Last 2 spots left for this weekend's mini-immersion in Trauma-informed Somatic Yoga. As yoga becomes increasingly popular in therapeutic settings, it’s important that teachers and professionals understand not just that yoga offers healing opportunities to those recovering from trauma, but how and why it can help. This course offers the unique opportunity to learn basic foundational frameworks, apply this knowledge to both individual and group cases, and identify how yoga can meet the needs of diverse populations. This course is designed for yoga and mental health practitioners seeking to share yoga with people who have experienced trauma. You might be teaching in a studio, private practice, or less conventional setting, or you may be a practitioner seeking depth in your personal practice. If you’re looking for a grounded, practical understanding of how you can use movement and touch work to support folks with trauma recovery, this workshop will serve as an excellent introduction to this work. My Dad left this world two years ago today.
He left quietly, non-intrusively, unceremoniously, in his sleep. Just the way he would have wanted - Simple, hassle-free, clean. For a year I tried to learn how to grieve from afar. Away from family and friends, removed from the sights and smells of the memories we once shared. I realised my body needed to feel the loss. Not just in my head, but to physically, viscerally, mourn his absence. When I made the decision to move back to Singapore, I had to battle with another loss - Leaving behind the person that I was going to share the rest of my life with. Someone whom I thought was everything I could ever asked for. And now another year has gone. 2020 felt like a year of resets on steroids. Heartbroken. Letting go and letting in. Belief systems crushed. Hopes dashed. Fears transformed. The impossible made possible. My father taught me to keep things simple, to always look for the silver linings, to move pain into joy, suffering into compassion, fear into hope. So today I light another candle. For you, dear Papa. In this flame we journey together, into a space where it's timeless and boundless. ~~~ "Hope" is the thing with feathers - That perches in the soul - And sings the tune without the words - And never stops - at all - And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard - And sore must be the storm - That could abash the little Bird That kept so many warm - I've heard it in the chillest land - And on the strangest Sea - Yet - never - in Extremity It asked a crumb - of me ~ Emily Dickinson I had a dream last night of a tranquil landscape of rock formations amidst a lake.
I woke up with a yearning for the smell and sight of dirt and rocks and a big body of water. I decide to “follow my dream” and came here to Little Guilin, a little nature escapade right here on the urban red dot! I’ve never been here but my dream led me to this spot. My body felt the respite. Life has gotten so busy the past few months that I've almost forgotten what I’m made of. Trust your dreams
We work with embodiment of the fluids when we move from the core body, the physiological responses correlated to our vagal tone, active listening, and working with perspectives / vestibular system through the lateral body.
Yesterday Dewi Chen of Terra Luna Yoga dropped into my little home studio to share a conversation about somatics, yoga, sensorial languaging, existentialism... There was a short practice too, albeit punctuated by technological hiccups on the other camera
I remember the first studio yoga class I taught 12 years ago became a private lesson because only 1 person showed up!
I was all nerves but it was one hour of full presence, connecting mind to mind, body to body, soul to soul. The rest is history. As I delve deeper into how we embody the human condition and each of our own journey into healing, I found the field of Somatics as the relational roadmap to understand why we are how we are - as individual organism, and as collective communities. I have worked with thousands of individuals since then, from age 0 to age 90+. I work with people who suffer from chronic pain and help post-stroke patients reconnect their body with their brain. I assist stressed-out execs in carving out space for quality rest in their busy schedule to get out of their heads and into their bodies. I help people hone their sensory awareness, to honour the stories written in our body, to reclaim our inherent wholeness. I teach people how to FEEL again. (This was way before phrases like Embodiment, Somatics, and Trauma became trendy jargon) So if you're on this journey too, or have a sense of curiosity or interest in uncovering how our brain is our body, and how to develop your own roadmap to healing self and others, or if you work privately with clients in the realm of the body and mind, I invite you to join me in this upcoming training. (Only 1 spot left) This lady here is the woman who gave me life.
I was her first born. She was 22. For most of my life, we couldn't see eye to eye. There were resentments and estrangements. I swore I would never be like her. And then I learnt about tolerance. And empathy. And compassion I realised she is just another human being trying to do her best. I started to see how we mirror each other. There was a softening. The spiked armour we were both donning began to come apart. An unspoken understanding of our deep love and respect for each other beneath the triggers and the strife. She's a woman who roars. So am I. #motheranddaughter #unconditionallove❤️ There’s nothing more exhilarating than running up a hill after a 8-year-old.
