Warming the river

Imagine our lives as a river

Here’s a wonderful metaphor describing how we come to carry unprocessed traumatic experience inside of us, adapted from the book, ‘Attuned’, by Thomas Huble.

If we first imagine our lives to be like a river, moving and flowing as one dynamic, unfolding and connected entity.

When we humans encounter something too overwhelming to process in our lives, we have the amazing capacity to block the immediate experience and freeze it, in order to protect ourselves from the pain of the shock and so survive the trauma and move on.

Turbulence from the past

So we get big sections of the river of life becoming frozen solid. The river still flows but it can’t move so well as the frozen chunks of past experience bash around and cause turbulence in the here and now. These chunks of past are held separate and in a state of perpetual reactivity so that the slightest touch brings forward the pain from a long distant wounding.

So parts of life can still flow, can integrate new experiences and be open, present and available to change and adapt. Whereas some parts are locked in the past and cannot be updated and integrated.

And when the subsequent, inevitable difficult experiences of life fall towards the river like snow, the parts of us that are flowing, can immediately absorb and integrate the impact and content. Whereas the frozen parts cannot; the snow accumulates, layer upon layer, increasing the density of the wounded parts of us and further stymieing the flow of life.

Fear is a shackle

Most of us find the idea of breaking open the ice scary, we don’t want to go there. And fear is the shackle that keeps the trap shut.

There is a lovely quote by poet John O’Donahue, which goes, ‘i would like to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of it’s own unfolding’.

When parts of us are recycling reactive habits from the past, hope for change becomes tired and the future might seem to offer little in the way of hopeful surprise.

And fair enough, it’s a big deal to willingly re-examine the pain from the past – and how might we do it?

Warming the river

What we can do is begin to warm the river.

As we bring more presence, space and relational capacity into our lives, the river warms and the ice gently gives up it’s story to the flow at it’s own pace. Easy and no rush.

If you’re interested to find out how Biodynamic Craniosacral therapy can warm the flow for you, do get in touch.