Transitions are times of somatic unforming – what has been no longer is, what is coming hasn’t formed yet.
Stanley Keleman called this “the middle ground.”
Last week I was in the Netherlands, part of a beautiful healing herd alongside horses, dogs, and a family of students. Before that, I was in Bulgaria, seeing my family and friends, and teaching an incredible group of people. My heart was full.
This week I am back home in the US, properly jet-lagged – and this weekend, I moved to a new home, a new neighborhood, a new office.
Change challenges the body. It upends the established normal, our routines, our anchors. In the world of the nervous system, change is a time of fast and irregular oscillations, with little time for preparation and even less for integration. Change is about action — and it can leave us feeling extremely uncomfortable. Like a boat without an anchor, we are left to the momentary state of the internal ocean.
Survival Strategies Around Transitions
Because of that, most of us have a survival strategy around transitions.
Survival strategies are those combinations of actions, impulses, beliefs, ideas, emotions, sensations, and images that have helped us cope with similar circumstances in the past. They are often born out of necessity and scarcity, out of child consciousness — less than mature in the long run, but helpful in the short term.
Some of us avoid transitions entirely, or get super anxious and try to speed them up. Others override with food and substances what is most natural: feeling yourself in the middle ground.
The gooey void beckons. The body aches. It can feel like the joy and excitement of what was and what will be have nowhere to take root.
Moodiness, restless dreams, irritation, impatience, all of these try to protect us from feeling ourselves at our most vulnerable. The known, the sure, and the familiar protect us, not so much from the world, but from our own fears.
There was a time I really struggled with transitions. My anxiety would be at an all-time high, the ground under me shifting – and I, unable to find my feet, would do anything but feel the discomfort.
At night, before going to bed – that great transition from wakefulness to sleep – I would plan my meals and workouts and to-do lists for the next day. It settled me, gave me something to grip when everything else felt out of control.
When it was time to leave a place or a person, I would speed up and get very cheery. “We will meet soon, let’s plan on it!” — instead of feeling my sadness. The grief would swell up, and I would push it down. “Just be grateful for the time we had…” I would tell myself.
At the end of a meal, which in those days felt like the end of the world, I would make myself a little treat, then another, then another, extending the ending, unable to be done. My stomach was full, but the ending was unbearable.
Today, it’s different.
After many years of being on my recovery journey, transitions feel fertile and warm. It’s been sweet to feel the gooey, unformed mess of this current one. I was gone for two months and now I am back – in a new home, in a new internal state – and I am truly okay.
The places that once felt scary now feel like a temporary harbor.
This is the power of nervous system recovery and somatic self-learning. It not only equips us with new skills so that we don’t get gobbled up by survival habits, it makes their activation unnecessary.
If I can transition gently, being with the uncooked, gooey state of my soma, and if I can take refuge in the moment, I am okay. No need to avoid. No need to speed up.
Truly, in my body, like this: everything belongs.
You Can Learn This Too
Transitions are usually when many of us reach for food, whether in restriction or overconsumption, as a way to cope with the unformed.
But learning to be with the middle ground is a skill. A somatic skill. One that can be learned, practiced, and eventually – lived.
You don’t have to white-knuckle your way through transitions, and you don’t have to numb them either. There is another way: learning to inhabit the uncertainty with presence, gentleness, and even a little curiosity.
That’s the work I do with my students. And it’s available to you, too.
In peace with food, Galina
Leave a Reply