An old client of mine has written a book, ‘Leading Beyond the Numbers’, for business people on feeling. She wonderfully, and generously, describes some learning from a set of sessions we did together, in this extract from the book, below:
“I still remember my first appointment with Steve Haines. I was in my early 40s and living in Geneva. The first thing he said to me was ‘you are too young to live like this’.
As I lay on a table in his office, he asked me how I felt. I replied, ‘I think I feel …’. He said something like ‘I didn’t ask you what you thought, I asked you how you felt. How do you feel?’. I didn’t know what he meant by that.
And more importantly I didn’t know how to describe what I was feeling. I began to tune into what my body was feeling. Then he asked me how my legs felt. ‘Useless’ I said. I didn’t think about that response, it was how I felt. It was also news to me.
For my homework he recommended that each night once I got to bed, to spend a couple of moments feeling my feet. It wasn’t about moving them or touching them but about directing my attention to them, of being aware of my feet. That was the beginning of a new journey.
After a few nights I began to dream of running. It was like I’d unlocked something and my legs or feet were saying to me remember when we used to run, we’d love to do that again. Within about a year of meeting Steve I ran my first and only, to date, half marathon.
Through working with Steve, we uncovered a likely root cause of this pain that I was feeling. When I was 11, I broke my elbow. Badly. I had to have 2 operations. In the first one they failed to put me back together again. In the second I had 2 pins inserted into my elbow to reattach the bones and more than 20 stitches.
I spent about a week in hospital and a further 6 weeks with my elbow in a cast. When the cast came off, I couldn’t straighten my arm out – it was locked at the elbow. I went through months of physiotherapy which was extremely painful at times.
Even now, almost 40 years later, I feel a shudder go through me just thinking about it.
During the recovery period the surgeon told me that if I ever broke my elbow again, I would lose the use of it permanently.
That is quite a thing to be told as a child. I took it to heart. That message was meaningful to me. I made sure that I prioritized protecting my elbow. I embodied that protective mechanism. I began to look through the world with that lens.
Steve explained the likelihood of what was going on for me like this: if you have a house alarm, it will usually sound when someone breaks in. However, my alarm was sounding when a leaf fell from the tree in my garden.
The pain I was feeling in my back was down to my extra vigilant nervous system. It was seeing danger everywhere and doing its best to keep me protected. This account needed a refresh. The past was not going to change but the future could.
I’m elated to say that pain disappeared. Not overnight. It took time to convince my body and brain that my elbow didn’t need extra protection. Even as I improved, I experienced flare ups, particularly when I travelled. As soon as I sat on a long-haul flight, I would feel that pain.
I learnt to reassure myself that I was safe. I did this by whispering quietly and compassionately to myself, inside, that I had not injured myself in any way and this pain was unnecessary. I was sending the message that I didn’t need to be on high alert – that the data that I was getting from my body was inaccurate. It worked. The pain would fade.
Steve explained to me that the nervous system is like an inner guard dog or a sort of threat detection system that is constantly checking is this safe or not. If it is not safe, we go into fight or flight or freeze states. We speed up to survive, or we collapse, disconnect, disassociate and feel stuck.
Steve told me that in his experience when people understand that these reactions are our own protective reflexes that are happening unconsciously in the background, it ‘is absolutely gold dust’. It helps us to understand that when we go into these states it is because of our individual nervous systems’ perception of whether we are safe or not.
Becoming more aware of your inner sensations and what they are trying to tell you requires paying attention to them and practice. There are many ways of doing this including mindfulness and meditation. told me that it takes practice to learn how to feel and to realize that: ‘Feelings aren’t a beacon of eternal truth. They’re a negotiation. They’re always real because they are a perception side of you, but it doesn’t mean that accurate, useful, or true. They’re things that need to be negotiated, that we can reframe and construct them differently. That might need help and support.’”
You can find Susan’s book here: Leading Beyond The Numbers.
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Upcoming Trainings with Steve Haines:
Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE®)
TRE Intro Days:
London: 23 Sep, 18 Nov
TRE 1 Year Trainings:
London: starts 25-27 Oct
Nice: starts Oct 2024 – with Sylvia Benoist (English with French translation).
Dublin: starts Oct 2024
Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy (BCST)
The Art of Touch 2 Year Trainings:
London: starts Oct 2024
Waterford: starts Oct 2024
Galway: starts Oct 2025
The Art of Touch Intro Events:
London (evening): 19 Sep
Galway (evening): 5 Sep
