About Surrender #4

In about Surrender #3, we changed our thinking and images regarding setting boundaries – liberated from conditioning, telling us to be inferior.

So what is still missing?

The changes within our bodies and feelings…

Let’s start with the Body – with our movement, breathing and posture.

These three aspects mirror whether we feel safe within ourselves or not, whether we will defend our boundaries, if necessary, or whether we fear that we might ”abandon ourselves”

When we change our movement, breathing and posture, we will automatically change our self-image regarding setting boundaries.

We can transform body signals which say “hopefully nothing will happen to me“ to being the tigress, roaming calmly through our jungle; are we afraid? Yes, if it gets dangerous. Are we suffering from tension, mistrust, worry and compulsive controlling? No! Certainly not.

How Can We Influence Our Body Language?

By doing exactly the opposite to our conditioning; by moving, and breathing and uplifting ourselves and our posture.

Unfortunately, our cultural heritage regarding intact boundaries is a disaster. . Body-language experienced as “female” is in fact the body-language of an oppressed social class.The acquired patterns of movement, of the voice, clothing etc. create the the message “helpless is feminine” in a similar way to how military training supresses the emotions.

Let’s Get Physical

Our travel route started at “smile and wave” and proceeds to “saying no and setting boundaries”.

Remember – we are doing this, not to instigate war, but to nourish, to calm and to regulate our nervous system, in order to accept the soft invitations to desire and surrender.

This journey is an intense physical empowerment. We are moving so obviously, powerfully, directly and focused, that we can’t even think about it. We use our defense instincts, the “fight-mode”, which happens BEFORE we can reflect on it (re- flect…)!

This is the moment where we abandon psychological, analytical and all other helpful advice. At this point we transform ourselves back into an animal, which lives in its territory, hisses and fights, if necessary, until it remembers itself.

I advise every woman who suffers from any violation of boundaries to catch up on this physical NO and to familiarize herself with coordinated and decisive defense. (By the way, coordination can become highly constricted through trauma.)

Possible Methods Are:

• *Model Mugging
• *Kick-boxing
• *TigerWork
• *Wen Do
• *Win Tsun

These methods clearly differentiate from disciplines such as martial arts, where skill and techniques are more important than the encounter with your own reactions to assault, danger and boundaries. And of course we will go far beyond lashing out with pepper spray and handbags.

These methods communicate movements, which can awaken our instincts, hence they can obviously also trigger our fears…

Isn’t it true that we dread physical fighting because we are afraid we might lose? It is exactly this fear which shows us how much we have suffered through our lost battles – how much the past thwarts us, until we are able to experience different outcomes regarding our boundaries.

The feeling of being safe within ones boundaries lies within brain-areas which are older than our personal thinking. These deep brain-areas don’t react to what we believe or would like to believe, they react to what our body is expressing through movement, breathing and posture.

It is necessary to know an effective art of self-defense, to experience your own body in action in order to skim individual or collective trauma structure.

Just do it, the radically simple practice of DOING IT, is the key. A body which has never experienced defending itself will frustrate every positive self-image in case of an emergency.

The belief in physical strength is not just a blind belief in something, it’s an intuitive knowledge which is deeply anchored in a sense of knowing what’s right at the right moment – and also knowing what’s right in the wrong moments.

4th Step: Other Feelings

Now there are only feelings missing…

• “I feel helpless when I’m angry.”
• “I feel ashamed as soon as I set a boundary. I feel rude and hysterical.”
• “My anger doesn’t help anyone; it feels like I put the saddle on the wrong horse…”
• “I am afraid I might feel lonely if I say no.”

Feelings are a major topic, right? Our feelings make the impression of being a malicious, tangled, hopeless knot, full of contradictions and vicious circles in relation to surrender and boundaries.

Here is the GOOD NEWS: The opposite is true.

Conflicting feelings are just one symptom of many and we don’t need to worry about them. The confusing feelings will disentangle themselves if we let them be and concentrate on our bodies instead!

Which means in plain terms: our feelings follow our physical movements – our feelings derive from our bodies! Without even noticing we create our desperation, shame and feelings of guilt through physical tension. So as soon as we allow our bodies to move in a new, unfamiliar way, we slide out of victimhood.

Instead of trying too hard to feel our feelings, to understand and pacify them, we exit the emotional level and bring our attention to our bodies.

And again: The emotional level follows the physical level.

It doesn’t mean we don’t feel anything if we orientate ourselves in our bodies instead of our emotions, on the contrary: We notice that a real fight-mode in our nervous system will frighten us. We will shake and cry our kicks and blows, but these feelings will be alive and spontaneous – they appear organically throughout the process of our change, and they will mark our healing, not our stagnation.

With these 4 levels, to repair our boundaries…

..We will recover, within our thoughts and images, in our movements and feelings, from being a wounded human to becoming a calm being again. We unexpectedly flow back towards trusting our fellow species through our desire for sexual surrender and erotic contact with our world.

That’s the simple, final chord after stumbling around in the chaotic world of our trauma: longing to embark on our journey of reinforcing our boundaries – and if ‘About surrender’ can be our teacher for life, so be it.