In this post, I’d like to personally reflect on some of the things that were discussed in the most recent Squiggly Lives podcast I co-hosted. In this episode, we spoke with Sarah who is a trauma informed yoga teacher. It was such an insightful and fascinating episode, I highly recommend that you listen to the full episode below. You can also get full details of the body mapping exercise she shared, which I’ll talk a bit about in a minute.
After recording this episode I reflected on some of my own trauma which I’ve recently had closure on.
Earlier this year I had a miscarriage which was confirmed at my 12 week scan. The baby had died at just seven weeks, but my body didn’t recognise this and continued the pregnancy, so it was a huge shock when it happened. I’ve since found out it was due to a chromosome issue, which helped to give me closure.
However, at the time, I had all these mixed emotions from guilt to grief and anger. I was at times really confused about how to integrate everything that had happened.
As a yoga teacher, I was actually really surprised to want to do no movement after I started to miscarry. But as Sarah discusses in her podcast, there is a time and place for everything, and that’s OK.
After about a month I was able to start moving into my body again and processing what had happened through my body. However, to begin with, my head needed answers and explanations, and so what helped me initially, was to read books on miscarriage by pscyologists and psycotherapists.
When I was ready though, yoga and movement was incredibly helpful and I was able to really feel a huge release — particularly in my legs — when I started to work in a more embodied way.
If I’d have known about the following exercise which I’ll share with you, I also think this would have been incredibly useful.
How to do the body mapping exercise
So in this podcast Sarah shares an exercise which is really useful for helping to become more aware of what’s going on in your body. It could be referred to as a body mapping exercise. In the picture I’ve shared, I drew around my whole body so I had a life size outline drawn out on newspaper. However, the exercise can be done on a much smaller scale too — by simply drawing a small outline of your body.
You can then start to scan different parts of your body or maybe focus on or meditate on a part of your body that you’d like to focus on in more detail. And then using different coloured pens, you can start to colour in or draw onto the figure how you’re feeling.
For example, when I did this (or at least my take on the exercise), I used highlighter pens, and observed a sort of nervous wobbly feeling — almost like jelly — going from my throat area to my stomach, and this colour was almost definitely pinkish in tone.
Prior to doing this, I had no idea how I was really feeling in that moment, but as soon as I became aware of the different sensations and really gave myself the time to just feel — I felt so much better. I think the moment I allowed myself to just feel into what was going on, I was able to feel self acceptance.
You might choose to do this as a more general exercise, where you map your whole body. Or as Sarah also mentions in the podcast, you can also do it for specific areas in the body too if you’d like to give a part of your body more focus.
You can listen to the full podcast episode below and if you’d like to hear more about the body mapping exercise I’ve talked about here, you can find it at 21 minutes 44 seconds in.
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