About ten years ago my husband and I began to start a family around the same time that I moved to the Burlington, VT area and started a Nia community. Little did I know at the time that the birthing of the Nia baby was going to be the network that walked me through a dark valley of grief. Starting a Nia community was filled with fits, starts, and stops, teaching in different locations at different times to find the things that worked. Meanwhile in my personal life I was finishing grad school and attempting to start a family. In happy hopes after quickly getting pregnant we were almost as quickly disappointed with multiple early losses for the first few years. I sunk my heart in to doing what I loved which is teaching Nia and being a therapist. Little did we know at the time that we were beginning a journey wrought with loss and suffering. After a year we were pregnant again and we were excited that the third time was the charm. The first trimester went smoothly and then in to the second. By this time, I was teaching a few classes a week and dancing through what seemed like a normal pregnancy. There were some tests during the second trimester that indicated that there may be issues but everything seemed fine. Then one day in late fall, I was walking in the woods and an owl flew a few feet in front of me while walking my dog and stopped on a low hanging branch a few feet away. I walked up to her and stood beneath her a few feet above my head staring in to her eyes. At that moment, I knew something was wrong. I had stopped feeling movement and thought that maybe I was being paranoid. I made an appointment and went in for a "feel good" check up and we received the most earth shattering news - at 33 weeks our baby girl had died in utero. She was stillborn in 2010. I was not prepared that starting a family with all of the dreams and excitement meant also opening my heart up to the most profound loss and pain one might bear on this earth...the loss of a child. I had literally taught class just a few days before, my pregnancy had been a part of the community and now it was over. That's it. One day expecting a child and the next that dream is gone. Sharing the news with family, friends, and my Nia community was so difficult and yet it helped me heal. When I returned to the studio a few weeks later, it was a new layer of grief and unfolding. But for each student and friend that cried with me, they were holding a piece of the grief that I did not have to hold myself in that moment. Students and teachers came together and created a string of beads that were from different special places as a token . I still have that string of beads that I pull out every once in a while. At times I told myself that I did not have to do anything but breathe, and at times could not tolerate that the only way through the experience was through the pain. The pain was lonely, no one could do it for me even with tons and tons of family, friends, and community support. Grief is lonely, hard work but I am here to say that it is possible. Sometimes I just danced, or cried, or hid in my covers. I created a Nia routine called "Mystery" which I taught and now have let go, I keep her in my heart in many other ways. I never really knew when I was going to be able to "function" and when I wasn't but through Nia, therapy, friends, and time it has all shifted. This past summer my friends and Nia community hosted a baby celebration for my two healthy daughters who danced with me through their pregnancies. I'm not saying that dancing is the only way but it was one of the tools that helped me recover. I learned that It is possible to survive the worst experiences and still experience moments of joy in the rest of our lives. My husband and I now have two healthy daughters that were born after our first, I think I hold them a little more tightly than most and I still teach Nia two days a week! As a result of my training and experience in loss, I have started a new project called #oneminutemoodchangers. I am combining what I know about the fitness, teaching Nia, the body, healing, neuroscience, and the need sometimes for quick relief from really terrible overwhelming feelings to create one minute exercises that provide emotional relief. Please feel free to follow me on instragram @oneminutemoodchangers. Please feel free to share, my hope is that my story provides hope for others experiencing loss.
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The number one question I have been asked from clients over the last ten years of work in the chair is "How do I make this feeling go away?" or some version of that question. Sometimes the feeling is about what story is being told in the moment and sometimes it is about the story in the moment and all the other times in ones life that he/she has experienced that same feeling - which is why at times the sensation is overwhelming. A feeling can be like a small wave that one rides or it can feel like a tsunami if it is touching on many unprocessed similar feelings from our past. Whether a little wave or a tsunami we can all use a break from a feeling especially if is feels painful. Herein lies the inspiration for One Minute MoodChangers - one minute activities that you can employ to change a feeling in the moment. No, it does not replace good therapy, but it can provide relief. These exercises are based on neuroscience and research on movement, mindfulness, and mood. I will post these regularly and eventually they will all be available in one place. For now, here is one to try....
