We Become the Mother/Mater/Matter
As we journey with somatic self-love – the embodiment of love, our bodies can become the Mother/our Mother.
The trapped energy of mis-attunements, of developmental abuse and lineage trauma create behavior loops in our nervous systems that no longer serve us as adults, but have trained our bodies to believe it is the way to feel safe.
From Marian Dunlea…
“Marion Woodman, writing in the 1980s, argues that shadow material (negative affect) is often, though not necessarily, created as a result of developmental trauma and the relationship with our primary caregiver, in particular.
It lies deep in the body and that it is only through active engagement with the body that we can begin to bring it to consciousness and redeem the body from its shadow position.
She teaches that when an individual cannot accept herself fully and fails to root herself in the world, in the matter of her particular body, the body is left holding the rejected, wounded aspects of the soul:
“The shadow is in the body, too far from consciousness even to appear in dreams, and there is no … conscious[ness] enough to make the link between body and psyche.
Then Mater (mother) concretizes into matter and holds together with flesh what should be held together with love.” (Woodman, 1982, p. 86)
Woodman describes the rejected, wounded aspects of the personality that become dissociated, split off from consciousness, and fall into the body, as forming the somatic unconscious.
It is my belief that if we learn to regulate the Autonomic Nervous System we gain greater access to the messages and signals emanating from the somatic unconscious, whether in the form of an image, gesture, movement, dream, symptom or the quality of one’s breathing.
But first we have to learn to reset our neural wiring so we are not continually firing, or responding, from a place of stress, trauma or an activation…
In so doing, we expand our window of tolerance: we increase our capacity to tolerate powerful emotions and create a more holding and safe environment in our bodies and psyches which makes us less susceptible to the triggering of old, negative complexes, and more receptive to self-regulating positive impulses and dream images that contain the seeds of new life.
Neuroscience shows us that the early relationship between infant and caregiver shapes the infant’s brain and neural patterning.
The repeated pattern of attunements and misattunements between infant and primary caregiver contributes to the formation of positive and negative complexes respectively.
However, the plasticity of the brain ensures that the patterning of the neural wiring is adaptable and can shift when exposed to an enhanced positive environment.
Learning to reset the Autonomic Nervous System increases our capacity for self-regulation and enables the creation of lasting changes in our neural wiring, especially the development of new neural pathways concerned with compassion and empathy.”
This is the framework of Self-Love Ceremonials. A practice space of 111 days in community where learn to reset our capacity to feel our emotions and accept all the parts of ourselves.
For more information on Self-Love Ceremonials go here.
Artwork by Daniella Matutes