Although we often use the word depression to refer to feeling down or sad, true depression is a clinical diagnosis and is most appropriately addressed with your physician or therapist. What I find is that very often when we talk about depression, we are not necessarily referring to the clinical definition - we are actually talking about resignation.
Resignation is different than depression
Resignation is a mood. We might feel resigned about our life or some aspect of a situation and the defeat controls us. It controls our emotional experience and it controls our thoughts. When this is the case, we aren’t necessarily clinically depressed; rather, we have lost contact with our aliveness and with our ability to see and feel new possibilities for ourselves.
Somatic bodywork helps us open to something new
I often have the thought that my job is really to support my clients in seeing and practicing something new. When we are resigned, typically we are seeing the world through the lens of our history. Our outlook is narrow - we aren’t seeing the big picture. Resignation is a story we tell ourselves but it is not grounded in our own aliveness and resilience. When we are resigned, we are living in a body of resignation. Fully felt and expressed, this is a body in which our head hangs down, our energy is typically pulled way in. We aren’t extending out into the world and so we too aren’t in a body that can receive something positive.
Becoming a bigger container
What does it mean to become a bigger container? It means that we are in our length, width, and depth. We are centered and grounded. Our body isn’t tight, contracted, or numb, and instead we are feeling energy moving. We feel some tingling, temperature, pressure, movement, sensation.
Bodywork for more width
To shift out of a body of resignation we need to reconnect with something larger and open up in our width. This isn’t just a good idea or a concept: bodywork supports us with physically widening out; our shoulders become wider and our peripheral vision wider. This widening is felt in the tissues of the body as a softening. Bodywork helps us learn how to interrupt the pattern of making ourselves narrow in how we sit, stand, and walk.
Bodywork and breathwork for more energy and aliveness
Energy in this context is not an abstract notion but rather the experience of feeling sensation in our body. Often, this is felt as a tingling or buzzing. Feeling sensation in the body helps us feel more present, connected, and open to new possibilities. This felt sensation is always accessible, but we need help in remembering how to access it. Sometimes breathwork can be what brings more energy into the body. Simply breathing deeper increases the oxygen in our system and can support us in feeling our body in a new and more positive way.
Bodywork for a wider range of emotions
With resignation as a dominant mood, we have lost touch with the full range of our emotions. Whether it’s through bodywork that helps us relax around old contractions in our tissue, or breathwork, or work with sound while on the massage table, the shifts in our physiology support us in shifting the interior of our emotional world. The physical and the emotional are connected, so if we shift one, the other one changes as well. (This is one of the reasons why exercise, dance, and movement can be so effective at combating a challenging mood that we are stuck in.)
Bodywork to shift the story
To reiterate, resignation is also a self-narrative. Very often we need a new story about ourselves, our past, or our future. Just like with emotions, our thinking and cognition are tied in neurologically with what’s happening in the physical body. By supporting us with being more relaxed and alive in our bodies, bodywork is a powerful way to bring us into more contact with a life-affirming story that is often a necessary step in shifting away from our resignation.
Somatic coaching and somatic bodywork are available in Petaluma, CA, and online. Schedule or send me a message today!