Spells on Your Cells

The anatomy of language and the alcemy of shame

Many of us live our lives through a glass window, we show up fine, and yet deep inside we are operating out of patterns of shame, and separated from our truth.

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The spell of shame

We don’t always know where this shame comes from. It’s almost as if it’s the water we swim in. From a very young age we are given messaging about what will earn us love, what is acceptable behavior, and what will get us kicked out of the pack.

X + Y = good, acceptable, successful, worthy. C+D= undesirable, unstable, ugly, lazy, unworthy.

Fill in the blanks for yourself. For me I was told being small and skinny, quiet, polite, agreeable, pretty, and funny was desirable and a good thing. Also I was praised for being caring and nurturing but not having any of my own needs or being too sensitive. Even better if I could be strong, athletic, driven, and productive at all costs.

If the messages are not implicitly told to us, we watch those around us. We learn how to shrink, or how to puff our feathers to show our dominance. Very young we mold to fit the boxes of what most of our culture finds acceptable.

It starts with our closest relationships, then spreads. We internalized messages about our worth from our parents, siblings, friends, media, neighbors, from overheard conversations, from class rooms, from institutions.

Don’t be this that’s too much. Be that or your’e not enough.

My animal body has learned to survive in culture that thrives on hierarchy and separation.

To be hyper-vigilant, looking for threats and ways in which you may be unacceptable and is to live from shame, and it is a survival technique. It is a very natural response for a mammal to scan an environment and shape shift behavior according to the other mammals around you.

There is a process of perceiving information, internalized it, and adapting accordingly. This becomes a cyclic way of living, thinking, and operating. We all have adapted to our unique internal eco system of external messages from dare I say a sick society that profits off of insecurity and discontent.

Even if the behavior we watch isn’t connected to words. We create this messaging internally based on conclusions we draw.

With enough negetive thinking, there can be a physiological effect on the body which I will explain further down the article.

I am not blaming anyone who is suffering with their condition. I myself, have suffered with autoimmune issues, anxiety, depression, chronic overthinking, and negative thinking most of, if not my entire life. This is definitely not a pep talk on good vibes only, or just think more positive.

It is an active exploration of all the angles in which our body experiences and internalizes individual and collective trauma. As well as a path of currently carving holistic healing that embraces the whole being.

Rather than making conditions like this the enemy, more so exploring how our mind effects our body, and how the symptoms in our body can actually become an ally of awakening to patterns and conditioning of thought that we do have the power to resist and shift.

So why and where do my self and so many others get caught in self depreciated spirals?

The impact on our biology

Whats happening on a physiological level is fascinating.

I learned about an experiment done watching a documentary in highschool. Dr. Emoto photographed water molecules in freezing cold water using both positive and negetive words. The molecules structure literally changed from beautiful crystal geometric patterns with positive words to mercy blobs with negative words. The conclusion Dr. Emoto was able to draw from this experiment is that humans are made of up to 70% water, so if words have the power to change water molecular structure of water, imagine what they could do to us? Critics of Emotos work claimed that it was too hard to replicate this experiment and perhaps there were other components effecting the molecules. Regardless, I do resonate with Dr. Emoto’s conclusions through my lived experience of feeling physically worse when I talk to myself poorly.

Various studies have also shown that negetive thinking can create structural damage to the brain, particularly the prefrontal cortex responsible for executive function, and the hippocampus responsible for working memory. Activating the amygdala, which is responsible for the creating a fight or flight fear response in the mammal, reduces blood flow to essential areas of the brain. This of course effects hormone function, activating cortisol produced by the adrenal glands, which gives your body energy to fight or flight the threat.

Sometimes, we are reacting to our thoughts alone, based on these subconscious conclusions and inner statements of belief we made very young, learning how to survive.

So if the inner dialogue turns into, "I am broken, I am not okay as I am, I need to fix myself.  Technically threat becomes yourself.

What do you think happens to your body when it’s threat to is itself? Chronic inflammation occurs, immune function drops, and eventually, your cells turn on themselves. Thus auto immune, and/or chronic or even terminal illness.

What’s more fascinating is the brain can actually become addicted to stress chemicals! Cortisol and Adrenaline become a type of high for the brain perceiving it can get more done and feeling empty or bored when the stress isn’t there.

My lived experience of this is waiting for the shoe to drop in my currently healthy relationship and still moving through my life as if I’m bracing for the next catastrophic event, busying myself, and addicted to high intensity sports that inevitably flare up my auto immune issues.

So once we recognize these loops, what can we do about it?

Somatic’s Vs Transcendence

When I was in my early twenties, I was medicated. I didn’t feel the meds actually were getting to the root of the problem, so I got off, and decided to learn and practice yoga and meditation. I was sure that if I just practiced long enough, the meditation would medicate my symptoms and I would finally be enlightened by my thirties.

