My somatic focusing experience with the water lilies - reimagined
During my somatic counselling training, I was introduced to an exercise that involved focusing on different somatic realms of the body. A somatic realm can be the breath. It can be the bones, the cells, our thoughts, movement, or the liquid aspects of the body. Rather than trying to analyse these realms, we place our awareness there and become curious about what happens. One exercise stayed with me particularly strongly. For around 20 minutes, I placed my awareness on the liquid aspect of my body. At first, I experienced flow. As I stayed with it, there was a sense of traveling and discovering through this flow within me. Gradually, I entered a dreamlike state, somewhere between sleeping and being awake. I found myself floating in a body of water in a rainforest. I felt safe and calm. Sunlight flickered through the trees and across the lilies. Then I began to notice lilies growing out of my own body and extending into the water around me, forming something like a mandala, flowering at their tips. It was an extraordinarily creative image. For me, it represented self-growth. But it also represented something about emotion, the liquid aspects of the body, and our relationship with the world around us. There wasn't such a clear separation anymore between me, my body, and the landscape. I was part of it, and it was part of me. What interested me equally was what happened after the exercise. The experience didn't simply finish when I opened my eyes. There were echoes. For several days afterward, I experienced something like a lighter version of myself, more grounded, more self-directed. There was a sense of safety, creativity, and connection. When I say creativity, I don't necessarily mean suddenly wanting to make arts and crafts. I mean creativity in the nuances of how we live. Cooking can suddenly become conscious, even slightly ceremonial. You notice the individual ingredients you're bringing together. You notice texture, smell, and colour. You become interested in the relationship between things. The natural world can feel different too. I find myself noticing patterns in nature and the relationships between living things. There can be a sense of reciprocity, an awareness of what the natural world gives us simply by noticing it, and of the symbiotic relationship we already have with it. This is one of the reasons somatic work fascinates me. There are experiences I have had through deep somatic focusing that, subjectively, remind me of aspects of psychedelic experiences. Vivid imagery, an altered sense of embodiment, creativity, emotional openness, and a shift in perspective that continues after the immediate experience has ended. That is a personal comparison, rather than a scientific claim. Another part of somatic counseling involves learning to notice rhythms and sequences within the body. The breath is perhaps the easiest place to experience this. I think of an energetic sequence as having four movements: Initiation, rising, containment, and completion. There is the initiation of an inhale, the first movement emerging from stillness. Then there is rising. The breath develops and expands. There is containment, the experience of holding the fullness of that breath. And then there is completion. These qualities don't belong only to breathing. We can become curious about how they appear in movement, in emotion, and in the way we approach our lives. Perhaps initiation feels difficult. We might become curious about whether difficulty initiating appears elsewhere, perhaps in procrastination or difficulty beginning something that matters. For another person, initiation and rising might come easily, while containment feels much harder. They may begin projects, relationships, or experiences with plenty of energy. Yet find it difficult to stay with them and contain what is developing. These aren’t formulas. They are invitations for curiosity. Does what I am noticing in my body resemble something about the way I move through my life? And if it does, what happens when I stay with it? This is where awareness becomes important. If I begin to recognize how initiation feels in my body, I can keep it company. If containment is uncomfortable, I can explore containment. Through breath, movement, orientation, and attention, we can spend some time with these different qualities rather than immediately trying to correct them. When I know an energy and recognize how it feels, I have more capacity to hold space for it. I can assist initiation. I can stay with rising. I can explore containment. And I can witness completion. Completion, for me, doesn't necessarily mean letting go. It means complete for now. There is a difference. Completion can mean acknowledging what has happened and staying with it for a moment before beginning another cycle. Sometimes that looks like celebrating ourselves. Sometimes it's appreciation. Sometimes it means recognizing what we have accomplished rather than immediately asking ourselves what needs to happen next. And sometimes completion means staying with something uncomfortable. We don't necessarily have to make the discomfort disappear. We may simply allow it to be noticed and witnessed. Then there is a pause. That pause interests me enormously. It is an in-between space before another initiation emerges. For me, that pause can have the quality of a place where no single part needs to take over. Nothing needs to happen immediately. There can simply be acknowledgment, witnessing, and permission for what is here to be as it is. And eventually, another initiation begins. The cycle continues. Parts work is also somatic in the way I practice counseling. We don't only talk about a part. We become interested in its felt sense. Where does it live in the body? What happens when it arrives? Does it contract, push, hold? Become restless? Does it feel relentless? A protector can carry the memory of a time when we weren't seen, acknowledged, or appreciated. Perhaps we were spoken down to, made to feel not good enough, or experienced something that left us feeling unsafe, not valued, or unequal. The protector remembers. Sometimes it works incredibly hard to make sure we never experience that kind of pain or disappointment again. It can become loud precisely because it is trying to help. Rather than fighting our protectors, we can begin to befriend them. Sometimes a part of us works overtime to protect us. We can notice it, listen to what it has been carrying, give it permission to be seen and heard. We can also remind that protector that some water has gone under the bridge. I am not exactly the same person I was when that experience happened. I have resources now. There may be strong, creative, playful, or empowered parts of me that this protector hasn't been allowing into the conversation. We can invite those parts in, too. The protector doesn't need to disappear. Perhaps it simply doesn't have to do everything alone. Within ourselves, we hold many potentials. Potential for self-expression, for expansion, safety, balance, love, direction, a stronger sense of self. Somatic exploration can bring us closer to those potentials. There are also barriers. Old protections, beliefs, experiences, patterns. They can form something like a screen of smoke, making it difficult to see clearly who we are and what our potential might be. For me, growth isn't about declaring one side good and the other bad.Life contains what unfolds easily and what doesn't. There are the lilies opening beautifully at the edges of the mandala, and there are the darker, more difficult places. Both are here. We can become interested in our capacity to be with what is. Another philosophy that has influenced the way I work is permaculture, although perhaps not in the way people usually imagine. I'm fascinated by people. Permaculture. In companion planting, two species can be placed together because their relationship supports growth. Each brings something to the environment. Something becomes possible through the relationship that neither necessarily produces in isolation. I think therapeutic relationships can have something of this quality. My own style of counselling is highly collaborative. It is co-creation. We companion plant seeds of exploration. We plant ideas. We become curious about those ideas together. Some grow. Some don't. Some lead somewhere neither of us could have predicted at the beginning. There isn't always one right interpretation or one correct direction. It is an unfolding process. There is wonder in that, and there is reflection. And I believe that being ready to be with the unknown is a cornerstone of healing. My intention is to offer a place where this kind of exploration can happen safely and comfortably, without judgment. A place for curiosity, a place for the body, a place where the parts of you that have worked incredibly hard can be included in the conversation rather than pushed away. And a place where we can also become curious about the potentials that may be sitting behind that screen of smoke. There can be wonder in this work. There can be reflection. There can be discomfort, humour, movement, stillness, and moments when something we have understood intellectually for years suddenly feels different when experienced through the body. We don't need to know exactly where an exploration will lead before we begin it. Sometimes we can simply plant the first seed and notice what unfolds. I offer somatic counseling in Fremantle, Western Australia, as well as online counseling via Zoom. If this way of working speaks to something in you, you are very welcome to get in touch and explore whether working together feels right. Somatic focused counselling is available at my 130 Hampton Rd, Fremantle practice and via Zoom, for those living further away, interstate or internationally. www.elijahforest.comExpand. Thrive.
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