Notes to a podcast

I recorded a podcast with Keren from At Source today. She sent some Q’s ahead of the recording and I wrote some A’s. The conversation didn’t exactly follow this but if you are wanting to know more about embodiment and somatic work, you might find something useful here:

BIO: Sonia Waters is a somatic sexologist and embodiment therapist who stepped away from a corporate career in architecture and construction to help people on their journey to reconnecting with their complete selves. From individual bodywork sessions to workshops and adventures, Sonia is passionate about living in the magic of everyday and sharing tools for people to find their gold. She is certified with the Somatic Sex Educators Association of Australasia and currently doing her master's degree in psychology.

In this episode we cover the impact of our modern busyness problem on the body, the journey to understanding our physical selves and making space for communication.

Welcome Sonia! To kick things off, can you tell us a bit more about how you help people? What is an embodiment therapist?

Okay, this is not an elevator pitch answer.

Embodiment is about being in the body.

White Western thinking and the field of science has severed the head from body. As a result, we spend 90% of our time in our heads and yet we have 90% of our living in our bodies. We are talking here about all the bodies; the physical body, emotional body, spiritual body, digestive body, intuitive body …

All those are the processes of living; the soma. When we are dead, the bones, muscles, structures are all still there, but they are not living, we have no soma.

People of indigenous cultures, including Māori can be far more embodied. They connect with their ancestors, spirit, felt sense in the body, connection with land and environment in ways White Westerners do not. I am white. And privileged by my whiteness. I see Māori, as both terribly overrepresented in the health and justice system through this forced white western way of being, and privileged with deeper connection with self, their culture, spirit, land. This connection is what the world is sorely missing.

Embodiment then is being in all the living body, the soma.

I use the terms embodiment therapy, somatic therapy, almost interchangeably, they are an invitation to being in and living from the somatic experience.

So, how do I help people?

I invite people into their felt sense. Sensations in the body. We spend time in there. Being curious. Feeling. Tapping into the nervous system to understand more about how we can open and close, expand, contract, express, regulate our system and not let it hijack us. We build a sense of safety and trust.

For people with trauma this is useful. For people stuck in the past, stuck in not feeling pleasure, or building brick walls in their intimate relationships.

Being in the body, learning to be with our nervous system, learning to communicate what is going on for us with others, feeling more, feeling pleasure, feeling sexual, erotic, alive, connecting deeply….

These work their magic to unwind old conditions of being and to re-wire neural pathways that are authentically our own.

What are some of the most common reasons people come to see you?

Everyone’s experience is unique.

Often the problem they come with is not the thing we work with. For example,

Some people feel they have never had an orgasm and want to experience that.

Some people lose their libido and want it back.

Some people have erectile and ejaculation difficulties, coming too early or not at all.

For a start, lets say all of these things are socially constructed. What orgasm is, looks like, how it is performed, the sex drive we ‘ought’ to have, the erection and ejaculatory timing that we ‘should’ be doing … we see on TV, social media, porn stars on medications and digital enhancements, sharing larger than life stories with our friends over a Friday drink, the messages are everywhere. We compare ourselves with those if not consciously, then subliminally. Unwinding some of the ‘should’s’ and cant’s is part of the work. Being with what we have and expanding that is some of it. Going into the past is sometimes useful, to understand where our brick walls to feeling came from, learning to set some of those behind us and to be safe in the present. Learning to regulate our system, know our physical body with anatomy lessons, be in our sensations with sensate focus practices, feel through embodiment practices, communicate, …

At the end of it all, people want to connect with other humans, people want and need to belong. To do that we need to connect with ourselves. If I want to feel my libido return, I feel for it. I didn’t loose it in my last trip to town. It isn’t even a thing. I have sensations and I can grow and play with them. Those change as I age. They change with the person I am with. I can feel and be erotic when I am safe. But not when I feel in danger. When I can trust the environment inside and outside me then anything is possible.

I see you do bodywork sessions. For someone new to this space, can you please tell us a bit about what this entails?

Somatic sexology

Embodied counselling

Zoom, in person, in studio, out in the hills.

Some talking. Some doing. Some touch.

Singles, couples.

All in the felt sense of yes. Learning that felt sense and communicating it is the first step.

