Noticing | 4
Cold plunge, empty dance floor, and pleasure as self-care
The following are senses that I call up when explaining somatics to folks, the “other senses”, as opposed to sight, sound, touch, taste, smell. This recurring series will include moments from my week that I noticed particular sensations, big or small, as a way to share with you about my week, and also to provide an example of what somatics even is. Enjoy!
Temperature
Cold plunge > Sauna > Hot Tub
I remembered that my gym has a cold plunge pool. The cold plunge brings a panic to my body that wraps around my throat, and when it releases, my entire body lights up, my nerves fire with rainbow light. It’s worth it, I will be coming back to this. The hot tub is disappointing after the heat of the sauna
I reached for the coolness a lot this week. The bedroom window was left open, I slept with fewer blankets. The cold was a comfort to me.
The heat of my cat radiating into me lulled me back for more sleep in the morning.
Texture
Soft. Hairy skin. Pillow squish. Tucking a pillow in the crook of my knee for the squish. My hands are alive to the textures of even just the couch around me. The soft blanket, the rough cushion, the different rough of the pillow.
Weight
Bodies pressed against me, on my chest, in my lap, grounding me into the earth.
Movement
I went dancing last night. I finally found an electronic music venue near where I live, in an old church. It wasn’t very full when we got there, but the music was bumpin’.
I used to dread a dancefloor that wasn’t full of people, but now I revel in how much space there is to spread out and follow my body through the music. At times it felt like I was swimming through the sounds, like the music was lapping up against me and I was weaving my way through it. There was enough room to pull out some swing dance moves to, which I have fantasized about doing to tech house before, and it was just as much fun as I thought it would be.
There is a past version of me that thinks it is so cool that I went straight for the empty front and center of the dance floor, and just let myself go and have such a good time, and feel beautiful, and alive, and contribute to the energy of the space. It is nights like this that really let me appreciate how far I have come in aligning my actions with my desires, to express myself and feel free in expressing myself. Little me who used to freeze in panic at the thought of joining my family on the dancefloor at weddings finally found her groove.
Interoception
The urge to underline words that come into my ears as I am listening to Emergent Strategy by adrienne marie brown. To hold them and grasp them in my hands. I yearn for paper, and pen, and the feedback of the pen against the paper felt in my hand that moves beneath words to scream THIS. This is what I want to build.
Emotions well up inside of me, hard ones, memories of past relationships, emotions I’m trying to avoid. I had a lot of time in the car to think this week, and was often subject to the bubbling up of these old, familiar, heartaches. For one special moment I leaned into them, and when I did, they passed, and my body came online, and I felt warmth spread from my pelvis through the rest of my body, as though it said to me that it was okay to feel sad, and it was okay to feel really good and alive in the midst of that sadness, and after the sadness passed. Neither is wrong.
It felt as though the pleasurable aliveness spreading through my body is my body taking care of itself, tending to the ache of sadness with its capacity for pleasure.
I am a being in the realm of somatic sex education, ancestral healing, erotic healing, kink, relationship anarchy, polyamory, geomancy, and a constellation of anything else you’ve seen written here. If you would like to work with me one-on-one in any of these realms, keep an eye on this space for an announcement when my books re-open.
This is great. You describe the cold plunge very well. Your writing helps me to remember how alive I am. To lean ino the discomfort and pain of memories. Thank you for this!