I have for a decade practice mindfulness and meditation daily. I am not enlightened, I still suffer from sever anxiety, depression, and c-pstd, and consider going back on meds frequently.

I can say that the meditation definitely didn’t hurt, it gave me tolerance and ability to sit with really painful uncomfortable feelings. I believe the mediation practice gave me the capacity to sit for hours in silence with others in Craniosacral sessions as they move through their healing.

I have studied the philosophies and teachings of Buddhism, Taoism, and Yoga. Most of my world view has been shaped by this. The embracing of suffering and deep compassion from the Buddha, the connection to all things in nature light and dark in Taosim, and the Unity and Oneness of Yoga.

I have learned through these practices that an essence of our consciousness beyond the chatter, beyond the cyclic loops of the default mode network where rumination occurs, and where all the messaging we have collected over our life experiences plants it’s self and grows if we let it. In many traditions this is called the witness. 

I do believe this aspect of Self or consciousness, is the part of our still center connected to God, the Universe, or what ever name you give it. There is an essence at the core of everything that carries that stillness, and, I do believe given the Dharma of the individual, we can and will if we so desire find ways to access it.

In my decade of meditation practice, I have experienced the witness, and calm in my nervous system. I do best when I accompany it with breath work and mantra, however, at the end of the meditation, every day, it’s still the same old me, going through the motions, stuck in negetive thought loops.

I might possibly just be bad at it? I have read several books on meditation and I don’t believe I have been able to get past the rumination part. I just become painful aware most days of my anxiety, my to-do list, and my incessant negetive self talk. I don’t feel often makes me more compassionate.

I realized somewhere along the way that is that my approach to meditation is the same as as everything. Do this or you are not good enough.

For a long time I would beat myself up for not being further along, I felt that there was something discorded in my soul, and just as I felt abandoned in life, I felt I would be abandoned in death for not spiritually transcending my body/mind.

Eventually, I let go of needing it to take me anywhere more than where I currently am, I let go of the path of enlightenment, I let go of needing it to be anything other than a check-in tool for how my inner world is.

In lot of ways I feel the teachings and practices I am still only able to access from an intellectual understanding.

What I have found through my practices, is the practice creates tolerance for the pain, it doesn’t absolve it. There was and still is a gap where my body hasn’t quiet been able to integrate the teachings.

There is a lot of controversy on the topic of somatic’s vs transcendental practices of yoga or meditation. In the sense that there is a consensus from many spiritual yogic traditions that the body and mind is something to rise above and overcome. That you give yourself in devotion to a deity or guru beyond you. I don’t resonate with this.

And then the somatic lens being that the animal body is wise and actually one with nature, and therefore merging with the body and it’s signals is actually the becoming one with God, as God is nature.

I believe Somatics is the missing link from the Self to the animal body.

The trusting the wild body challenging the cultural narrative.

And I am not here to tell you I’ve found the key to healing, and I am now healed.

What I wrote above is where I currently am. From here I will explore a theory with you.

I believe there is a way we can merge the gap. We can move through our practices not with the agenda of getting beyond ourselves but rather with the intention of getting into ourselves.  We can learn tolerance for the discomfort in our body and build capacity to follow it’s messages with mindful awareness.

I still feel stuck, many days, and I feel my animal body fighting the systems that be. I am learning to trust her hunger, her fatigue, her pain. As map not only to what needs to shift in the world, but what needs to shift in my own dialogue towards myself. I am realizing so much of it is how I am speaking to myself. The deeper unconscious agreements I have made.

This can leak through any practice. Clean eating, exercise, yoga, meditation. Anything I attempt to do as a means to fix myself. Carries the same sickness, even if it is guised as wellness.

I am aware that at times I have resisted the internalized systems of abuse, I can become my own best friend.

It’s a practice I am building, catching myself again and again negatively speaking to myself, and my cells responding.

I notice if I have spoken to myself with ease, support, and compassion, my body feels different. I have more energy. There is a sense of trust I feel with the universe and myself, and my entire preceptive reality changes.

This I believe is what all the eastern traditions I have studied at their base are saying.

If you merge with nature, you merge with God, If you stop resisting where you are, you enter oneness, you stop this division.

This is inclusion of shame, negetive thinking, looping, and rumination. Allowing it to pass through have it’s voice, but also not feed it more attention or let it take you over.

When going out into the world, noticing narratives that hold this shame paradigm, acknowledging them, sending them love, but then not allowing them to run through your body.

This is how we heal the sickness in our culture from the inside out. To live in our truth, and realize we are enough and not too much. And affirm this internally for ourselves over and over.

We can live by example, making choices for ourselves that are wrapped in the mantra~ I am right where I need to be, there is nothing wrong with me. Advocating for our true health. Not how someone told us to be.

Now it’s one thing for me to write it, another to do it, I am going to do my best today to be kind to myself. I invite you to do the same.

Thank you for reading.

-Olivia