Hips Like Honey
The first time my hips, sacrum, and pelvic bowl locked down was when it became clear to me that my father was dying, which was about a year before he passed. That was two years ago, and I have struggled with that tightness off and on ever since.
Last Christmas I had what my miracle-worker massage therapist described as a “healing crisis”. I had received an electric lumbar massager for Christmas and leaned into it so long and hard that something did finally release, yet a pocket of fluid also formed around that spot, deep under the skin, and looked like bread dough rising, which was alarming and unsightly in the mirror for a couple weeks. I thought that was the end of the lock down, but it was just a breather.
I took an online yoga course called Hips Like Honey by Manuela Mitevova, which I highly recommend, even though I didn’t stick with it. Maybe I’ll go back to it. I saw a local chiropractor for a bit, too, but his methods felt tired to me, which matched his office, and those bills added up in a way that didn’t seem proportionate to the benefits. (I worked in chiropractic for several years in my 30’s and was comparatively underwhelmed.) Maybe I’ll try again with another chiro.
Over time, the tightness seemed to solve itself and only became an issue on the rare occasion that I threw down some spontaneous twerking in my living room, just to get a laugh out of my family. Let’s just say that my tight hips & twerk don’t go together, and I lose my dignity every time I try to make them.
This holiday season, the tightness returned with its usual somatic messaging. You are storing emotions and stress in your Swadhisthana chakra, your sacral. This is the location of emotional balance in the body. Being an Enneagram 4 (you can learn more about the enneagram here) and an Emotional Generator in Human Design, I have very little of that. I can swing wildly from feeling every emotion available on the spectrum to being emotionally closed off and unavailable on any given day. (This is one reason I need spirituality. My life focus and recall of those principles and practices helps keep me on at least a little more of an even keel.)
I have heard it said that the hips are like the body’s kitchen junk drawer. You can find all your stored emotions that you don’t know what to do with in there. It’s the location where we subconsciously and energetically tuck our deepest vulnerabilities and oldest griefs. The psoas muscle, located in that region, is considered the “muscle of the soul” in the Toaist tradition because it holds our trauma and stress in storage until we are able to deal with it. Aren’t we lucky?
Ironically, it also has hefty responsibilities to ensure that we function day-to-day, move forward, remain upright, are stabilized, breathing well (via its connection to the diaphragm), and that our center of gravity is protected. It contracts when we are attacked, triggered, or retraumatized, activating muscle memory of what it learned the last time we were in those states. It quite literally curls us into a ball when we need emotional protection, hence how when I wake each day, I’m starting to look and move like I’ve reached the latter stages of life and need to be stretched straight and oiled from the inside-out. (Please do your own research on the somatic connections with the psoas and this area of the body - it’s an eye-opening rabbit hole.)
Anyway, I find myself asking myself, what happened this time? Why are you so upset? God, that just feels like the most loaded question! But like we must occasionally do with that kitchen junk drawer, I know I need to take a look and reconsider what I’m holding onto.
This is tricky for someone like me. I’m not a person who gives zero fucks. I was recently talking to a family member whom I love, but who is quite different from me. I liken her to a Type A golden retriever. She’s got a lot of love to give and she’s fairly black and white about it, dominating, loud, impatient, fast, traditional/conservative, opinionated to the point of positioning herself as a lay expert on many topics. I suspect she’s an enneagram 8, if that makes sense to those who know about the enneagram. But again, a BIG, loving, contagious, “girl eats world” energy. In talking about the stresses of life she said, “I just want you to remember to focus on what’s important.”
This took me aback. What does that even mean? Understanding some of the differences in our consciousness, I understood that she was implying, you can’t save the world. Actually, she said something of that ilk a few sentences later. She was basically saying, in her own loving way, “Just focus on your little circle and your family and what’s in your control.” But as I told her, I’m not made that way. I’m an Interfaith Minister and a Spiritual Counselor and an Intuitive Medium for a reason. In part, I am here to serve suffering and concerns of the world that don’t just belong to me and my little circle. My circle of care extends far beyond the personal and into the universal in a way that I can see how the universal is actually very personal. It’s the humanitarian within me who is acutely aware of how interconnected and similar we all are. It’s the emotional generator within me, too.
Ironically, in Human Design, we emotional generators have defined sacral energy, which means we have emotional authority, a certain kind of superpower. But we experience a lot of emotional highs and lows that influence our responses, choices, and insights. And we have to honor those emotional waves because it’s how we gain deeper understanding about life and ourselves. Unlike other Human Design types, we have access to a constant presence of emotional energy and awareness that keeps us tuned into parts of life, ourselves, and pain that others fear and avoid like the plague. We are the archetypal counselors, therapists, social workers, spiritual mentors, healers, non-profit humanitarians, creative emo artists, etc… (If you don’t know about Human Design yet, you can begin that fascinating, life-long self-study here: Free Quantum Human Design Chart - Get Your Free Human Design Chart or Human Design and Gene Keys - Gene Keys. These are my two favorite resources, but there are many others.)
And of course, my own traumas and some of the compassionate values instilled in me by my empathetic and empathic mother have informed my orientation to help “save the world” and expand my circle of care far beyond my little life. My personal history and destiny have forged a way of being within me that is both my strength and my weakness. I give a lot of fucks, and sometimes I pay the price in my body.
