Know Thyself: Become Self-aware

Growing up with a pen-chant for writing, (pun intended), I always heard the sage advice, "Write what you know." Writers will write, but good writers write about things that they know true. As a child and young girl, I wrote mostly fiction as a way to entertain myself. As an aging teen turned young adult, I evolved to write poetry, as way to understand myself.

What developed that understanding was my gift of observation. Perhaps it was Harriet the Spy (RIP Michelle Trachtenberg) that influenced my detective-eye, but I enjoyed watching my environment. It made me feel secure because I knew what was going on. Watching people within the environment and making up stories as to what they're doing or where they're going was my entertainment. People-watching became a past-time. Imagining a person's day based on the way their hair lay disheveled to the side, how quickly they moved about, or by the furrowed brows and downward creases on their face.

This highly attuned skill has been put to good use in my career. By being able to observe a person's gait walking into the studio, how they carry their bags, what shoes they wear, how they elevate their shoulders while talking about something stressful, their sleep positions while side-lying on the table, I can more easily identify the problem(s) that led to them coming to me in the first place and transmute the grimace on their faces to pure relief when I've reached that nagging spot in their neck.

I can truly see how most people are unaware of their habits. The little daily movements that add up at the end of the month to a full-blown pattern. Patterns are chiseled and grooved into your nervous system and embedded into your myofascial tissues, repeated and reinforced over weeks and months and years. We all have patterns--some are dysfunctional, some are not.

The dysfunctional patterns almost always stem from some kind of hurt--be it physical, mental, or emotional. If you go to reach for something in front of you and feel a sharp pain in your shoulder, your brain learns to avoid that pain by modifying how you reach, meaning you shift the load to different muscles. Those muscles may not be trained or designed to work in the way you are asking of them now, creating extra strain that creates dysfunction.

If you share something difficult with someone you expected to hold space for you, but instead they ignore you and change the conversation. It stings emotionally and your brain learns that sharing hard feelings isn't viewed as important, and your brain can interpret that as you not being important. You learn to keep your feelings to yourself, and that emotional weight can be heavy. It can modify the way you carry yourself--slumped shoulders, forward posture--as if you're literally being weighed down by your own burdens.

Stress is the most easily recognizable signal from a dysfunctional pattern. It shows in the forehead crease, the tight, fixed jaw, the tense, elevated shoulders, and the rigidity emanating from the moment you walk through the door. Work, family, life all contribute to stress. Even if you love your work, even if you love your family, and even if you're fairly happy with your life, the needs of others can be a lot to manage and juggle for one person. How can one do it all? Carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders is the easiest way to neglect your own needs and become resentful of all the people in your life dependent on you and becomes the chronic pain issue that doesn't go away--this is a detriment to the mind, body, and soul.

What do I know about any of this? Well, I wouldn't be writing about it if I didn't. I've lived it. I've created my own dysfunctional patterns while subjected to a dysfunctional environment. My skills of observation were birthed from a survival need to feel safe and secure. Over my many years of self-healing, I've chiseled and grooved that skill into creating a secure, safe, and supportive environment for those looking to break the pattern. It started with awareness of my Self.

Healing isn't all physical--it is interwoven with your mind and heart. Everything is connected, and it all starts with self-awareness, to know thyself.