My somatic coaching experience through words and pictures.

Micaela Di Julio

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My somatic coaching experience through words and pictures.

Even though It’s been months since my first body-oriented coaching session, the experience is as fresh as wet paint brush strokes on a canvas. Why? Because as my body discovered new sensations through this body-oriented coaching, my mind documented the process through words and pictures.

I found Ben J Munday through Medium a couple of months back. He read my article about women in leadership and told me how he works to empower women professionally and personally through somatic coaching. He offered me several sessions, it was so insightful, I wanted to share my experience here with others.

Trust me I’m no Frida Kahlo or Van Gogh. I wrote this piece as an honest testimony about my somatic training experience through journaling. Let me take you on a journey of drawings and handwritten notes to show you that the wonderful benefits of journaling and somatic coaching are accessible to everyone who wants to give it a try.

What the somatic coaching experience meant for me

Unlike other forms of coaching where you sit down in a chair as somebody attempts to pick your brain, somatic coaching is about establishing active communication with my whole body- and this was what made it such a breakthrough for me.

It was through somatic coaching that I noticed the signals my body was sending to my brain. No, I’m not just talking about recurring thought patterns, but sensations and reactions. Somatic coaching made me realize that my mind could not simply look the other way this time. It was time for me to really start listening and observing what was going on.

My life before somatic coaching

I wrote this a couple of days before my first session:

I keep wanting to feed that insatiable animal inside of me. I get tangled up and demand from myself more than I can give. It seems like I can never accomplish what I’m aiming for. I meditate, but my thoughts devour me. I’m trying to balance my life but no matter how hard I try, things just burst and scatter.

Maybe you’ve experienced something similar before, the mind and body as two different people. The mind is the spoiled and overachieving child constantly asking for attention, and the other, the body is the neglected and quiet child. My body sacrificed hours of movement sitting on a chair, feeling stuck and useless to serve my mind’s necessities. Why? Because it was the mind that was constantly demanding my body to sit down and work.

This repetitive behavior only caused my mind to feel overwhelmed and anxious and my body forgotten and useless. It happened so often that I quickly forgot how to even listen or recognize some of my physical needs. Little did I know that my body and mind could actually work together to gain strength, reduce anxiety, and just simply live cohesively!

Somatic Coaching: the trifecta of personal power

I’ve always journaled, drawing is not my strength. I’ve never taken an anatomy class, but somatic coaching planted a newfound desire for me to want to draw and depict my body. I want to share my drawings and journaling today to encourage others to start exploring themselves.

Within his coaching sessions, Ben incorporates techniques based on thoughts, feelings, and actions in what he calls the “trifecta of personal power”. To get a wholesome perspective about my coaching session I’ve divided my experience into these three categories:

· Feeling (Somatic): 'Soma' means Body in Greek. In this part of the coaching experience, we listened to the body, its sensations, and triggering factors.

·Action (Embodiment): This is the part that impacted me the most. Recognizing patterns and reactions through movement and postures. Understanding the way I thought, felt, and ultimately behaved in the world.

· Thinking (cognition): We tapped into my different thinking patterns and unhelpful belief systems. We covered topics like my insecurities, confidence, language, future goals, and motivations in life.

The somatic experience through feelings and sensations

During my first session, Ben guided me to attune with my body’s unheard sensations. These are some of the sensations that I experienced when paying attention to my body:

Pressure around my chest area.
Lots of back pain and tension around my neck
As if something was stuck in my throat.
A certain detachment from my mind and body.
Things wobbling up in my stomach

As we continued our somatic training, these sensations transformed into:

A sense of openness and comfort around the chest area.
My stomach settled
The thing stuck in my throat “shattered”.
A heightened sense of awareness about the different parts of my body. From my jaw structure to my toes.

Click image for more of Mica Di Julio’s words

In my strange metaphoric mind, I felt as if something was stuck in my throat. As the session continued, I felt how this strange golden egg slowly shattered into tiny pieces. It was as if the thousand thoughts and emotions that had solidified into a sort of rock finally shattered. Once they were shattered, they could finally be processed and “digested”.

The embodiment experience: understanding my actions.

Starting with the first session and throughout the rest of my somatic training, I gained an acute sense of awareness about my body, its reactions, and my behaviors. otherwise known as “My embodiment”.This experience wasn’t about judging myself as if I was doing something good or bad. It was simply becoming aware of my reactions and behaviors, all I had to do here is observe.

My newly observed embodied behaviors and reactions:

Protection: I clutched my hands together around the chest area whenever I talked about my insecurities.
Avoidance: I laughed whenever I had to ask myself about my troubles and problems.
Distraction: I fidgeted with my hair whenever I felt I could not find the words to what I was trying to say.

The cognitive experience: recognizing my thought patterns:

As I started recognizing the sensations and actions taking place throughout my somatic coaching. I began detecting the recurring thought patterns, limiting beliefs, and other cognitive components that my sneaky little mind was constantly trying to hide from me:

These are some of the breakthrough thoughts that gained new-found importance in my life:

That I was taking out the “pleasure” component from the things I enjoyed the most, like my job, my relationship, and time spent with family and friends.
Feeling stuck in my professional career was simply because I had not healed things from my past.
I felt “unbalanced” was because I was being pulled away from my needs.
Feeling I was failing others because my cup was empty.
I constantly pressured myself to perfectionism.
That this constant pressure I put on myself was the same one that was obstructing me to turn in my best quality work.
That I was detached from my body and needed to start moving it!

Images inspired from the emergent nature of the body-MicaDiJulio

Through somatic coaching, I learned about the importance of self-awareness. We can become more genuine and authentic by aligning our thoughts, feelings, and actions with what is true and right for us, as an individual. We have the choice to ask ourselves: “Do I want this or try something different?” That is what empowerment really is: becoming autonomous, free, and comfortable in our own skin.

Somatic coaching taught me that when we sincerely connect with our humanity- our darkness and light, and all the things that we experience generate deeper and meaningful connections with the world around us.

No, you don’t have to choose mind, body, or spirit. The thing is learning to integrate them all to truly get to know yourself and the wonderful world that surrounds you.

Let’s close this up with my last diary entry:

As I dive deep into my darkness, I know very well that my role in this life is to learn from it. I can now see and notice that it was never darkness, after all, it was simply the unknown. I’m not afraid of opening those locked-up doors. Even if the ghosts that were lingering inside decide to come barging in. I know this is just the beginning and there are still a lot of fears I must face- and not hide. I want to: as I told Ben a couple of days ago to “digest this”. It’s no longer about devouring life. I want to savor every bite.