10 Nov Rewilding with Foundation Training
“Rewilding” may be a current buzz word, but that doesn’t diminish what it stands for – taking ourselves out of nature’s way.
It has been shown repeatedly, that when we stop imposing our impatient and goal-oriented will and start watching and listening, nature immediately begins to heal.
The process is a long one and never follows a straight or “tidy” path. Rather, it is a journey of constant adjustment and re-balancing, wondrous to behold, if we can just have the faith to trust it and let it teach us.
Foundation Training offers us this same approach to ourselves – rewilding our bodies!
We are so conditioned to ignore our body’s messages and warnings. We push through little niggles, medicate more insistent ones and then resort to cutting out, screwing together and replacing. We are taught to see a sore knee as just a sore knee; a frozen shoulder as a random and annoying thing that “just happens” to shoulders; a bunion as an unfortunate inheritance from Granny. The mainstream approach does not see the body as an integrated whole, where a sore knee, a frozen shoulder and a bunion are all symptoms of the same imbalance, which has been building and adapted to, throughout our lives.
As with rewilding nature, we need to suspend our preconceived expectations and our fear, and replace them with awe as we begin to see long-held tensions release, long-lost muscles take back their roles, long-squashed spaces expand.
As in nature, if we quieten our impatient and goal-oriented attitude and use FT to reconnect lost pathways, our bodies will heal.
Again, as in nature, the FT process is a never-ending adjustment and re-balancing and throws up new and surprising challenges as it unwinds – like peeling layer after layer off an onion.
It has astounded me how incredibly hard it is to trust this journey. I know it’s true, I really do, and yet when a new pain surfaces, it is so easy to lose faith and think “I’m stuck with this one. May have to get THIS one cut off!”
But I’m writing this now, because I think I’ve finally “got it”! Over 5 years of FT practice, my body has never failed me. It has thrown up pains, sometimes quite dramatic ones, but they have always been easy to understand as stepping stones on my unwinding journey, if I can just quieten my panic, listen and go gently. I see them like the sudden infestations of a particular weed in the rewilding of landscape. The usual response is to reach for the weed killers and take back control, but if we stay out of the way, nature’s journey will become clear and the weed will do it’s job and move on.
So, I encourage you to see FT as more than just a tick in the “weekly class “ or “daily exercise” box. Develop real faith in the body’s ability to find balance and let it lead you on a path of discovery, healing and awe.
Written by Sue McGovern (Remedial Massage Therapist)
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