Widening Your Riverbanks to Increase Capacity

Consider your life as a river. 

The water [of you…of your being here on this Earth] moves within the container of your riverbanks.

What moves in the river of you is emotions, feelings, sensations, hopes, dreams, and… the hard times too.

Now, imagine something that’s way too big flows through that river of life: a challenge that’s just too much;  an emotion that sends you over the edge; constant stress and anxiety; OVERWHELM. When these raw or sustained times of discord come, [anything that’s too much, too soon, or too fast] they breach through the edges of your river. 

The overwhelm causes a pool of energy to remain in that overflow. It could stagnate there. It could also fester, buzzing and teeming with energy. 

We call this the “trauma vortex.”

In somatic work, we are helping this overflow of energy to flow back into the river’s natural movement. 

How? We work together to notice and track the opposite of this energy in the body: your innate resourcing power. Through feeling the beautiful ways that you shine within your body, you unlock the door holding the waters from returning back. This resource stream gently meets the trauma energy and helps guide it back into the flow of life.

This is known as the “counter vortex.”

Through a gentle movement [titration … going slowwwwww], we visit the waters pooling outside your natural flow. Healing begins through the counter-vortex, through using the body’s intelligence to pendulate through resourcing and grounding, then back into the charged energy. 

This vortex gently meets the trauma energy and helps guide it back into the flow of life. Moving between activation (trauma vortex) and resource (counter-vortex) slowly restores balance.

Once those waters in outside your riverbanks can move again, something else happens: your riverbanks become wider. In other words, you have more capacity.

This means the nervous system’s capacity to tolerate and integrate high levels of activation expands. You can feel more, stay present longer, and recover faster from stress, without being overwhelmed.

Because life isn’t just calm and peaceful. There will be more challenges to face. 

Increasing capacity means increasing your ability to take on the next thing coming your way with strength and wisdom.