Many people come to me to help them manage their aches and pains. They often ask me which muscles to strengthen and what to release so they can be stronger, or feel less “tight” in their body and mind. In today’s world, health is often conflated with #fitnessgoals. We measure our overall well being through the utilitarian perspective of time, weight, distance. We gauge our accomplishments by how satisfied we are when we look at our body parts in the mirror. We forget that we are not a machine put together in parts and engines, with a brain affixed at the top. We are an organism, grown out of a seed. We are relational beings from the inside out. We are ever-changing, ever-evolving. Movement is the language in which we express our aliveness. So instead of loading our muscles thinking that they function through some sort of mechanical memory, perhaps we can bring awareness to the articulation of our joints and our movement habits. Instead of stressing over how much weight we can carry in the gym, consider how much time we spend sitting on a chair. Instead of obsessing over body fat, what is the nervous system telling us about the state of our being? Health is expressed through the freedom and ease in the ways we inhabit in our body-mind, in relationship with our environment. It is the ability to walk, run, swim, climb, squat, jump, to rest and not feel like our mind is jumping out of our skin. Most importantly, how well can we bounce back if life throws us curve balls? #trauma #recovery #resilience If you’re interested in exploring this, join me in my next training in Trauma-informed Somatic Yoga Therapy in November Yoga In Common Singapore #traumahealing #yogatherapy #yogattc #somaticyoga #nervoussystemhealing #yogawithdaphne #somaticmovement #movingfromwithin #injuryprevention Do you know that the fascia in and around the abdominal area can get really sticky and gooey from sedentary lifestyle, bad diet and stress triggers? And bloating in this area can also lead to back pain, neck and shoulder tension, a sense of being "uprooted", and more anxiety? This is a simple 10 mins gentle self massage for the belly area to release tension and bloating, tone our vagal nerve (reset our nervous system), and reconnect with our navel centre which is the core of our being. #somawithdaphne #yogawithdaphne #abdominalselfmassage #yogatherapy #somatictherapy #selfcare #fasciastuff #abdominalfascia #vagaltone #nervousystemreset This is the longest period I've stayed put in one place.
For the last few weeks I manage my cabin fever by coming here, with a friend, or on my own. Yes it's a fake beach with imported sand, and it's not Koh Phangan or the Sydney beaches. But the sea water is salty and there are fishes swimming beneath the surface, and mostly there are no traffic sounds so it's still respite from urbanism. I try to do nothing for the two hours I'm here. I don't even listen to music. I spend most of the time floating in the water #oceansavasana... twirl my feet in the sand, watch people and sea birds and the distant ships. Do you take time to do nothing? #donothing #rest #oceanlife #findingpeace #preciousmoments Floor play with sister and niece. Much of the work I do is also teaching people how to get on the floor and get back up. I train my clients to not be fearful of the ground beneath us. A big part of somatic coaching is to lean into the support of gravity so we don't have to do all the work of tensing all our muscles and be in fight / flight mode constantly. In today's society we spend way too much time in the vertical plane, and on elevated platforms such as chairs and couches. We slouch into them and then collapse into our elevated beds at the end of the day. Ease your way onto the floor and uncover your inner child. Your spine will thank you for it 💃 #spinalhealth #somaticmovement #getonthefloor #somawithdaphne #yogawithdaphne #yogatherapy #embodiedintelligence #somaticcoaching Throwback to a sunny autumn morning in Pennsylvania. I was attending a friend's wedding. I had a younger body then (35yo). A new client I worked with yesterday asked if I can help him defy the aging process. I said instead of defying it, why don't we work with it so we can keep doing the things we love, and be around for people we care about. #agegracefully #timeisnotlinear #yogawithdaphne #somawithdaphne #movementmedicine A lot of tension in the body is often created through accumulative tension in the muscles, either through compensatory movement habits or through our stress response. We tend to forget that our skeletal elements such as the bones and ligaments give us form and alignment. These elements also provide proprioceptive feedback so we get a sense of where we are in relationship to space and gravity. They offer us stability and support without bracing.