I said from the beginning that Trump could win. People are mad about the state of affairs in our country and someone, some party, some platform is to blame, I suppose. The few conversations that I have tried to entertain on Facebook to understand the opposing view usually ended in some kind of immature mud slinging – WHY???? I am still asking myself WHY? Over many things really, perhaps it is being a middle child or something, but my life work is helping others find answers to all kinds of questions about all kinds of things. Up until an hour or so ago, I found the great Facebook divide just baffling and yet understanding people is my livelihood. WHY??? What am I missing?? Here is what I have come to – it is all about values. If you value free time over money then you will most likely look for work that requires less commitment but may pay less and that’s okay. I let my kids pick out their own clothes because I feel like they should feel confident in expressing themselves over my need to have them present a certain image…these are value driven decisions. Not right or wrong just value driven and in fact values drive all of our decisions. Voting is values driven. Here is what I can appreciate about our differences no matter who you voted for, that whatever candidate you chose, it was because you felt strongly about one thing more so than anything else. That one thing that I, or you, felt so strongly about may have been similar but depending on the candidate chosen, it was likely different. Here’s why….. I work in a field that values social justice issues as an essential component in working with people and evaluating their concerns. Racial, sexual, gender, socio economic, etc. identities influence how we experience the world and how we feel, and oppression causes mental illness among many factors. So for me, I could never vote for a candidate that outwardly expresses anti-women, anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-anything values because that is inconsistent with the values that drive my decision making in work and life. Social justice is more important to me than money, electing someone anti-establishment, bringing back jobs to America, banishing illegal immigrants, etc. Perhaps for others the most important thing in voting was “anti-establishment” (I’m guessing here) and so therefore Trump seemed like a good candidate, or maybe it was most important for some to vote for a woman because we have never had a female president. Okay, I get that. But here is the divide, I tend to surround myself with people that have similar values for a reason. It is hard (not impossible but like really, really, difficult) for me to understand how anyone might be able to compartmentalize Trump’s hateful remarks and acts because other parts of his platform had more value to them. Now roll with me here, imagine he assaulted your daughter, your wife, your sister – imagine he never paid his bills for your contracting company and then drove your family business under with lawsuits, or he made fun of your disabled parent. It seems to me that this kind of imagining does nothing to sway the values of his supporters because it is less important than the other things that he represents like bringing jobs back to America or building a wall, or bucking the political system, or whatever. I’m not sure it matters who we all voted for anymore but the results have left me afraid about what we as a country value in leadership. I don’t tend to see the Donald Trumps in therapy, I tend to see all the people that suffer in relationship to people that share his narcissistic, sociopathic characteristics. So, yeah, for now call me liberal for not hating the corporate, political machine enough to want to vote for the iconic perpetrator that often leaves a wake of emotional destruction in his/her path. You see that is where I often come in….I help people pick up the pieces…….in hopes that what I am doing helps make this world a better place for you and me (said to MJ's Heal the World). How you do that, if you do that, and how I do that might be different but my vote is part of that. Social justice will always be one of my core values no matter what candidate or what party in determining my vote and therein lies the divide. One of the first things I often do with clients in therapy is teach them how to breathe if they don't already know how - I mean of course everyone knows how to breathe but breathing therapeutically to reduce sympathetic arousal and increase parasympathetic arousal is different. Aside from breathing I am often offering techniques that help people answer this question: "How do I make this feeling go away?" Which has been the impetus for One Minute MoodChangers. I am committing to creating a one minute video weekly offering a simple exercise based on neuroscience that one can do to alter an internal feeling state. There is so much we do not control in our world but appreciating that we do have control over sensations in our body is empowering and a great way to cope and heal. Enjoy! Below are the first two videos, please take a minute to watch, like, and subscribe for updates. Trauma comes from the Greek word meaning “wound.” Emotional wounds are caused by any events, perceived or otherwise that overwhelm our nervous system and alter our lives. It is not the actual event but our relationship to the event that determines whether something is traumatic. If the emotional response is not allowed to be processed and healed, for whatever reason, we end up with ongoing symptoms such as anxiety, flash backs, irritability, and rage to name a few. Nia as trauma-informed practice:
Thanks for reading! www.rebeccaboedges.com Broken hearted over the ability of so few to cause so much pain for so many. Most of us have the capacity to love and hate, offer support to others in a time of need and to take advantage of others weaknesses if given the opportunity. We generally restrict the latter part of ourselves for the better of human kind, we are social creatures after all.
When a tragedy happens, like recent shootings or bombings in the news, we are reminded of this dark side of humanity, the powerlessness that comes from being victimized by others and the pain and suffering that one person can cause for so many. So much power for one person to hold..........and in fact we all hold this power to affect others all of the time for better or worse. We can use this power in service to heal the world or use it in harmful ways. It is a choice, and most people, most of the time, choose positive action. Maybe from having lost our own child, when I hear stories of other people dying I think, they were someone's kid, they were someone's child. The person who did this horrible thing, they were someone's child. Its really about grief because you see, we are all grievers. Grief connects us to our fundamental transient nature and to each other. Whether one got a divorce, lost a pet, sent a loved one to war, or lost a family member - it is all grief, change brings grief and the only constant in life is change therefore grief. Through my own experiences with grief I have learned that I can not do it alone and my experience in sitting in the therapist's chair listening to others is that none of us can do it alone. When your heart or my heart breaks for the loss of a family we don't even know, that is one little piece of the pain that they do not carry alone. So, when you allow yourself to cry and be sad you are holding a part of the tragedy for someone directly affected and you let them off the hook for carrying that one little piece. I believe that their bodies feel this, as did mine when we lost our daughter. With that, I offer holding space in community and in my Nia classes this week for whatever is.......joy, sadness, fear, connection...... and I choose to dance it. For moving the emotions through the body, feeling not thinking, is the way to heal, as an individual and community. Choosing your way to move the grief is part of the healing process so whether you hang out with friends, work out, write a song, whatever it might be, your unique way of moving the grief helps heal the world. This is the brighter side of humanity, you and me, allowing ourselves to be aware of other people's pain and the desire to reduce suffering in the world. If you feel inclined, please leave a comment about how you choose to move grief in your life. |
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I'm a therapist in private practice and Nia instructor for over ten years. I counsel for grief, eating disorders, and trauma. ArchivesCategories |