A Body like Butter

Photo by Jared Rice on Unsplash

A few years ago, when I landed back in my body after a particularly “how is any of this possible?!” ayahuasca ceremony, I felt confused.

For a few hours (in Earth time, that is – time doesn’t seem to exist in whatever dimension ayahuasca takes you to), I traipsed through an astonishingly beautiful landscape, feeling like I was receiving “fuel” from the Universe itself. The “fuel” was energetic. It was of the “I now have a limitless supply of energy for anything I ever want to do in life” variety.

As I received that beautiful gift, my lower body shook uncontrollably. My hips and legs shook. And shook. And shook. So much so that I remember vaguely pondering, “Am I going to be able to walk tomorrow?”

If you’ve ever heard of TRE (Tension & Trauma Releasing Exercises), it was a spontaneous version of that. The basic premise is what we’ve heard people like Bessel van der Kolk and Peter Levine talk about for decades now: most animals, after encountering an activating situation (like being chased by a predator), shake when it’s over.

They shake the fear out of their system and then they’re done with it. It doesn’t become trauma, lodging in their nervous system and reactivating whenever they hear a car backfire (or whatever else is like their trauma). Instead it’s a stressful moment–and it ends. They shake, they release, they move on.

In peace. 

I didn’t make this connection until I started tapping away at my keyboard this morning, but it’s fitting that, as my body released trauma, I received abundant energy. Trauma–”big T” Trauma, such as a violent rape or surviving a natural disaster, as well as “little t” trauma, the daily accumulations of stresses and hurts we all accumulate–it saps our energy.

So, as ayahuasca activated my body’s innate wisdom, guiding me towards shaking away whatever needed released, it makes sense that energy flooded in. My natural vitality was being restored. (Beautifully, I don’t know what was released–one of the many gifts ayahuasca has given me is healing without needing to relive painful moments. Grandmother Ayahuasca treats me a bit like a toddler. She gives me a toy to play with, distracting me while she pulls a splinter from my psyche, and I don’t realize anything big, scary or potentially painful happened until she slaps on a Band-Aid when the procedure is already over–-is it any wonder that I’m such a devotee?)

But, until today, I didn’t connect the dots on that piece. This is why integration work is so important. Most people I know who work with plant medicines receive immediate insights from ceremonies, then continue to have “aha” moments for years afterwards. But those moments only come if you pause, giving them a chance to emerge, instead of racing off to seek the next ceremony, the next plant, the next whatever. Sipping. Appreciating. Integrating.

Anyway, the thing I intended to write about before I had that, “oh wow, maybe this is important” moment, is about what happened when I returned to my body.

As I landed back in human form, remembering what it is to have arms and legs, shoulders and a face, I felt confused. Because the body I returned to felt DRAMATICALLY different than the body I left.

I was still a little under the influence, so I briefly wondered if I landed in someone else’s body. A beautiful Lebanese woman was sitting next to me and I wondered if, perhaps, my consciousness had landed in her body instead of my own. “Am I Lynn now?” I wondered without alarm. The level of inner peace that comes from these ceremonies–it’s something else. The idea of ever feeling worried about anything feels laughable in those moments.

But I wasn’t Lynn. I was still Keely. Except I was Keely in a body that held ZERO tension.

None. Nada. Zilch.

The normal tension I feel in my face, where my forehead scrunches a bit around my eleven lines–gone. Same with the tension I hold around my mouth.

Neck and shoulder tension–forget about it.

There was not a single ounce of tension anywhere in my body. I was as relaxed as a newborn babe. I probably could have picked my nose with my toes if I wanted to (I didn’t think to try, unfortunately. All these missed opportunities!).

I felt, in short, amazing. I kept feeling my face, in awe of this new relaxed body.

I felt so much awe because I don’t usually feel that way. I’m one of those people who goes to get a massage and the masseuse expresses concern. “Those knots,” they’ll say, giving me a look of pity. Some masseuses even give me extra time for free, then give me an “atta boy” when I don’t cry as they dig in, trying to loosen things up.

I’m not alone in this. There’s this weird cultural thing where a lot of people I know feel a bit of pride when the masseuse tells them their body is especially tense, as if it validates something, “I knew that my body was more tense than Susie’s.” There’s pride in being a good soldier, I suppose. In soldiering on in a tense and rigid body, sucking it up for the good of…producing more widgets? Being a good martyr? I don’t know. I don’t get a lot of cultural things.

I, however, don’t want that. I want to be like my yoga teacher. I want to go for a massage and have them say, “Wow, your body is like butter.” And I’ve had it. There have been chapters of my life where my body is open and loose. Where my relaxed mind lives in a relaxed body.

Right now, however, that’s not true. I’m holding a lot of tension in my body and–wouldn’t you know?--it’s not going away on it’s own.

So, I’m going to take action. I’m going to intentionally spend less time in the world of the mind so that I can spend more time in the world of the body.

That might mean less writing. Or it might mean writing more about adventures in embodiment, excursions in cultivating a relaxed, open, spacious body.

I don’t know and–lucky me–I don’t particularly care. I’ve spent a lot of time cultivating a relaxed mind. I don’t get worked up about much. And now, if I can crack the code on cultivating a relaxed body?! Who even knows what will be possible then.

First up: a Qigong lesson this afternoon. Relaxed body, here I come.

Wishing you a relaxed day in a relaxed body and sharing my hopes that a masseuse one day tells you that your body is like butter,