Some of the keys we work on: breathing, regulating the nervous system, learning about anatomy, sensate focus, emotional release, concepts of boundaries, consent, relating,

We start with talking, there is no plan, we let the conversation and the clients felt sense guide what happens in the session.

Something as simple as “would you like a hug?” can be a very powerful learning and experiencing journey and might, as it has been for a recent client, actually lead to several deep ahahhh moments.

We close each session with the client developing a practice that draws on the pieces of the session they felt was useful, and committing to doing the practice in a way that suits their lifestyle.

The sessions are not really where the learning is. I facilitate learning and give information. It is at home, in the practice between sessions that the learning is integrated and slowly becomes the new way of experiencing.

This season we have a special focus on authenticity and living life to the fullest as your true self. I’m interested in your journey leaving corporate life and transitioning to the work you do now. Can you tell me about what that was like for you?

Wellington, project manager, solo mother, I wanted the big projects, we lived the awesome adventures, I was determined and in control. Until I wasn’t.

Depression swamped me. I didn’t see it coming. One moment I was on it, doing it, the next I could hardly lift my head. I tried to do the things I knew I loved and so one day I ski toured to the top of Ruapehu. I got to the top and felt nothing. No delight. No joy. No awe. Just flat bottom of the ocean. That really was the beginning of realising I wasn’t coping, I needed help.

Food, sleep, fitness, changing jobs, changing partners, changing house, … you name it I changed it. It was a long road and no one thing helped. But the accumulation of things plus the big shift from the pressure cooker city life to small town, working from home, for myself, doing stuff I love with people who care. The first year I moved down here to Wanaka I slept. I designed and had my house built and I slept.

I mentioned relationships. There were a few of them. Each one I thought was going to last. I threw myself in and it was fun, then it died, then I left. The common denominator was me. So started my adventuring into the shamanic, spiritual, sexual me. I did several ISTA trainings. I trained with Janine Ma-Ree in a nine month womb journey, I joined her witches coven, I did a three month masturbation course. I learned a lot. Let a lot go. I am still a work in progress but it all felt so useful to me, that I wanted to expand the learning to help others.

So, I studied with the Institute of Somatic Sexology, namely Deej and Uma in Australia and certified with the Somatic Sex Educators Association of Australasia . I am doing my third year internship with them this year along with my Masters in Psychology to bring somatics and embodiment to mainstream health in Aotearoa.

As I said its more akin to indigenous ways of being in the world. I learn a lot from my Māori clients. As we restructure our health system, now is a great time to be having this conversation.

Being your authentic self feels difficult in an age where we are constantly barraged with images that perpetuate what is desirable and what normal should look like. Do you find people come to you navigated by how their body ought to be and perform rather than with a deeper understanding of it?  

Yes.

We are driven to push forward in a linear structured world. A very straight forward way. Some people talk of the masculine and feminine aspects of being in the body and for some parts that feels useful but also we can use terms like linear and circular, hard and soft, loud and quiet. We are not one or the other, we have access to both. Always. Like a tree. With its trunk and leaves. The tree trunk stays its path, moving a little in gale force winds. Its really useful to the survival of the tree. The leaves move in the gentlest breeze, they fall in autumn and grow new in spring. They change colour, texture. They are essential to the survival of the tree.

We are not either a tree trunk or the leaves. We are both.

To be our authentic selves we need to allow ourselves to be the complete tree. And we need to see through the socially constructed aspects of who we think we are. The tree is in an environment that includes pollutants, lovers that carve their initials into the trunk, drought, floods, children build huts in its branches. They affect the tree in some way but they are not the tree. They come and go. The tree heals. It is here and now. Feeling into who we are, here and now, in this moment, feeling the physical body, emotional body, intuitive body, thinking body, all of it, is fundamental to living our authentic lives.   

I want to talk a bit more about our modern busyness and stress problem. We often ignore symptoms in our body, pain being one of them. Do you see through your clients how trauma and stress are stored in the body?