On the other hand, muscles do the work of mobility, muscle fibres fire and contract to help us move through / across space Muscles and our bones work symbiotically for optimal functioning in stability and mobility. However, what happens is that we often get stuck to trying to achieve a form or a goal, or we are rushing to get somewhere, or to perform a task based on what we think it should look like and if it fits certain mould. When our nervous system is constantly wired to react to stress and the constant need to "try harder", the muscles take over the direction of the bones. We tend to get set in movement habits that are driven from the perspective that we are a machine made of parts rather than an relational organism. This is a little somatic practice of exploring the support we can create if we bring awareness to our bones / ligament and movement continuity. The dynamic fluidity to respond rather than react. So we can create more healthy bone and joint health, as well as regulate our nervous system to come into a sense of being rather than having to do more all the time. #bodymindcentering #somatics #somaticmovementeducation #somatictherapy #somawithdaphne #yogawithdaphne #movementinquiryembodiment #bonehealth #osteopathy #yogatherapy #somaticyoga Workshop recording from the recent online virtual conference Sugar & Spice - a sexuality & embodiment festival. Presenting a bottom-up experiential approach to relate to the nervous system through the fluid body. "Daphne's session was a good introduction to an alternative therapeutic way to deal with trauma. Her soothing voice guided us to our fluid body and fluid movement exploration. It was so relaxing and calming" #somatics #nervoussystem #polyvagal #sensingfeeling #therapeutics #bodysensing #yogawithdaphne #traumainformed This week on #SomawithDaphneandLucy
Lucie is taking a little hiatus... When Lucie told me early this year that she is venturing into the decluttering profession, unlike most who know her, I wasn’t at all surprised at this career choice she has chosen. In working with her the last 3 years from teacher-student to movement collaborators, Lucie is always able to demonstrate her presence in understanding the nuanced concepts in movement, and also in the creative ways she’s able to apply them in real life. We share a common deep love affair in the work of somatics and embodiment which goes above and beyond just being healthy and fit. It calls upon us to do our inner shadow work so we ca clean out the cobwebs of our somatic imprints through relational inquiries. There is no demarcation between body and mind. The body is the mind. The mind is the body. The body is the canvas upon which our experiences are wonderfully written with movement as its language. Within the microcosm of the body we inhabit in - a universe of fluids, cells, organs, breath - belies a magic we can lean into, a harmonious balance of space, gravity, support and surrender. As a movement teacher and body therapist, our work parallels each other's. What I do is to guide and hold sacred space for these storylines to be organised, to be told, to be released or reframed. Through this co-creation, I help my clients uncover their authenticity for expression and agency to live more fully. Keep in touch with Lucie at Your Space as she embarks on her adventure too in the alignment of inner and outer spaces. How does your home reflect your inner state of being? It goes beyond just inquiring #doesthissparkjoy. Till soon Lucie! This week's topic on #somawithDaphneandLucy is about what constitutes healthy stretch! Everyone loves a good stretch. However, do you sometimes feel that the more you stretch, the more you need to stretch? The yoga world is obsessed with stretching. There’s this misconception that the more one stretches a particular area of the body, the “longer” and “looser” it will be, and “looser” feels better than “tight”. Like most things in life, there’s also the “high” of chasing big sensations in stretching, and the belief that there is no gain unless there is some sort of pain. Being a person with hypermobility, the physical practice of yoga came about relatively easily for me. It doesn’t take long for my joint spaces to open up and I could quite quickly flop into forward bends or use my arms as leverage to pull myself to extreme range of motion. I’d feel spacious and open after an intense stretching session. However, it wouldn’t take long before my body started to feel tight again and needed another round of “fix”. As this cycle perpetuates, my body would feel achy and sore if I have to sit or stand or walk for extended periods; my mind