it was exactly what I needed... and what I need more of in future. I guess a 1:1 Movement Medicine class with whatever content I bring to supervision.
Enormous gratitude to Catherine and also for friends who have me to stay and give me the space to do what's in my diary whilst I'm there. I felt that being in my friend's house also gave me another layer of holding to do this work!