Journaling

Journaling has been an important tool in my healing journey. For someone who tends to live in their head, writing things down seems to controls the “spiraling” of my mind. If I write it out and it doesn’t make sense, I am more easily able to realize that it is a distorted thought pattern rather than reality.

Journaling is great for someone who has difficulty processing their feelings. I have written down so many feelings that I have gone through, some joyous, some painful, and all important. When I am looking back at previous journal entries I am able to more easily remember all of the different emotions that I have felt, honor them and realize that emotions come and go and that I do not have to be overwhelmed by them, and to just let them be. If you struggle with identifying emotions as I did, I would recommend printing out a copy of the Emotion Wheel, and using it for guidance when trying to figure out what emotion you are feeling, over time you will find that you won't need it anymore.

TWSBI Eco

I find that a physical journal is important, something about putting a pen to paper is cathartic. It was really difficult for me to be consistent with journaling until I got the right type of paper and pen. I imagine this is not going to resonant with everyone, but I find journaling to be a sensory experience, the texture of the paper, the quality of the ink and writing materials seem to make a difference for me, and is what got me to be really consistent. I personally love fountain pens, the ink is so rich and easily flows from the nib, as compared to a ball point pen. If I could make a recommendation on what type of pen to get, I would say it would be the TWSBI Eco, it’s $35 which is kind of expensive for a pen, however it holds so much ink, and you can refill it indefinitely which makes it more affordable and eco-friendly in the long term. If you wanted a fountain pen with an ink cartridge (so you don’t need to fill it with ink yourself), I would recommend the Lamy Safari. Now with the fountain pens, you do need to use high quality paper otherwise it can bleed through the pages. I really like the Oasis Notebook (A5), which runs around $13 each. I also love handbound books, with coptic binding as it lays flat. Bottom line, find a pen and paper that you love, you can visit your local stationary store to try them out, and make it fun! At first when you journal you may not know what to write and what I would say is to just let things flow, no one else is going to read your journal so it doesn’t have to be complete sentences or grammatically correct, just like anything you learn to do, it gets better and easier as you do it more.

Yoga

Prior to yoga, I had poor body awareness, I didn’t get signals from my body until it was dire, when I needed to eat, I was famished and I stuffed myself with food, when I needed to use the bathroom it was an emergency. I also didn’t feel emotions until they were very strong, so I would feel numb most of the time, until I was angry, frustrated or overwhelmed. I thought all I needed was my brain, my thoughts, I was mistaken in believing that was all the information that I needed. Then found yoga and finally connected with my body and boy there is so much wisdom there once I was able to attune to it. Our body and our emotions hold the truth, the mind with its thoughts can spin things a hundred ways, but the body and emotions always hold the truth.

Yoga is multifaceted. It includes the most commonly know asanas (physical postures) but actually there are 8 limbs of yoga which include breath work and mantras. These different practices within Yoga has truly been transformative for me. When I first started out with yoga, I was absolutely clueless, I didn’t understand what the words meant (chaturanga, downward dog, shavasana, etc) or the proper way to move my body into those poses. I found my yoga teacher at a group class, I was drawn to her gentle nature and how she attended to each student. I met with her once a week, for about 10 months and she helped me connect with my body, and fine tune the yoga postures so that I wasn’t straining my lower back or neck.

I also expressed to her my feels of anxiety and she then introduced me to breath work. There are so many different variations of breath work, but the ones that I like the most are: 1. Left nostril breathing (which is exactly what it sounds like, you close down your right nostril with your right thumb and breath slowly in and out of the left nostril. 2. Alternate nostril breathing (with your right thumb over your right nostril and right ring finger over your left nostril, you alternate by breathing in through the left nostril (close the right), then breath out the right nostril (close the left), then in through the right (close the left), then out through the left (close the right), and repeat. 3. Breath of Fire - this one needs more instruction but essentially you are exhaling through your nose with some force so there is a gentle “pump of the belly”, this is quite an invigorating breath but can do some magical things (one thing to note is that you should not do the breath of fire during your period as it can cause increased discomfort.

I also want to talk a little about the mantras, the most common one that you may know is “om” which means the divine and infinite. Another one is “Om Mani Padme Hum” which brings together compassion and wisdom. The mantras are powerful, and if you are not spiritually inclined or perhaps you have a different spiritual belief, you can still benefit from them. The reason behind this is the vibration of the sound. Our bodies are filled with water and so sound can resonate and help release stuck energies. Chanting a mantra 3, 11, 22, 33..etc up to 108 is a great way to benefit from them. You can find these mantras on Spotify and other music platforms.

