Crying. Oh, it’s been maligned.

And make no mistake about it, it’s been genderized and pathologized. Let’s see if we can find another way with it.

Crying is a release of emotion that let’s the person know quite clearly that their body can’t hold this feeling in any more. It’s a catharsis unlike any other that relieves the body of intense pressure and pain and HEALS in so many different ways.

A good model for crying is to watch little kids or babies. They cry with complete abandon and don’t give a second thought to who is watching them or what the judgment might be. Crying like this is a brief thunderstorm in the desert, total and absolute and provides a clearing of the senses and the psyche.

One of the fundamental qualities about language is the ability to label an event or an object with a word. There is also the dimension that the word and the thing eventually become cohabiters of the same level of importance in the mind. Assigned meanings are essential for a human to build subsets of realities and to build complex realities based on experience. Eventually, you have to become aware of the pervasiveness of this labeling, and then start to redirect and become conscious about assigning both meaning and value to life.

Labels are found in almost every aspect of human behavior and human environments. Communication- talking especially, being in relationship, daily life, and interacting with people will lead to countless assignments.

In everyday speech we are constantly languaging things and events to suite the mental image of our experience or what we would like to be our experience. It often falls to conditioned word choices, which also then function as a recursive loop. One says a word because it is basically next in the hopper ready to come out of the mouth, then it chooses the next word that has been associated or assigned to that position reflexively.

The act of falling in love is made up of intense feelings that are continuously assigned meaning during the process of “falling”. A prime example is a couple during this phase of relating hears a song that soon becomes “their song”. The song acquired meaning through intense projection through the lyrics and a shared mutual experience. These events, songs, etc. rapidly take on a life of their own and are soon sublimated from normal consciousness and continuously work on the person’s mentations.

As you go about your day your mind is constantly being reminded of things that have assigned names to them. Each of these things will continually flood the brain and synapses with information and regurgitate it subconsciously as you are exposed to your life. The simple acts of washing the dishes, brushing your teeth, putting on your clothes, getting in a vehicle, walking down the street, and almost any other event you can think of, continually pull your mental state back into the logical, linear, and ordered world.

Everything has a name on it; the toothpaste tube has the name of the product, the company name, the logo, the ingredient list, and the instructions. To paraphrase Aldous Huxley from his book, Seeing Without Glasses, the human being is lazily taking in vast amounts of information.  These bits of information are lost to the conscious mind, but the unconscious is constantly sorting, finding pattern matches, and otherwise keeping a large part of your reality busy with mundane garbage. The big question is, “Are your content to accumulate such flotsam and jetsam in your head?”

The visual field for human beings is the only place where they find a relatively unfiltered reflection of themselves. Mirrors for many people are a place to connect with themselves, though it’s not always a good connection and it can be hard to look in the mirror for any length of time without being accused of being a narcissist.

But, let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. What we think we know about how people construct themselves is frequently an internal image that is not congruent with the external image. An example of this can be if one were an overweight teenager and now may be in shape, but still see the body in the earlier time and place and not able to acknowledge the difference. I see this frequently in people who work out and may be in great shape, though they still see the skinny or fat little kid.

Our work in this area is to alter that discordancy so that they are closer to each other, and hopefully to skew it in the direction of the present time physical world.

Your name is a word that you’ve heard many times. It was imprinted and anchored to you by your parents, teachers, and friends for years and years. How it’s been said throughout your life often shapes how you respond to it.

There have been people in your life who may have said your name sweetly and when someone new says it that way it brings back a taste of that sugar. Think back to a time when you’ve had a lover say your name and how good that felt, especially when tied to the feeling of being in love.

Conversely, when someone has said your name in anger or punitively,  your body and psyche often reacts with a memory of that original event. And if you have had numerous events like that, there can be a cascading effect of these events into the present moment. If you’ve ever had someone who spoke your name enough with an edge to it, it may be some time to do some healing around it.

A healing around this can occur by doing a number of things, a couple of them that are very simple and deeply affecting follow. The first is to look at yourself in the mirror and thinking to yourself, “I love you.” while you simultaneously say your name out loud. This is a NLP anchor that attaches your image and I Love You to your name. In the beginning, feel free to do it everyday so that eventually when you hear your name a warm feeling of self becomes resonates

The second technique is to enroll an intimate physical partner.  This requires that you prep them ahead of time so that while you’re making love they are ready to deliver the content. How it works is that at the moment of your orgasm, your partner softly says your name a few times while caressing your body. This is an example of  somatic anchor,  an auditory component, and a peak experience. These anchors are very robust and will provide a deep somatic healing to your bodymind.

So, go have fun with this and let me know how it goes.

This is part of the Somatics in the Gym blogs.

A bit of context first. The back on mammals is a vulnerable place, it’s the part that is exposed during an attack.  So as a result the animal is constantly trying to keep things in front of it if it senses danger. The belly is protected by the curling of the body. This is great if you walk on four legs.

For us humans, because we walk on two legs, our back and belly are both exposed, and the scapula (shoulder blades) protect the heart and lungs. In order to build muscles here, we need to actively pull on life or on some machine or device that lets us use the grasping and acquisition movements of our bodies.

In the gym this translates into back exercises; rows and lats. Today we’ll look at the Rowing exercises as these are the ones that are most important and activating. For all of the exercises, it would be good to have music and lyrics that support your movements and also to say to yourself some version of the following: “I Pull Life into Me.”  In other blogs, we’ll talk about allowing and receiving, but for now the focus is on active engagement.

Low Rows activate both the emotional feelings and kinesthetic responses to life. If you were suppressed as a kid or even now as an adult, this movement will allow those feelings to be modulated and reframed by action.

Straight Rows are often done sitting down with your eyes forward towards the horizon. This allows for a dense clarity to happen where you are focused on what you want and as you pull it towards yourself you are in constant eye contact. This is vital for relationships and a deep connection with the people in your life.

High Rows activate some very primal feelings of being a little kid, this is because the head is tilted back and the arms are up overhead (see Lats). This is the same position that children find themselves in when looking up at adults. It is a position that would be picked up from, or a position that you would ask from.

Try it now by putting your arms up and reaching out in front of you. Notice the feelings, thoughts, and images that emerge. Pay attention to whether the idea of doing this disturbs something, and do it to get a feel for what shows up. Great.

Now, take these thoughts and feelings into the gym with you and try these back exercises with the idea of pulling life into you and be aware of what’s different afterward.