restless. To many people, I seemed like a dedicated yogi, spending hours on a yoga mat contorting myself into a pretzel. I realised that something had gone terribly amiss when the more I practice, the less I could bear stillness without discomfort - counter to the tenet that Yoga is state of being both steady and easeful (Sthiram Sukham Asanam) I finally found the answer to this mystifying conundrum when I discovered somatics and mobility practice. I had been stretching wrong! I was chasing sensations instead of cultivating awareness. I wasn’t listening to the subtle nuances of what my body was telling me. My muscles were either switched off or over-contracted in those deep stretches, further stressing my already hypermobile connective tissues - in particular the tendons and ligaments - as I collapsed into gravity or when I leveraged on an external force to pull myself into the end range of motion (ROM). Even though this might initially trigger the nervous system into a relaxation response, it also destabilises the connective tissues around my joints. My body then sends a “danger signal” resulting in even more muscle tension, creating the vicious stretching cycle. My practice now includes resistance stretching which requires active range of motion, i.e keeping muscles in eccentric contraction and maintaining integrated postural tone through myofascial continuity (more on a future post!) to express our 3-dimensional relationship with gravity and space, as well as in creating progressive loading with theraband or weights to strengthen and stabilise joints) Passive stretching is still a valuable practice to down-regulate the nervous system when we use props to support joints without going into the full range of motion such as in restorative poses.. The concept of a neutral pelvis is a topic every movement educator across different modalities would passionately debate over. This week on #SomawithDaphneandLucy, we’d like to share our take on the neutral pelvis as an embodiment PROCESS, rather than just a shape or a form. One of the most logical rationales to this principle is that - When the pelvis is in its neutral position, it allows for the most amount of space between each vertebra, as they are then aligned in their natural curves (i.e primary and secondary curves or kyphosis and lordosis). A neutral pelvis means that our spine can act as a “spring” in our bipedal form, to provide a buffer for the compressive forces moving through the body as we navigate through space and gravity. A simple approach to finding a neutral pelvis is to experiment with the anterior and posterior tilting of the pelvis in relationship to the bony landmarks - the ASIS (hip points), and the diamond-shaped compass of the Sacrum, Coccyx, Ischium, Pubic Symphysis - to find the place in the centre. These landmarks are incredibly useful in bringing awareness to a vital and yet vulnerable part of the body that we often ignore. Even though we spend so much time sitting on our bum, what we do with our pelvis and pelvic floor are often only brought to our attention when we are experiencing pain or discomfort. From the bony landmarks, we can begin to explore the intrinsic movement of breath within the inner body, in particular the relationship between the ribcage and the pelvis. Our respiratory diaphragm sits just beneath the ribs. As our primary breathing muscle, the diaphragm contracts and descends during inhalation, and releases to ascend during exhalation. The heart and lungs rest above the respiratory diaphragm, and our internal organs are below this diaphragm. On the other hand (end), the pelvic floor (also a diaphragm) supports the weight of our internal organs, in addition to sexual and elimination functions. The respiratory diaphragm and the pelvic diaphragm (not just a floor!) is actually one continuous integrated “being” that modulates our life force! Their ability to move in resonance with each other is important in the healthy and intricate functioning of all our biological processes, such as oxygenation, circulation, motility of organs, digestive and reproductive processes etc. Creating an embodied awareness on this symbiotic relationship of the intrinsic rhythm of our breath pulsating through the different diaphragms will not only create optimal alignment and ease in the way we move, sit, stand, walk, but also help regulate our nervous system, return us back to health, and cultivate a sense of grounding and safety. In the next video, we would like to invite you to explore a short practice to sense the resonance between the 2 diaphragms to come into the “state” of a neutral pelvis. Why do we study the body?
