Is bad posture taking you from the pleasure of being at home in your body?

Fariya shares in this episode of The Sensual Sessions podcast that movement transformed the felt sense of being herself.

“Shifted my sense of identity. Felt very insecure. Showing people I was in charge, carried my back in a very particular way. That insecure holding caused me to injure myself. Startling revelation finding I didn´t have to do it, then you start wondering: who am I? Where can I hold myself in this world?”

We have attitudes in certain areas in the body. A way to holding yourself in the world that can even lead to chronic pain and passing out, like it happened to Fariya. It´s enough to have a certain attitude in your body towards the world that a lot of times it means following the cookie cutter template of in the way of being of your ancestors..

The position of your body is REAL PLACE of holding yourself. As you get older your self-image changes. Different experiences shape, grow, morph your sense of who you are. And the people around you will influence that as well. Self image is not only us thinking who we think we are but thinking about other people thinking who they think we are.

Being at home in your body depends on your self-image which is a relational interphase formed by the interpretation of the world through internal and external experiences.

The pleasure of coming back home in your skin

Fariya shares the story of a client that after taking 5 day retreat of 2 Feldenkrais Method® sessions a day she was a different person.

When she came back she had no pain, she wanted just a tune up to tuning into the body, she looked different, she carried herself differently, she even dressed differently. And the conversation was about possibility, “I could do this, I could imagine that. LIFE IS GOOD.”

She became embodied in a different identity from doing whole series of lessons where she could see herself in a very different way because she was not in a box anymore, she had a room with windows, she had possibilities, she had space to be creative and to be herself. And not be held by responsibility and constantly trying to measure up to other people standards.

So it can be so transformative finding home in your skin.

How to feel comfortable in your own skin

This can be very difficult if we hare talking about this idea of finding pleasure and satisfaction through objects or activities, like going on holidays, getting a new car or whatever to say “I feel pleasure, I feel happy.” But it´s short lived, it´s always the next thing that we need. It´s good to have experiences, there´s nothing wrong with it but if it´s a place where they´re looking for a sense of meaning connected to themselves, that´s when it can become faulty.

Perduring pleasure can be cultivated through movement lessons that helps us come into ourselves and say hello to our inner being, that inner self that really wants to be happy sensing the flesh and wants to express in a way that is completely free from inhibition.

How tapping into possibilities lead the transformation for coming back home

When you have possibilities you can choose. Whereas if you´re in a box you can´t choose, you´re stuck there. That´s not true responsibility. True responsibility is to make decisions and being accoutable for assuming those consequences.

This lady tapped into the maturity of self when she became embodied. She became a different person from the one that was boxed and now became more of herself. It´s herself at home.

You go on vacations, you go for the frothy frappuccino because you want at least a little taste of the fleshly sense of pleasure that coming back home means but then you default back to the fake containment of the box because there was no embodied movement process that led you there.

Self-image is made of your way of being in the world

Self-image is formed by how you perceive yourself, how you feel others perceive yourself and the way you carry yourself in the world.

“Movement in ways of being oneself” -Fariya Doctor

Movement has to do with the choices that you make, that are expressions of yourself, that are the how it feels to be YOU.

Being boxed it´s not who you are, it´s one of your ways of being. If you move differently then you´ll be able to choose how you prefer to be. Then you can go back to be boxed if you like but not because you have no other choice.

But if you have no choice but to be boxed, what´s the first step to get out of there?

How to get out of the box where your own assumptions put you in

When you feel trapped in a situation and see no options it´s usually because there´re a lot of assumpions being made about themselves.

A lot of times people box themselves, no one is doing it to them. They are doing it to themselves. Telling all sorts of stories about that restrictive space. The way you think. How do we think about the world, how do we think about ourselves. The things you tell yourself that you don´t know if they´re true.

It´s by moving in non-habitual ways that you can tap into shaping your way of thinking. Movement and thought are together.

When we are babies we don´t know ourselves until we move. Our eyes are moving our tong is moving. First point of contact is the tong, feeding. The touch, in reaching. But not really knowing where our boundaries are, our back, our head. So how do we know this? Until we make contact with the external world, which is mommy or daddy.

As we learn we are learning through contact and movement and experience in how we interact with the world.

So by moving in different ways, doing Feldenkrais Method® lessons, you get think of yourself in a different way without judgement on what is happening. For example, when you lift an arm, are you holding your breath? What is happening when you roll to the side, do you tense something or you just fall to the side? What are you doing with your body? And when you pack those patterns and give yourself permission to move in a very different way, you also give yourself permission to think in different ways.

Unleashing pleasurable creative ways

Fariya talks about a client with a severe brain injury who said, “I´ve never been able to visuallize an image and paint it, and I can do that now”. WOW. Fariya wasn´t planning that, the client´s body did it. Something happened with her internal sense of being and artistry and now she could see something in her head and paint it. So, that was a revelation for her.

This elusiveness of the Feldenkrais Method® that it not only changes the sense of ourselves and who we are but and our hability to shift our self-image in response to different situations, we don´t always have to be a certain way.

When we are talking to different friends we can be different with each group because we have flexibility of expression in the way you present yourself to the world.

Movement, thought and expression can change the way of being that is very beautiful.

