I’ve always had a stooped forward posture at my neck. I have worked hard for 30 years to straighten my posture. I have done so much emotionally and physically, but still I stooped forward. Until 3 months ago….
In the last 3 months I’ve had two experiences that are an amazing in their effect. I have had 100’s of experiences like this in the past, but these 2 are really good to share as together because of their lasting physical effect!
The 1st experience was me 3 months ago regressing to age 5. In the 2nd experience, just 3 weeks ago, I regressed to a ‘past life’ & being a rather interesting animal…
5 Year Old Me I teach a movement class outside. In it I teach people how to express themselves more fully & openly, & to meet each other at a deeper level, with spaciousness & openness. One of the people in my class, Jon is really getting this. So 3 months ago I asked him to receive my energy as I ran at him and grabbed his wrists. So I ran at Jon & grabbed his wrists. He proceeded to throw me around the field. He did so with openness, kindness and power. This meant I wasn’t hurt by him throwing me & encouraged to run at him faster and stronger. Very quickly I was running at him full pelt, allowing myself to go for him more & more uncontrolled. This is where it gets interesting….
As I ran at Jon my head began to hunch forward, & I found myself shouting ‘you ******* bastard’ at him and screaming. I began to feel as if I was swinging my fists at him wildly, even though I was actually grabbing his wrists. Rather than stop or reign myself in, as I ran at him I asked myself ‘what is this?’ Suddenly a very clear memory appeared… 5 year-old me in the playground, a 6 year old boy being nasty, me losing my temper totally & running at him swinging my fists. The older, bigger boy responded by putting his hand on my head, holding me at bay & laughing at me. My head was hunched forward against his hand, my fists swinging wildly at him with all my might, but hitting only air. As I ran at Jon and he easily threw me, I found myself rolling in the grass again & again, feeling what I had felt age 5… all the rage, frustration, the underlying hurt & injustice. Then the resulting despair, hopelessness, and feelings of being powerless and ineffectual. My decision was immediate, to let these emotions out and express them as I ran at Jon and was thrown by him. So I screamed with all my might as I ‘swung’ at Jon, and screamed at my powerlessness as I rolled. 15 minutes of this and I was exhausted, and couldn’t get up. Jon sat next to me, put his hand on my solar plexus area, and kept his awareness open & spacious as my being adjusted to what I had just done.
When I stood up I felt wonderfully energized, more relaxed & supple than I have for years. My awareness felt open, spacious, at peace & free of my thinking mind. Wonderful. I then shared this experience with my class.
Past Life Me Three weeks ago I did some cranio-sacral work on myself. It involved lying on a treatment couch and allowing myself to move in a non-conscious way. Having done this for years, both with myself and others, it is something that I do very easily & naturally. Quickly I began to move, & found myself rolling of the couch onto the floor, where I proceeded to crawl around on all fours. Then I did an interesting thing. I found myself pushing a chair across the room with my head as I crawled forward. As in the 1st experience, I reacted to myself doing this not with judgment or thoughts, but by moving towards what I was doing with an attitude of spacious asking… ‘what is this?’ What immediately came into my mind was one word…
Warthog.
So I became a warthog, and pushed with my head. I felt like it was all I knew how to do in my life, to put my head down and push! I allowed myself to really enter into the world of my warthog, and it came to me that my life was so hard. I was born with legs that didn’t work like the other warthogs, so I was always struggled and was ridiculed by my warthog tribe. So all I could do was be on my own, and be the best wart hog I could, to put my head down and push. Then I went to my death, where I was attacked by my own tribe of warthogs, killed then eaten. I felt the loneliness, the humiliation, the feelings of unworthiness and despair. What it is to be the runt, the disabled, the disowned. And to be turned on by my own kind. So sad!
I then lay there in my clinic, having let that all be here, and felt the connection with this life, where I had grown up in a family of emotional violence, where I had felt the same feelings. And I realised in a whole-being way that all through my life of being alone, feeling powerless, & to people turning on me, the reaction I know is to put my head down and keep pushing forward, doing my best. And by allowing, listening to and caring about this me, & the warthog me, I felt a cloud lift and dissolve, & the warmth of the sun on me. On some parts of me maybe for the first time ever.
Then I stood up, and felt fundamentally altered, freed up, and again softer, more relaxed. Amazingly I found myself not stooping forward.
In the 3 weeks since, I have found myself still to be standing a good 5-10cm straighter with my head, with no effort at all. This is a remarkable validation of my warthog experience. Also I dont feel like putting my head down and charging scared, more like look standing straight and looking around relaxed.
As I write this it all still feels incredibly real. I feel the warthog memory as being as important as my childhood memories. Maybe I’m just using an imaginary warthog to express my painful childhood. Maybe. However to my consciousness right now, the warthog is real, and I feel good honouring his life as real and just as important as this life.
Maybe we don’t die If my warthog is real, then he wasn’t actually killed. How can he have been killed if he was me and I am still here today, in a different body? This realisation is amazingly freeing. It changes everything. If true, then no-one can kill us. Life isn’t just biological dog eat dog where we are all fundamentally terrified of death. It’s more a journey to realisation of who we really are.
I’m glad I found my inner warthog.