Why are you upset, Kendall?
Well, here’s the thing…
I can’t keep my heart off the genocide in Palestine, and I don’t understand anyone that can. For over 100 days, my heart has broken for the innocent in that land, especially the children. I’ve gotten to a point that I don’t want to hear any of my peers in the helping fields talk about trauma if they aren’t also talking about the hellacious suffering in Gaza and the extreme trauma occurring in the beloved children of Gaza, especially. It’s a disassociation that I can’t stand. I don’t know how anyone with a beating heart can look away from that and not try to do something, anything, to help raise awareness and speak against it, especially not people who claim to be spiritual or religious. In fact, it is tuning me into genocides around the world. We cannot sit idly by in neutrality, and for those who do, I can only see it as a product of a kind of soul-sicknesses which most don’t even know they have. It is a gross disconnect from consciousness, one that I am constantly mourning for humanity and swimming upstream against.
My 10-year-old soul-mate dog, Bodhi, is in his own struggle. His spleen needs to be removed as soon as possible, but only after we address some bulging discs in his spine with steroids and all the forms of hands-on healing that I can bring him. Once the spleen is out, it will be biopsied for cancer (lymphoma). This is a vulnerability that I can’t process at the moment. He’s my ride or die (I prefer no die), and I have never been cared for or understood by an animal so well in all my life. He’s always been so young at heart and experiencing the complications of aging with him is a drag for us both.
My mom and stepfather have been through the damn ringer the last few months, going through their own losses and physical vulnerabilities. They live just down the road from me, are retired, and I’m not used to seeing struggle pile up on them this way. It just brings the vulnerability of life right up to surface and makes me reconsider how to best spend my time with them and how to be a better helper who is willing to step out of my own, complex interior world in order to exhibit care and extend help. And of course, the catastrophic thoughts come; there just never seems to be enough time with the people we love, and we never seem to use that time together perfectly. I want to take away their struggles.
Marriage can be hard. Great marriages like mine can be hard! I’m married to my best friend and my soulmate, but we’re in one of those life spots where we’re just not as frequently on the same page as we’ve been in other times. Figuring that out can feel frustrating and can become ugly at times, even as we continue to choose each other daily and hash out the ways we each need to evolve and evolve together.
Even though this time in our relationship isn’t marked by alarm bells, we are feeling the squeeze of needing to grow and not always at the same time and also needing to cultivate more patience, kindness, and better communication. My husband, he admits, gets on automatic pilot, and I end up sensing and experiencing the problems of that before he does, which makes me relentless in addressing what needs to be brought into awareness and transformed. I push for change and not always in the best ways, and therein lies my inner work.
What comes out of my internal junk drawer is unfavorable thoughts about men (and my husband is one of those men) - so many self-protective judgements about the generalized shortcomings of male consciousness and disappointments about the ways men (my husband) can get “stuck and stupid”. I find myself wanting to be alone more, dreaming about a space that is void of masculine energy all together, and falling into the realm of my lower consciousness where there is always more healing to be had.
We are both engaged in the dialogue and the process now, but getting to that stage of direct, intentional, cohesive engagement can sometimes be like two giants sparring off, until we are each willing to get to the heart and get accountable. This is the guru of marriage, and we do have one I wouldn’t trade for anything in the world.
The tectonic plates of a couple of my longest friendships are shifting. I believe this is, in part, the natural fallout of some personal healing I’ve done in the last year around my residual patterns of people-pleasing. No matter what their stance is, I feel the Universe/Spirit has heard my intentions to heal that and the energy is no longer a match.
I read something on social media at 3 in the morning that said, “Let yourself disappoint people, especially if you need to take care of your mind or because your intuition is telling you that what they want does not align with who you are becoming. Betraying yourself is not virtuous. Remember, no one can feel your heart better than you can.” That resonated completely.
In my Human Design chart, it shows that for me friendship is a life-long commitment, and I have always said so, so this feels especially sad. But what I am finally seeing is that I have betrayed myself in both of these friendships trying to give them what they want in different ways, while asking for little in return. This has come to feel self-neglectful. I trust that life is giving me what I need to grow, but it is accompanied by loss.
Why are you upset, Kendall? These five things and dozens more. My mom told me a story about being in primary school around the time of my parents’ divorce. Apparently, I was getting very upset in class, so upset that I made all the other kids cry, just like passing a cold. I imagine us all crying in class, riding a tidal wave of grief, frustration, chaos, helplessness, and stress that I may have initiated or tuned into and brought forth, but which none of us understood. They sent me to begin a relationship with the school guidance counselor at that time. This caring about a whole lot started very young.
Life is a river of upsets and joys. Sometimes we’re in the boat coasting through. Sometimes we’re swimming in it with jacked up hips as we try to manage the whitewater. Sometimes the whitewater is what causes the problems in the first place. Other times we’re on our backs floating, hips like honey, waiting on God to bring the sun back as we watch the peace of clouds without a care in the world. This is life and this is where I am in it. Naming it is the first step in helping the energies move and promoting the healing and evolution that always comes.