How do you empower yourself? How do you empower children? How can we feel safe in such an ever- changing and sometimes crazy world?

Just recently I had the chance to delve into this topic with my children. We were in a taxi on the way to the airport and just by virtue of being ‘trapped’ in the car with me, I held them spellbound as my audience.

Since Mind-body awareness is a topic I hold dear to my heart, I took the opportunity to read a poem about the topic of ‘flight’ from a book called “Trauma Proofing Your Kids” by Peter Levine and Maggie Kline. The poem is called ‘How Fast Can You Run?’ and it’s meant to empower children by helping them tap into their bodily resources of escape and safety.

After I read the poem, my children and I had a wonderful dialogue about how strong their bodies are and the times that they’ve used this strength to leave situations that have felt scary to them.

The poem, in spinning a tale about ‘Rapid the Rabbit’ running so fast away from ‘Coyote’, sets up a framework for discussing what situations a child has felt like running and how powerful they have felt in doing so.

My children shared a few stories of ‘taking flight’ by running from a scare – for one child, it was a bee who had scared them and for another it was an alarm that sounded off in a building; another one was frightened by firecrackers. We talked about how their body felt –  how their heart beat so fast, how their breath came so quickly and how fast their legs carried them.

In all these cases, the children had been able to run. I could hear the confidence in their voices and the relief in their ability to escape. As the authors state, “When kids associate movement with strength and the power to avoid threat, they develop self-esteem that comes from their core. This builds the kind of confidence that remains even when children are under stress because it has become an ‘automatic ‘motor memory.’ (p.71).

My children were lucky in these situations because they had the ability to run.

There are situations, however, in which a child is frightened and not able to run. It could be that at the time of the event – whether it was getting chastised by a parent/teacher or being bullied by a ‘friend’-  they were unable to leave the situation and felt ‘frozen’ in place.  When a child has experienced this, it’s important to help them access their sense of power and their ability to keep themselves safe.

Levine and Kline’s book has poems for dialoguing this ‘frozen’ state because these experiences can become fixated in a child’s cells and show up as anxiety later on.  By conversing with a child and bringing awareness to their bodies, we help empower them to ‘unfreeze’ from the event.

The child most likely felt small, overwhelmed and powerless and though the event has passed, there is a trauma – like condition in their cells. Encouraging the child to be aware of their body and to act out their ability to get away by taking ‘flight’ helps them release the stress of having been frozen in place during the frightening event. Levine and Kline suggest having the child actually run around or even run in place by pumping their legs.  If one is unable to get the child to act out running, even imagining running is helpful.

This mind-body activity with the child helps them to access their ‘flight’ muscles and bodily strength and results in them feeling confident in their own ability to take care of themselves.

As adults too, we may have experienced events in which we felt we ‘couldn’t’ leave a situation that felt overwhelming to us – perhaps being chastised by a boss, or experiencing the anger of an acquaintance. We ‘froze’ in place.

Many of us have an overpowering social sense of ‘trying to do the right thing’ that keeps us frozen in place. We believe that ‘it wouldn’t be nice’ to walk away.

Or we have the very normal fear of losing a job or a friendship. Whatever the reasons are, we often choose to stay in the presence of someone who treats us in a way that feels lousy, overwhelming and fearful. We sit and ‘handle it.’

It’s important to become aware that in all of these situations, your body has a reaction – your heart beats fast or you may feel numb. You may be overwhelmed by the mix of fear, humiliation, anger etc. and dissociate – leave the awareness of the body.  After the situation, you may walk away from the encounter, ruminating and replaying the scene again and again in your mind.

These are trauma responses and it is very important to take an opportunity to drop into your body to ‘take flight.’ This means that instead of just replaying the scene in your mind, you notice what is coming up in your body.

Do you feel heat? That may be anger. Be present with this heat by keeping your attention on the physical sensation, no matter how uncomfortable it feels.

Do you feel fear and imagine running? Then ‘run’ your legs.

We are not children, yet our responses are similar and the trauma can leave the cells when we run in place with our legs pumping. Even pretending to do so in our imagination is beneficial. Peter Levine walks his readers thru an exercise like this in his book/ CD called ‘Healing Trauma.’

It’s also important that as adults we give ourselves permission to actually ‘take flight’ in situations.

We don’t have to stay in place when we are being treated unkindly, even by a boss. We can excuse ourselves and go to a restroom to give ourselves space to feel our heart beating, our limbs tingling, our stomach dropping.

You may feel discomfort to leave a situation and you may feel even more discomfort to feel these physical sensations in your body, but know that this action of taking care of yourself is extremely empowering and healthy. You will also experience a  surge of self-confidence as you access your inner resourcefulness in keeping yourself safe.

Another benefit of dropping into your body and noticing the physical sensations of ‘taking flight’ is that you’ll receive inner wisdom.

