Dear ,
It's wonderful to be writing to you again.
In this newsletter you'll find:
- Reflections - a lesson I'm taking from my trapped nerve
- Ways to work with me in the coming weeks
- Things you might be interested in - sharing any resources I have made and/or found that I think you might like!
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A trapped nerve in the neck inspired me
I don't know if you've ever had a trapped nerve - it's not something I would recommend.
I didn't know what had happened. I started with what I thought was a cricked neck, but it got progressively worse and worse, and the pain started to radiate through my whole upper body.
By the evening, I was falling on the floor each time these cascades of pain were happening and I was crying out.
My mum and partner insisted I go to hospital, as we all knew something was wrong.
And after a horrendously long wait, and a devastating insight into the state of the NHS, and after a dismissive doctor labelling it as a 'pulled muscle', I eventually got to the understanding that this was actually a trapped nerve in my neck - incredibly painful, but not dangerous.
I saw an osteopath the next day and she gently talked me through the way that the muscles around the trapped nerve would be seizing up, and becoming increasingly tense each time. This was in an effort to protect the perceived vulnerability of the nerve in the neck.
So she spent a while manually offering softening, and sharing techniques with me to support this at home.
It reminded me of the awareness of the breath in mindfulness that I teach as part of my Breathworks Mindfulness courses.
When we are in pain, or stressed, or even concentrating, we often hold our breath.
When we hold our breath we hold tension in our bodies. And I thought about this self protective mechanism in the body of tensing and spasming around the perceived area of vulnerability, and it made me wonder:
- Where am I tensing?
- Do I notice any cascades of suffering in my experience?
- Where am I holding on and creating more pain to protect a perceived vulnerability?
One of these for me is around rejection. And I'm learning more and becoming fascinated with 'Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria' (link to short instagram reel about this but its widely searchable if you prefer not to go on instagram).
I often am hypervigilant for signals of rejection, and when I pick up on one, I know that I can then pick up (or feel I pick up) on a cascade of them - I start re-categorising previous interactions, or predicting future ones, comparing to other friendships I know that they have.
And I start to close off. I try to protect from more 'damage'. I try to protect the nerve that feels trapped and incredibly painful. But in doing so I lose sight of what might be happening. And I tend to feel worse. I try to protect myself with hard edges, when often what I need is softness - even if it's just softness for myself.
So I'm taking this concept of the cascading self protection attempts, and trying to invite more mindful awareness, and then ultimately choice in these moments.
I wonder if there's anything that comes up from these prompts for you? If you want to connect about this I'd love to chat - please feel free to reply to this email.
I'm feeling inspired to run another 8 week course soon, perhaps in April of this year -
Would you be interested? Would you prefer a Mindfulness for Stress or Mindfulness for Health programme? Fill in this form!
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There are a few ways you can work with me in the coming months -
🌿 Resilience Toolkit
I'm currently taking new 1:1 Resilience Toolkit clients. You can see the details listed on my website, and there are solidarity (concession) rates available for those who need them.
Covid Conscious Resilience
I'm running a Covid Conscious Families programme - starting 18th march please do let me know if you'd be interested, or share with anyone who might be interested.
🌿 The Mycelium Community Membership
I want to particularly highlight the new weekly 'co-tending' calls we're having in The Mycelium membership. I'm finding these hugely nourishing (and actually wrote the bulk of this newsletter during today's session!) People use these sessions and the gentle support and accountability (and many have mentioned that they find a sense of 'felt safety' in the group) to tend to all sorts of needs / tasks / longings, from tidying a desk, to doing a jigsaw, to resting, to meditating, to medical admin paperwork. They're a really lovely anchor in my week.
The Mycelium Membership is available on a 'pay what you can' basis. There are three tiers including free option for anyone who needs it.You can sign up using the link, or if you need a free space, or have any questions then simply reply to this email and let me know!
🌿 Year-Long Circle Journey
This is still in the planning stages, but I am really excited by the idea of doing a year long Circle Journey. I'm not sure quite what format this will take - if you're interested and have any thoughts or requests I'd love to hear them. I'll share details as soon as they are ready.
🌿 Free Accessible Nature Resource
In case you haven't seen my free resource on The Portal - access it here.
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Things you might be interested in
My resources:
I've written two articles and one blog post since I last wrote to you!
1. I'm late (diagnosed)
2. A love letter to the hesitant sharer
3. Why is my child hitting me? Let's learn about proprioception. (TLB)
Things I've been reading / watching / learning from:
📚 Books -
Firstly I want to preface this with saying that I have not finished either of these books. I rarely finish books - and I feel a lot of shame around that, but also wouldn't judge anyone else for it! I sometimes feel that people listing all the many books they've read becomes an inaccessible comparison point to me, but I want to start sharing snippets and recommendations of the bits that I HAVE read - because i have read a lot, I just haven't finished a lot. and that just seems to be what my brain does...
Here are two I'm reading currently:
- Unlearning Shame - Devon Price (so engagingly written and such an incredibly important topic that I know a huge amount of us will relate to - particularly me having written about shame in the previous few sentences!!)
- Explaining AuDHD - Khurram Sadiq (this is super easy to process and I'm already taking some helpful pointers and insights.)
📺 Youtube - When Order & Anarchy Live Together (Khurram Sadiq TedX Talk)
This is the person who wrote the book listed above, and the talk is about AuDHD and his journey with discovering his dad (and then discovering that he also) was AuDHD. I found it to be a concise but nuanced explanation of some of the ways Autism and ADHD can present together and interact with one another.
🍥 Spirals - A series of Conversations with Leftist Developmental Coach Keri Jarvis (free resource on The Portal)
This series of conversations and resources is really brilliant. I'm a huge fan of Keri and her work and I highly recommend checking these out!
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Thank you so much for your support
🌱 It's an honour to journey together as we cross from season to season 🌱
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Have any questions?
You can reply directly to this email or use the button below
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