Great question. Yes. Stress and trauma are a bit different in the way they manifest in the body. Stress can lead to trauma but not always. Trauma can be with as they say a big T, like being shot in the back in the Afghanistan War or rape and childhood sexual abuse. It can be little t trauma like being made redundant on day 1 of level 4 lockdown and isolation. We need to be careful on how we use the word trauma as to use it lightly underestimates the experiences of people who survived big T trauma. Yet we don’t have to have been raped to suffer the effects of trauma.

Often sexual trauma is stored in the structures and tissues of the pelvis, genital, lower back region. It might speak to us in the form of pain, pain on penetration, pain in the back for example. Often we can feel pain, tightness, or aching in the sternum and throat as the voice that was never heard or holds back from making sound. Stress can be felt in the gut, upper back, shoulders, exhaustion.

Stress and trauma can be stored in the emotional body, or the nervous system, or digestive system. We are not a bunch of systems though, separate one from the other, everything is connected. So we need to work holistically.

The first step is recognising there is something you want to change, and that is a huge step. The next step of reaching out for help is therapeutic in itself. It is important to realise that at that point, you have begun. Therapy is part of the journey, part of the support network which helps us through the change necessary for a life more authentic, of reduced stress, or regulated/managed trauma. Our friends, connections, environment are also part of that journey.

So, you mentioned also our modern busyness. There are too things here.

We are too busy.

And we need therapeutic ways of being in the world that lighten our load and don’t add to the list of things to do. I work with clients to develop practices that are able to be integrated into their daily lives, in ways that work for them. It needs to be achievable, attainable, doable or its not going to help. So really, I think it is important to step back and look at the way we live and feel if we’ve got it the way we want it. If so then great, if not then change a tiny thing and re-examine. And … weave practices into daily life. Like smiling at yourself in the mirror as you clean your teeth, or having a regular self pleasure practice as you wake in the morning.    

You do a lot of work that involves people consciously living in their skin. Have we become disconnected from some of our senses, like breath and touch? I’m interested to hear more about sensate focus as well.

Hmmm …. I’ve touched on this. Pun intended.

And as I speak I am practicing it. Sensate focus is key to embodiment. Breath and touch help us get there and be there.

As I say Hmmmm … I am using a long slow exhale and vibrating sound in my throat.

Breath – every inhale breath make heart beat faster, exhale slower. Longer on exhale, downregulate. Activate ventral vagus nerve. Calming, connecting.

Touch is tactile, tangible, pleasure. Through noticing the sensations of touch we can be present. When touch occurs inside the boundaries of two people we connect in a positive way. Many of us are touch starved.

Do you find that our modern problem of overwhelm is leaving little time for connected communication?

I think for many people that is the case, but I suggest it doesn’t have to be. At the core of being in the presence of other humans, be that in the boardroom or the bedroom, we communicate. Connected communication does not take extra time. It takes being embodied, connected with the self, connected with other humans.

We can be busy and communicate from a connected place. Being overwhelmed though is different. It means our nervous system is operating at a level that makes deeper connection with the self and others more difficult. Stepping back, away from the edge of overwhelm, before we enter other unhelpful states is important.

Can you tell us a little about writing your book, Magic in the Mire. What was that process like?

The process … started in a mire. Redundancy, isolation in ways I had never contemplated before, unable to afford to live in my own home, hanging on by my fingertips. Writing is not something I have ever been inspired to do. I am and artist, a creator, I work with my hands. So I had to learn to write. My dear friend who is a writer proofread my work and suggested I had triple adjective-itus. She was amazingly helpful in holding the mirror for me to see myself in. The book is a little collection of tools that help me climb out from the bottom of the ocean, or mire, to finding nuggets of gold and magic in the micro-moments which transform the way I see and am in the world. I wrote the book to remind myself and to share these nuggets with others. It could do with expanding in the future but not yet, I have enough on … don’t want to step into overwhelm!

Is there one actionable piece of advice you could share with people who are interested in becoming more connected with themselves? Where could someone start on their journey?

Breathe and feel.

For every breath we take, on the exhale, the heart beats slightly more slowly. The more time we spend on the exhale the more we slow our system down, downregulate. This is useful in our excessively upregulated world.

Knowing this, would you and your listeners be curious to do a little embodiment exercise with me? It is about one human, two hands and three breaths.  

So that’s a wrap people. I will send a link to the podcast when it comes out!

Much love,

Sonia.