You’ll have access to your intuition that will guide you in response to the intimidating situation. You will ‘hear’ what words to communicate to your boss or friend regarding their behavior and how it makes you feel. Or you may ‘see’ that this job or relationship is hurting you more than you’re willing to tolerate and you’ll make changes to actually ‘take flight’ by leaving the situation permanently.

Keeping ourselves safe and helping children to do the same is a programmed resource in our bodies. It’s about time that we all accessed that power.

Miriam Racquel (Meryl) Feldman is a Mind-body and Intuitive Wisdom Coach who empowers women who want to find clarity around decisions of career, relationships, family and health. For more information, visit MiriamRacquel.com or email her at miriam@miriamracquel.com.

For years I was in denial.

I refused to see any behavior in my family that might be interpreted as bad or abusive even in the slightest degree. 

This was my family!

My parents worked hard to keep all five of us children fed, clothed and educated. They were good people.

The other reason for the denial might have been that, as a child, I had no idea how things should be ideally. Weren’t all kids in the same situation? Many of my friends sure were. Wasn’t every child afraid of her father’s anger if she did something wrong?

If someone asked me if I had a happy childhood, my answer was “I’m sure I did. I was good in school.”

Later, that kind of reasoning moved past my family to apply to conditions of living in the community, in the country. I became desensitized to abuse, violence and even war.

I saw difficult situations as just part of normal life, why talk about them? Why make a big deal?

I can definitely see how these experiences helped me grow resilience in the face of future traumas, but they left unconscious scars also. Only after acknowledging the source of my scars could my wounds start to heal.

As an adult, I used to wonder why I kept repeating patterns of behavior that weren’t helpful to me at all.

I used to go out of my way to please people – people I didn’t even like that much. (Still do sometimes.)

I used to be afraid to speak my mind when I didn’t like the way I was being treated, afraid to rock the boat.

Or the other extreme — I used to lose my temper and yell because the only way I knew how to get someone to listen to me was to scream at them.

I used to find comfort in food, overworking, over-giving, and over-reading, as ways of numbing myself. (Still do sometimes.)

Things changed when I remembered and acknowledged some of those difficult situations in my life.

It started with a simple trigger. I was looking through some old family photos my sister had collected lovingly and saved to a disc. There were pictures I’d never seen, especially from the early period of my parents’ marriage. It was obvious that as they had more children, their time to photograph them had decreased.

But there were a few family pictures with me in them and these released pain I’d long since buried. Memories came rushing in and I was shocked to find myself sobbing uncontrollably on and off for days.

I was finally feeling the emotional pain of some of my past experiences in my body instead of suppressing them as normal difficulties of life.

One of the earliest memories was from the time when I was a month shy of three years old. My twin sisters had just been born. Mom had complications and had to care for two newborns. My older siblings were in school or self sufficient, but I was still in need of total supervision. So mom’s aunt Rosa took me to her house for a while.

My memories are of following Rosa nana around, or just being by myself in her living room. I remember walking around that room touching sofa, chair, sofa, and chair. I might have been talking to imaginary people to entertain myself.

Rosa nana was kind and I know I loved her.

But how could this three year old understand why she wasn’t with her mama anymore? Could this have been traumatic to her? Did she feel lost?

Much later, mom told me that as a child I used to sit at the edge of a chair and rock back and forth, a habit I had kept into adulthood whenever I felt stressed. Did it start when I was three? Had I developed a way to soothe myself?

We tend to understand trauma only in terms of war, major accidents, rape or physical abuse. But it is much broader than that.

Trauma is actually any experience that overwhelms you.

It’s anything that’s too much, too soon, too fast for our nervous system to handle, especially when a successful resolution can’t be reached.

As Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, a leading researcher in the field of trauma puts it, “trauma is fundamentally a disruption in our ability to be in the here and now.”

Have you ever wondered, like I did, why you repeat behaviors that you know aren’t helpful to you or others? Why you suffer from chronic pain or anxiety or why certain situations make you extra sensitive?

Maybe you also have unacknowledged painful experiences in your life.

You don’t have to go back and dig around to find the old trauma. But just acknowledging the ones that you remember instead of denying their existence makes a huge difference in healing and moving forward.

Continuing to suppress emotions around those events is not the way to heal the wounds. There’s a difference between knowing something happened to you (remembering it intellectually) and somatically feeling your emotions about those same experiences.   If you stay stuck in your head, you’ll tend to try to rationalize or make excuses about what happened. This is your mind trying to protect you from feeling the pain.

Instead, allow yourself to feel the emotions in your body, feel the pain as sensations. Sit silently with them, what do you sense? Is there tightness in your chest, choking feeling in your throat, butterflies in your stomach, or a heavy weight on your shoulders?

Talk to your emotions and pain. Yes, talk to them. What are they trying to tell you? What is the message they want you to hear?

Allowing the pain to be there and tending to it like a friend will help it flow out and complete the circle to heal the trauma.

