finding flow
Movement has always dug me out of difficult spots in my life, be that physical or emotional unrest. I spent years and years letting off steam, grooving and getting down in many spaces - from tiny underground matchbox clubs to my bedroom. It was unconscious at the time but in hindsight, spending many a year in off the grid nightclub spaces was my movement therapy. Fast forward 20 odd years and movement is still a heavy featured in my life - though it shows up differently for me now.
We all have these incredible vessels, called bodies, that we live in. Often we don’t even think about them, let alone honour and respect them. And I mean really really honour them. In my clubbing younger years I had been pretty mindless as to how I was moving my body. I got into patterns of not listening and this unfortunately resulted in plenty of ickiness from back spasms, to neural pain to snapped ligaments. These days I am more mindful of the moves I bring into my body.
What I love about integrating a daily fluid freeform and joyful movement practice, is that it taps into your nervous system and your energy system in a way that is able to miraculously shapeshift your distresses, pains, tensions and tightnesses in your body, often within minutes, sometimes within moments.
When I started listening to my body and the plethora of joy and free flowing codes that live deep down in our cells, our tissues, our DNA, I started to really connect with my authentic and most joyous self.
I am a naturally led intuitive - although I spent many years fumbling around with dumbing down my natural instincts. In my view, intuition, joy and flow are a beautiful trio that compliment. For some people, these ingredients can serve as the antithesis of sadness, depression, melancholy, and anger.
When I initially became more intentional about integrating more flow and joy into my life, what happened was the noise dialled down on those “should” voices, the chatter around the cants, nots and all of that non-starter wordage inside me began to diminish. Those thoughts began to ask questions of “How can I bring more flow into my day? What can I practically do to feel more flow? What brings me daily joy?” I am not saying that those other thoughts are no longer around, but they are a lot less invasive in my mind than they used to be.
Finding flow and tapping into daily joy is born directly out of my desire to now choose to swim with the tides of my own personal and professional rhymes and rhythms. When I follow the sense of what actually feels good, I spend less time on social media, more time moving my spine, less time focusing on people whose vibes feel off to my soul and more time living my fluid joyful truth, combined with a strong dose of music.
I know my overwhelmed, susceptible nature coupled with a sensitive nervous system means that burn out and information overload are never too far from my experience. The tools I choose to incorporate into my day to day experience have a direct impact on my ability to dive in and out of social media, and support the tasks in hand of building and sustaining a business, as well as living a life that is oozing ease, joy, grace and flow.
So what are the tools of flow and joy I hear you ask?
Motioning the spine, movement expression, music (this is the current playlist that’s on rotation) and grounding myself via breath, play and laughter. I love a bit of smiling at strangers and a lot of random laughter.
Nicola Geismar