Because movement is a relational dialogue from the moment of conception. Because movement creates form and precedes language. Because it tells the stories of how we relate to the world around us. Because our nervous system records our conditioning and belief systems. Because our history is written in the cells. Because our body is the expression of our cosmic alchemy. Because it is a medium for deep existential inquiries to our mystical origins. Because in all its fragility we find refuge in impermanence. This week's sharing on #somawithDaphneandLucy is about coming home to the state of flexion: We are the only mammalian species on the planet that walks on two feet. This vertical relationship with gravity not only takes our brain further away from our feet, but also requires our back body to work a lot harder in holding up our front body. This relational dynamic with the environment is also an embodiment of our somatic and cognitive desire to engage with the world. In our quest to move up the evolutionary ladder, we expose our vulnerability to the world through the front body, which contains our soft and vital organs. The front body also forms a big part of our #selfimage (refer to our previous post on this topic) of how we see ourselves and how we want others to see us. Therefore, our nervous system is wired to “think” and “predict” danger to preserve our survival. This sense of vigilance can literally move us away from our anchor and grounding. When the world we live becomes too much for our nervous system to handle - too much stress, too much uncertainty, too much stimulus, too much grief, can we take this as a signal to retreat, to withdraw, to exhale? The flexion state takes us back into our embryological being - a time in which we are nestled and suspended in the warm fluids of our mother’s womb, a state where cells divides and organise, a state of balance and homeostasis, in which the order of nature grants us nourishment and protection. If you’re experiencing physical symptoms like migraine, neck and shoulder tension, back ache, shortness of breath, excessive gas, acid reflux, or even sleep disorder, your body is sending an invitation to marinate yourself in this restorative state. Check out this video as Lucie explains her experience and a little demo to retract the front line and open up the back line of the body. Allow your organs to soften and drape over the support of your cushions, bringing breath into the back body and releasing the adrenals from its state of vigilance to one of yielding. Welcome home. This week's focus on #somawithDaphneandLucy are your precious feet :) The relative distance of our feet from our brain often causes us to disregard the health and care of our feet. We tend to ignore the messages coming from this very distal part of the body. We wear shoes that are too tight, too loose, too flat, too high... For some culture, there’s even a certain element of shame attached to the feet. Some people might go through years of suffering from sore feet before paying any attention to this part of the body. The health of our feet is instrumental in our overall health. Our two feet are made up of 52 bones, accounting for about a quarter of all the bones in our body. They contain 60 joints and 200 muscles, tendons and ligaments that hold them together for mobility and stability. Most of the myofascial matrix crosses through the feet as they are fundamental to our evolution into bipeds. Our feet establish the foundation of our vertical relationship to navigate through gravity and 3 dimensional space and create movement continuity through all our body’s systems. Embryologically, our feet and toes grow out of the limb buds before the legs are fully formed, essentially making our feet an extension of the pelvis, and hence its close association to our pelvic health. Keeping our feet strong and nimble means stronger grounding and stability, more movement choices and increased neural pathways and plasticity! Training our feet to be able to articulate through different loads and tracking its relationship to different parts of the body will not only alleviate conditions like plantar fasciitis, heel pain, achilles tendinitis, it can also prevent knee injury, relieves lower back pain, soothe neck and shoulder tension and even migraine. Its close relationship with our pelvic diaphragm also means that strong and flexible feet will bring awareness to our core being as we find support through gravity and levity. When we establish better proprioception and interoception we can also help to regulate our nervous system so we are less anxious and stressed! Does wearing a mask trigger your anxiety? A sharing on the effect on respiration, sense of safety, past trauma, and physiology, including some tips on how to alleviate anxiety in wearing a mask. They say nolstagia
is akin to a journey back in time when things made sense where we knew our place in the world. . . Perhaps it's also when our lives can't get any more mundane that we lose our compass and our ground. . . The triumph of waking up to another groundhog day . 16 more hours in front of the screen. Blue light solace at my fingertips Work, exercise, shop, socialise, youtube Repeat. . . Choices. Are they freedom or dilemma? To stay in or go out? Solitude will always be served as the main dish. . . 6 feet apart. Eyes exposed but be sure to avert my gaze. My lungs laboured underneath the cotton covering of sweaty recycled breath. . . Oh, the yearning to be seen and heard! and touched! Overshadowed by the anxiety of ending up as a snapshot shamed and fined. . . A nation locked down but united in fear. Fighting the invisible war of numbers against the enemy crowned virus. . . Masked vigilantes armed with smartphone and app Incognito but bestowed with power to defend and protect. . . Stand in line for nasi lemak and bubble tea Essential recharge for our ammo A balm for the caged mind in this urban Disneyland . . In the silence of empty construction sites, a figure stooped in his neon green shirt . The sound of bristles on concrete. Broom in hand He looked up and smiled through his armour "I'm okay" his eyes spoke. He sweeps our dwellings while his brothers locked away their homes out of reach. . . So we march on, to a promised vaccined land where business is as usual An utopia with no distancing no violence no debts no sovereigns Delving a little more into the perspective of not just what is mental health, but also looking at the how and the why through connecting with the responses in the body |
Daphne Chua
Registered Yoga Therapist, Somatic Movement Educator, Bodyworker, Yoga Teacher Trainer
December 2021
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