Healing through Movement | Training for the West Highland Way Trail
- earthnaturals20
- 11 minutes ago
- 7 min read
Spring is on the way now friends! This means is it's time to pull out the hiking boots and rucksack and plop some weight in it and get the legs moving! Spring is a sure tell sign for me to get my outdoors kit ready for the season ahead. Those of you who nerd out getting your seasonal camping and hiking kit ready can totally resonate with this !? Haha, yes, I thought so!
I gave myself a goal to train for the 154km trail in Scotland along the West Highland Way. I know many of you reading this have completed that gorgeous hike and made some memories already, or perhaps this is a goal for you too! Goals with my fitness and finances are what I'm working on to get myself there within the year or two. The shear beauty, solitude and physical challenge is calling to me. I can feel it in my bones, in a good way. Like a yearning to be on that trail.
With that said, the ambition and movement to ready myself was not always there. Gosh did I ever have to do loads of inner work to get to this point! The inner work began after the death of my beloved almost 14 years ago. He had been killed in a motor vehicle accident in the Autumm of 2011. Our son was only eleven months old at the time, and I was seven months pregnant with our daughter. The intense shock and freeze mode my body went into after his death, felt paralyzing. I talk more about how that paralyizing feeling hit me and how I started to move through it in detail on my YouTube video which you can access in the link below.
Healing through movement has been a journey over these past 13 years, a journey and challenge just like the West Highland Way will be, of course. What I've noticed throughout the years is that learning some of the deepest growth, always comes after some of the most significant challenges.
Now that the weather is a little nicer I've got my rucksack on getting out in the fresh air, getting my boots on and feeling all the elements! It's still a little snowy here but spring is around the corner. The air is fresh outside with notes of spring, melting snow creating the aroma of wet dirt, one of my favourite smells! A true delight for those of us who love when that spring melt starts to magically appear each year. I'm going to be doing more of this training now that winter is coming to an end. I invite you to throw on your boots and a heavy bag and get your butts out there!
Movement had been a challenge for many years, and still is at times. It's like the slow melt of the hardened constriction my body has felt that has finally started to lift, giving way to more expansion in my life. Movement has become a priority over the last few years, feeling that great physical, mental and spiritual connection it brings with it. I've been working really hard over the past few years just getting my body attuned and regulated via loads of healing modalities and creating resources for myself. This has helped ready me with feeling good with movement again after so many years of being in survival mode. And I know many of you can relate with that when you've also experienced huge trauma in your life or an event that created shock inside you. So as the years have went on, I've been busy stacking healing tools, all my resources that have helped get me to where I am today. It's a long process also involving you surrounding yourself with people that are into healing, health and positive ways of living . It becomes a huge asset. Get those resources in check ! If you're struggling to move your body, I get it. Reach out to someone you know that might be positive about body movement or being out in nature. Don't forget about YouTube too ! It's is a valuable resource. I'm always on there searching different people and channels that are inspiring. It's a great tool you can use for your wellness. Grab a friend who loves doing something you're interested in. It makes life fun, and you can keep each other accountable.
Healing with the Nervous System Freeze Response:
Let's talk more about freeze mode with your nervous system responses. Fight, flight and freeze are all part of your innate nervous systems survival and thrive responses. We are created perfectly but sometimes we get derailed or even stuck in a stagnant pattern. I want to talk about the freeze response in particular because that is a big one for me to process and heal in my body. I was impacted hard after the death of my beloved. Since then I've struggled with moving my body because it actually felt really yucky to physically move. It was too over stimulating. What I've learned over the years is to play into both the freeze response and play into movement. Right now moving feels great but over the years it didn't always feel that way. It's important to be still too, honoring that constricting, numb, paralyzing feeling. After he died I could barely step foot out my door and into our backyard. What I mean not being able to step foot out my door after he died was this paralyzed feeling and guilt feeling where if I went outside and let the sun hit my skin or if I moved outside I felt guilty because he wasn't able to do that too. He was passed away and there was this really deep ache inside that felt paralyzing. I use that word a lot because that's what it felt like where I couldn't even step foot on my back porch to get outside or in the sun because it just felt yucky in the body to be doing something when he wasn't here to enjoy it either. If you're someone who's struggling with movement and just getting out, or getting fit, get your body a little bit of movement and then just stop and just feel into that slowness. Move, then slow down or stop. Go between both. Just feel the slowness if movement is too much. Hang out in slowness where you feel that paralyzed feeling.
Nature as a Teacher:
When I'm out in nature, I see it as one of our greatest teachers giving us the opportunity for healing and growth. When I felt super overwhelmed I'd come outside and allow myself to be in freeze mode as long as I want, and notice that paralyzing feeling. We are often taught that freeze is so bad and we need to get out of it, which is true in general but sometimes it's the best place. Our nervous system is not faulty. It's showing us we can have some space and time to slow down for a moment and we can use this time wisely. It's the best place to just slow down. You can have two truths. You can be feeling stuck and you can be feeling like frick yeah let's move our legs! And when that becomes too much, you just go back into being still for a moment. It's like this eb and flow. This has been an opportunity for me to learn over the years that both are okay and that I have more capacity to do both and get better at both. When slowing down, it gives me a moment to listen for sounds in nature and attune my nervous system. Like taking in the sounds of birds singing or the sound of snowflakes hitting my jacket as I walk. Sometimes freeze mode is a great place to be because it actually allows us the space and the time to just practice feeling even when we might feel numb. Notice what numb feels like, or see if you can you feel the edges of the numbess in your body? Even when we feel like we can't move. It's taught me a lot of how to be more in the moment.
If you've got a backpack, shopping bag, etc, it doesnt matter, just throw something on your back. Maybe even start with standing there feeling its weight in the moment and see what that feels like for your nervous system. Take one step, maybe two. Or if you feel like it come climb a mountain! Life is limitless! You can even play my YouTube video as you go walking and walk along with me, you dont have to do it alone! Find that video in the link below.
Two Truths:
We can have two truths in our life happening at the same time. Just like winter merging into spring at the same time. Nature always shows us what we are capable of! Yay Nature! You can literally see it and feel it. Just like in the seasons where they have a time of dark and rest(winter) and a time of growth and blooming (spring), so does our nervous system. We have a time of rest and a time of growth and movement. We can be relaxed and we can be on the go, giving you the capacity for both.
So if you're feeling stuck just know you have capacity for all the things your body is created for because its beautifully made. As you explore your capacity as a human, it gets to be really fun, with all this movement that you end up getting used to, it inspires you to do things like fly across the world and go walk the West Highland way! It gets you challenging life, it's fun and you expand!
I went from not even being able to step foot outside on my back porch after my beloved passed away to now being able to go and train for this crazy big hike in Scotland. Our humanness comes a long way when we give it the right tools and find the right ways to play with that and expand ourselves. It's quite beautiful really. Finding ways that you can
give yourself permission to allow two truths can be so healing. Feeling yucky and feeling joy can coexist together because we as humans are feelers. You are capable of so much! Including healing!
So go explore yourself, get moving and get resting and play with everything in between!
Thank You for taking the time to read my Blog and happy trails! :)
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