If you feel called to start practicing yoga, but feel intimidated, you can always start out with a Yin Yoga, or Yoga Nidra class these are gentle, restorative yoga classes that can be a great entry point into Yoga. If you have trouble finding a yoga class nearby and/or prefer an online platform, I would recommend my Yoga teacher’s website, she has numerous pre-recorded classes that include all of the above limbs of Yoga that I discussed above. Her monthly membership is under $50/ month. https://www.alliegeerflow.com

EMDR

EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. I first heard of this term more than 10 years ago when I worked as a developmental optometrist at the Traumatic Brain Injury Outpatient Clinic in Minneapolis. I was asked by a patient’s psychologist if their visual deficits would prevent them from being able to participate in this treatment. I did a little research, and asked one of the staff psychologists at the clinic what they thought, and determined that it was fine to do as long as making saccadic eye movements didn’t result in significant somatic symptoms such as headaches or nausea. It would be many years later when I would participate in EMDR myself. I was struggling with anxiety and my therapist suggested that I try it, and I realize now this was the start of my embodiment journey. Prior to EMDR, I would get triggered quite frequently but had no idea that it was happening. I would feel physical symptoms such as a racing heart, feeling disconnected from reality, pins and needles in my body, and then it would shift directly to negative anxious thoughts and I would feel “bad”. So when my therapist explained to me that trauma is stored as a sensation in the body, that was real eye-opening (excuse the pun there will be many more i’m sure) . She asked me to think about a situation that caused me stress and asked me to identify where I felt it in my body. She also asked me to rate the intensity of the feeling from a scale of 1-10. I think I remember it feeling like a mass or knot below my left collarbone. She handed me two flat/egg shaped electrical devices that I would hold in each of my hands and it would pulse back and forth (left and right). She asked me to close my eyes and continue to feel the sensation and let me know that it could travel around my body and eventually it would subside. And it sure did, this was wild to me, I truly felt this mass/knot in my body move from my below my left collarbone, to my right collarbone, then up to my throat, and I sat there for about 7-10 minutes and eventually the feeling subsided. Then she asked me to bring up the stressful situation again in my mind, and see if I felt the same mass/knot in my body, I did, but it was less severe, then we went through the same process where I held the device in my hands as it pulsed back and forth between them and I concentrated on that feeling again. Once it subsided again, I again brought up that stressful situation in my mind and to my surprise, there was no reaction in my body or mind, just peace and quiet. Next she asked me what I wish could have happened with that event, this was a difficult concept for me to grasp at first, what did she mean what could have happened? I never thought to think about that, in my scenario, I had wished the person spoke to me in a caring way, with love and respect. Then she asked me to think of a statement to say to myself, such as “ I am a good person and deserve to be treated with kindness and respect” and I said that several times to myself and felt that feeling in my body.

We started off with smaller triggers and worked our way up to some big triggers, ones that I had been holding onto from childhood, and time and time again, I was amazed that afterwards, I could think of really traumatic events and did not have the physiological symptoms attached to them. I felt more calm, peaceful and in control.

I realized that I had loss connection with my physical body, it was my brain’s way of coping with all of the trauma that I had experienced from early childhood. EMDR was the start of my journey to connect with my body, and to be able to receive the wisdom that it holds. We are such a mental society, and we are rewarded for our intellect with praise and promotions, but when we ignore the body, we are shutting off our connection to the physical world, our Mother Earth, our spirtuality, and our intuition.

I wanted to mention that there is more than one way to do EMDR, eye movements is one way, the other way is what I did with the handheld vibrational device. I think the main point of this technique is bilateral stimulation, or stimulating both hemispheres of your brain. There is another similar technique called Brain Spotting, which differs from EMDR because you are not going back and forth between right and left, you are tracking a target to different areas of your visual field but has the same purpose which is processing trauma.

Over the years I have seen many of my patients benefit from EMDR as well, those with history of traumatic events such motor vehicle accidents, death of a loved one, survivors of abuse.

I highly recommend this book “The Body Keeps the Score” it is a fascinating read, and explains a lot of the concepts behind EMDR and Brainspotting, and gave me so much insight to my inner world. I also recommend the website : emdria.org to find an EMDR provider near you.