Małgorzata Kamińska

– you learn a language that allows you to communicate with your own subconscious,

– you practise body-mind mirroring (i.e. how bodily sensations reflect thoughts) and in this way develop emotional literacy (the ability to read emotions – that is, to interpret information conveyed by bodily sensations). Over time, the reflex to pay attention to what you feel in your body and what thought accompanies a given sensation in your body becomes established and automatic. For example, a knot in the stomach –> ‘What do I believe about myself here?’ -> ‘That I’ve done something wrong.’ And every belief discovered in this way is a starting point for further exploration – and this is how a map of our suffering is created, or a repertoire of beliefs that we hurt us with and in which we become trapped. In other words, we become aware of what drives our suffering.

Somatic Inquiry teaches me to take responsibility for my own suffering – I still find myself projecting the causes of my suffering onto the outside world (onto people, onto situations), but I no longer buy into it; I don’t let myself get caught up in it; I don’t take the bait; and instead of feeling a victim, I ask: What are you trying to show me here, Life? What do you want to teach me, Life?

– Somatic Inquiry opens us up to conscious feeling and leads to emotional freedom – the shackles of the widespread belief that certain feelings are unworthy and make us unworthy gradually dissolve – all feelings are worthy of the light of consciousness, all deserve to be heard, they all have something to convey to us that we need to hear or see. You probably know this, but there’s a difference between knowing it and experiencing it time and again during somatic inquiry – allowing yourself to cry, spitting out angry words that we swallowed long ago (and which have been a bone in our throat and a weight on our stomach ever since), cowering in fear, and then observing how this contraction is followed by relaxation, easing, even expansion – is a completely different kettle of fish from a superficial intellectual realisation. Knowing is one thing, but embodying what you know – that’s a whole other ball game.

Allowing fear, anger and sadness – that is, permitting oneself to feel them – whilst observing what I feel in my body, immersing myself in the sensation of, for example, a knot in my stomach, a painful heaviness in my chest, tension in various parts of my body (including the vagina and anus), whilst at the same time looking into the eyes of the painful beliefs that these bodily sensations communicate, such as: ‘I don’t deserve it. I’m worthless. I’m guilty. I’m a burden.’ – Time and again, I find that I am more like the space that hosts these bodily sensations linked to beliefs, rather than the guests who come and go – that is, the bodily sensations and the beliefs, the superstitions that try to protect me the cart before the horse.

And so it happens that all these painful thoughts – which, incidentally, I myself empower through my belief in them – when brought out of the shadows into the light of consciousness, begin to loosen. And with each successive time, with each successive conscious – that is, willingly allowed – feeling, they loosen up more and more and make more and more room for their luminous flip-side – in my case, for example: ‘I don’t deserve it’ transforms into: ‘I do deserve it’. And changes follow in my life – I choose and reach for what I want. Perhaps fear, uncertainty and guilt still accompany this, but there’s no turning back now – I will lay down a newspaper to reach it.

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Goodness, there’s more of you within you, thanks to this work. As the screws in your defence mechanisms – for what is self-sabotage if not a defence gone awry? – start to loosen, and then fall out. And after a while, you realise that your own power suits you well. That you no longer need to abandon yourself, to conform – or rather, to put yourself in a certain position – to secure someone else’s favour, understanding, and so on – because you hold yourself in loving arms, come what may. Fear – the devil isn’t as black as he’s painted. I’m here with you; you’re allowed to be afraid. I’m right here beside you. Anger – it’s beautiful! What else points out so clearly that my boundaries have been crossed, that something isn’t good for me – anger does! Sadness – it reminds me that my safety lies in my vulnerability. Joy – it reminds me of my innocence.