But sometimes it happens and people don´t like it.

What to do if you didn´t like being at home in your body

Fariya shared the case of man with back pain that ran back to being boxed after experiencing being his fully upright self.

The way he was standing was in a really deflated disempowered way when he first came in. The tail was tucked under, the head was down all the time. He had a lot of trauma in his life and he carried it with him in his body. Showed up, had a number of lessons.

But one leson, he suddenly found the arch in his back and he felt his butt was sticking out and his chest was lifted and he was walking after the lesson and he said, “I am feeling really proud” but he also felt a sense of arrogance. His idea of arogance was coupled with that posture which actually was no bad at all. So, that posture and the way of being in his body where perfectly normal. It wasn´t outrageous, he was a normal person walking but he couldn´t hold it, he rejected it. It was too far different from the way he was with himself and with others, was so different that it actually caused him to say “I can´t walk like this”. He went right back. But he had a glimpse of something different, he had a glimmer. So who knows maybe he came back once in a while.

When we have a lot of trauma in our life sometimes you need to come at it from different directions to change your comfort for carrying your body in a different way gradually.

You have to feel safe.

Maybe he was upright as a kid but his father beat him up accusing him of arrogance. So maybe he thought of the upright way of being in the world as a way to be abused. Getting out of the box to come into the home of who you really are takes boldness though not in a brutal way but in with the boldness with which a flower blooms. The boldness of curiousity and exploring without completely leaving the box at one.

When you build possibilities for yourself you´re safe because you can choose. So for this guy it would be to get into the box of his hunched position if he´s visiting his father if that´s safer. It also means adaptability. There is so much trouble with movement and pleasure.

How pleasurable movement helps you know yourself

As a teenager growing up I used to crash with everything until I go used to my new size, being taller and curvier. My self image was changing.

I found my true length through movement and contact.

But this is not mindless coded movement. Movement can be a task experience, not being qualitative but quantitative. Like going for how much can you get done in the day. Task orientes activities can be very difficult to attend to because we want to get a lot done, and that´s part of being human.

But there are times when we have opportunities to be aware of our movement. That´s why people love meditating, doing yoga, pilates is because they are asked to tune into something else. Their breath, their direction of movement. They´re asked to tune in instead of tunning out. In the middle of our busy lifes it´s nice to tune in. It doesn´t need to take a lot of time. You don´t have to go to a long retreat.

This is important because you can´t know ourselves if it´s isn´t through mindful pleasurable movement. Then we´ll have the full felt sense of who we are in order to share our best before we leave.

Tuning in is just a matter of sensing inward. It´s just a matter of noticing what am I doing with my hands as I´m talking to you, how am I shifting weight with my feet. Can I be here with you and still be inside my body?

There are different levels to tune in through movement. It doesn´t have to be big, movement can just be the eyes.

When you´re sitting in your chair you´re still moving. Your eyes are still going somewhere to think. Movement can be as simple as turning the eyes in the socket and noticing differences in where you tend to look in the day when you´re searching for ideas.

So when you´re thinking you look up to the think to the left or to the right?

What pleasurably being at home in your body really means

Being at home in yourself doesn´t mean to be stuck in four walls, you can change the curtains of the way that you are inside yourself by fleshly sensing your movement.

If you want to bare yourself completely free from inhibition then you need to find Pleasurable Ways Of Being At Home in Your Body, (you don´t need to take your clothes off, but it´d be specially helpful if you privately intend to do so) you´ll discover how to do so here at Episode # 60 of The Sensual Sessions podcast with Feldenkrais Method® Practitioner, Buteyko Method Instructor, Registered Massage Therapist and Feldenkrais Niagara Director, Fariya Doctor.

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About Fariya Doctor

Fariya has over 28 years of experience in dealing with the art and science of healing the body. She is an experienced Registered Massage Therapist and a Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner™ and Buteyko instructor.

She has a Bachelor of Science degree at McMaster University (1990), a Massage Therapy Diploma at Sutherland-Chan Massage School (1993), Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner™ (2004) and certified in the Buteyko breathing method in 2020. Fariya has continuously advanced her knowledge in bodywork, taking courses and workshops yearly.

Her practice involves being a “movement detective” for people. Seeing glitches in a patient’s movement habits, she helps them correct and maintain better postural patterns.

Fariya has a specialization in joint problems, chronic conditions, and respiratory issues.

Due to her unique approach in rehabilitation, she receives patients throughout the Golden Horseshoe as well as “Over the River” in New York State. Fariya also provides online services, such as private care, and classes.

Registered Massage Therapist Association of Ontario , and the Feldenkrais Guild of North America. She has previously volunteered and served on the Executive Committee of the Niagara Area Business Women’s Network (NABWN), the RMTAO and her local Massage Therapy Chapter. She has written articles for magazines in Niagara.

Currently, Fariya serves on the Board of Directors for the Feldenkrais Guild of North America (FGNA).

Learn more at:

https://fariyadoctor.com/

https://www.instagram.com/movement_detective

What´s Next

Go to The Sensual Sessions Podcast Episode #61: Transform Resentment Into Grateful Pleasure with Beverly Lawrence PhD

Learn more with resources on: Postural Presence Resources

Discover: The Ecstatic Breathing Practice