In my case, I spent some time looking back. I sat at the edge of a chair and rocked back and forth feeling the pressure of the pain of that sudden loss of mom, in my chest.  The sadness felt like a heavy rock on my heart.

I held the 3-year old me close until she relaxed into the belief that she’s not going to be taken away, that I will always be here with her. The rock on my heart grew softer and softer until it melted and poured out of my eyes and the three year old completely relaxed.

I still don’t remember as much as I wish I did, but I’m filled with love, understanding, forgiveness and compassion for my parents, my siblings and me. This isn’t the mental thought of “I love my family.” It’s the gut level love felt in my entire body.

I finally understood that my big fear in life has been not being important enough, not being loved, being abandoned or left behind.

That fear has been the reason for the unhelpful behaviors, my drive to look for ways to soothe the pain or make sure I was loved at any cost.

I remember as a preteen asking my mom if I was the neighbor’s daughter. And later in life saying things like “I must be invisible,” “I must be nobody.”

My newly released feelings were telling me where this came from and why I didn’t need to be afraid anymore. They taught me I could be the one to love myself, to put me first, and to communicate my needs much better.

Look back into your life to see if there were times of trauma or extreme overwhelm. Allow yourself to feel those emotions around the event. Where are they in your body? Offer love, kindness, and support to the parts of you wounded by these events.

Don’t resist them, befriend them and ask for the messages they bring to you. They have the power to heal old wounds and bring more balance to your life.

When you understand yourself, it becomes easier to see when your old fears are surfacing and reassure yourself that that was then and this is now.

You can be on your own side. You have agency to act on your behalf.

If you need help with this, reach out to me on my website. Ledaasmar.com

Leda Asmar is an endorsed Mind Body coach and a Certified Martha Beck coach. She helps people though transitions in life. She specializes in helping hardworking midlife women get unstuck, make authentic choices, and take charge of their lives by tuning into their inner voice and reconnecting with their true Selves.

website: www.ledaasmar.com

email: leda@ledaasmar.com

Guess how I came up with that one! Yep, on the massage table.

Obviously, if you hate massages, this tool isn’t for you. If, like me, you adore floating in dreamy relaxation while listening to soft music, then schedule a massage asap.

All joking aside, massage really IS a great self-coaching tool. Our bodies are magical, miraculous things that take care of us in thousands of unnoticed ways, day in and day out, for our entire lives. One of the amazing things our bodies do for us is store emotional energy. When difficult or painful experiences happen in our lives, our bodies help us make it through them.

If you’re in the midst of a trauma or crisis in your life, it is likely that you will feel mentally overwhelmed and unable to deal with every little emotion or issue that arises. For example, I just experienced a loss that involved much grieving. I was able to be present with the emotions of grief, allowing them to flow through my body and release as each wave came through. However, any additional emotional experience on top of that felt impossibly difficult. My mind revolted at dealing with the emotional detritus of everyday life on top of the grieving process.  So, my body helped me out and stored some of it for later.

In times of high stress, this is the body’s gift to us. All we have to do is remain aware that this may be happening, feel the emotions we can handle, stay aware of our bodies, and then help our bodies release stored emotional energy when the time is right. As you may well know from reading past posts, never allowing our bodies to release stored emotional energy results in physical pain – the body’s cry for help.

Like most things in life, the answer is moderation and balance. It’s a difficult task to NEVER store emotional energy in the body, and it’s also painfully difficult to ALWAYS store emotional energy in the body. What works and keeps us healthy is to allow the body to help us when the mind is overwhelmed, and the let the mind help the body when it is able again.

My body kindly stored emotional energy around issues unrelated to the grief I was experiencing. I was grateful, because I needed to focus on the grief. Then, after a couple of weeks, I felt ready to let my body release those held emotions. So, I went to my massage with the intention of both relaxing and feeling.  I sank into the dreamy half-asleep bliss for a full ninety minutes (SO WORTH IT!), and then I came home to feel.

And feel I did. Let me tell you, a good massage does wonders for bringing up whatever is being stored in your body! I let the emotions flow through, and I learned much from them. I felt the gentle re-alignment of body and mind taking place, which often reminds me of coming home from a long vacation. It’s sweet, slightly painful because the vacation is over, and very grounding. I feel settled in my own skin, my own body, and my own inner wisdom again.

That’s why I say go get a massage. If your body has helped you out by storing some emotional energy, you’ll be able to release it. (This can take several days, so simply get the massage and then wait. Feel whatever comes up, whenever it arises. It’s that simple.) Don’t try to be the perfect mind-body student and never store a darn thing in your body. Instead, recognize that we are all human, and that you need to store emotional energy sometimes. In fact, your body will take over and do it without your awareness in times of need. You’ll know soon enough, because you’ll feel a little tension somewhere. That’s when you pick up the phone, call up your favorite massage therapist, and treat yourself to a little self-coaching, disguised as R and R.

Really, could there be a more enjoyable mind-body tool?