the other F words

the other F words

When my top front teeth leave an imprint in the middle of my bottom lip, there is a delicious satisfaction in wrinkling up my nose and expressing myself selecting from a whole spectrum of F words.

With my eyebrows arching up towards my hairline, my exhale may contain expressions like fabulous, fanciful, or fantastical freethinker with feathers.

When my eyebrows are down and creating deep ridges in the skin above my nose, my utterances may be more like fierce, ferocious, or formidable fundamentalist with a fever.

Fight, flight, freeze, and fawn have been my favourite F words of late as they relate to my exploration of somatic work to support a robust nervous system. Alliteration aside, getting acquainted with how my body presents when one of these four F’s are activated has been beneficial in opening up a frank dialogue with my body and its innate intelligence.

Recently, my mind wandered backwards to the time before my body and I were able to have these informative, daily conversations. Back then, other F words were at the forefront of my experience. To achieve a sense of perceived safety, I preferred things that were familiar, fast, and furious.

Familiarity was a cornerstone of my survival strategies. Trying new things and meeting new people was not at the top of my list since I much preferred the devil I already knew over the one I didn’t.

While in high school, a friend signed us both up for a school-sanctioned whitewater rafting trip. When she told me, I’m sure my eyebrows met in the middle of my face to determine which F word would be the most effective one to use in response. With a hard edge to my voice, I asked my friend if she’d ever met me. Even with years of community centre swimming lessons under my bathing suit belt, water was a source of bad dreams or panic attacks for me. The idea of wearing a helmet in an inflatable boat being tossed like a leaf in a windstorm down an unpredictable river known for white caps and steep rapids, seemed like the definition of insanity. Give me solitude and stillness with a book, and I was, in my mind, safe.

Despite manufacturing secure spaces for myself, fear, anxiety, and shame still followed me around like last night's campfire. I was sure everyone else could smell me no matter how hard I tried to cleanse myself with overachievement.

And nothing could get me moving faster than when I felt lost. This meant, in an era before GPS told me where to go when driving, I found myself exceeding the speed limit especially when I had missed my exit or was on unfamiliar ground. This rushing while blindfolded habit also showed up as overattachment in relationships, careless purchases and rash decision-making that stirred my nervous system into a frenzy.

Once I was holed up in one of my carefully curated comfort zones, irritability, anger, and rage were still there like three belligerent barflies inviting me to belly up to the bar and get shitfaced with them. The angry emotions carried more energy than the fear-based ones so fury and I hooked up and left some scorched earth behind us for many years. Anger felt like having my own personal bodyguard on standby so I wasn’t about to fire him anytime soon.

While still strangely fond of the full rainbow of F words, my body and I now work together to explore other letters, words, and phrases with more rounded edges, soothing tones, and less certainty. We’re taking an alliteration break and checking out meeting experiences in a more soft, settled and curious way.

My body has been sharing with me that, while it genuinely appreciates my continuing efforts at making my living space calm with earth tones, soothing scents, and uncluttered, frequently cleaned surfaces and corners, the safety I seek comes from inside of me. I curiously let this idea wash over me as I fasten all three locks on my solid wood front door.

Practicing moments of slow, soft attention, I notice a place in my body that is at ease and feeling supported and pause there. Then, when I encounter somewhere that is tight, constricted, or in pain, the unpleasant sensation is held compassionately as if it was a tearful child looking for comfort. If soft spots are difficult to notice, or if tough emotions arise while feeling the constriction, my body is grateful for physical support that may include calming weight, even temperatures, or soothing movements. It may be as simple as leaning into the support of the back of a chair and noticing how my body responds to the concreteness of the support.

With curiosity, I gently move my attention back and forth between the pleasantly soft body part and the tense places. This pendulation releases me from overidentifying with either sensation any more than I would identify with a cough or a sneeze. Tracking what my body is saying to me has deepened our relationship and expanded my vocabulary beyond the still-satisfying F words.

Now that my body and I are getting to know each other more intimately, we’ve challenged ourselves to new adventures together in a compassionate, supportive way. A new partnership in life, exiting a long, stable career highway, taking up cross-country skiing, canoeing, hiking, teaching yoga and meditation, and answering the universe’s call to write my life out loud and on purpose have all been stops on this new pathway to an unknown destination.

As life happens, experiences go in waves from white caps to gentle laps on the shore, so finding safety internally to support courage to risk externally, is a daily practice. Whether in a canoe or on my couch, I still love me a good F word. Flowering in the freedom to fly, float, fall, and feel as needed.