Even Toes Know

My little pinky toe on my left foot screamed at me. Not one long scream, but several single, desperate shrieks, as if someone were being attacked. The screams were in the form of sharp, lightening rod-like zaps inside my right pinky toe, causing my foot to jerk each time as if someone touched it with a red-hot poker. On the first zap, I looked down, annoyed and ready to swat whatever asshole was poking me, but there was nothing and no one there. What the? What is happening? Stop it! my mind screamed like a child with limited words.

After the fourth zap, each one about five seconds apart, I blurted more words but out loud this time, “Something is hurting my pinky toe!” My husband, who was in the kitchen making dinner, responded silently with questioning, scrunched eyebrows.

“I know it’s crazy, but it’s like something is stinging it!” Because my voice was tinged with hysteria, he offered a few words this time: “Hmmm? Maybe you walked on it wrong or something?” I scanned his face and the tone of his voice for even the slightest hint of sarcasm or humor at my expense, but there was only a sense of concern that felt oddly sweet and comforting. My energy shifted, opening a space to transfer this compassion inward.

I began a dialogue in my mind with my pinky toe. Okay, Okay! I hear you. You’ve got my attention. What’s going on? What do you need? I sat with my questions wafting about in my brain, knocking up against other, more insistent and sarcastic questions about my sanity. And just as I felt an uncomfortable chuckle of embarrassment rising in my throat, another thought drifted in like a cool breeze on a stifling hot day: “Just need to be heard.”

I felt those words ripple in a soft wave of energy up through my torso, swirl up the sides of my neck and around my ears, settling back down into a warm pool in the middle of my chest. The zaps in my pinky toe subsided. It was as if some part of me just needed to be seen, not even completely understood but just given space to be.

I sat, feeling pleasantly stunned at what had just transpired. My inner question as to why this happened was immediately answered by remembering a recent discussion with my husband about our house hunting escapades and realizing the ideas I had been hesitant to share were on the verge of turning into resentment at not being expressed. This moment of somatic-awareness-turned-inward-inquiry helped me to realize I needed to find a way to voice my opinions even if they might cause a conflict.

I eventually found my words for a more candid house-hunting discussion with my husband, but really, this opening, this level of somatic awareness was something I have been intentionally working toward for nearly 10 years now. Instead of instantly resisting the existence of a pain, ache, troubling question, or need, I found myself welcoming a body sensation as a source of valuable information. I was genuinely curious about it, posing questions, and making space for the answers. It was a small but powerful moment, proof all those Jungian concepts I learned back in my depth psychology graduate program—dropping in, inhabiting the body, tapping into the psyche from a grounded place for inner explorations—were finally taking root.

During my somatic awareness journey, my mother’s health declined, and I became her caregiver for two years until she passed away in 2022. My mother had been on her own journey of exploration, practicing the healing arts of Reiki and Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP). She was an amazing source of unending support and inspiration for me and losing her was a painful journey. I was thrown into an abyss of shame, regret, and deep sadness, a whirlwind of heartbreak that absolutely unmoored me. It was a deep grief that demanded tending and parsing and exploration. But before I could move into processing this experience, I had to find a way to truly ground myself. I wanted answers to resolve these deep emotional aches, and thankfully, my therapist repeatedly asked that magical question, “Where do you feel this in your body?” As a trained sensorimotor psychotherapist, she works from the perspective the body is a gateway to understanding and eventually partnering with and transforming patterns of dysfunction and emotional turmoil.

Out of habit, I initially responded to her questions with how I felt or what I was thinking, spiraling into old narratives stuck in the cognitive realm. She gently and consistently brought me back to the body. So many of our sessions consisted mainly of learning and practicing embodiment skills. She led me through cycles of noticing and describing sensory details with more specificity until I felt more embodied and grounded in the present moment. I learned how simply pressing my heels alternately into the ground anchored me with a visceral sense of how the rest of my body was connected to that movement. Gently twisting in my torso combined with alternating arm stretches skyward eased my tension and helped me see me how vital tending my nervous system was to our work. We often practiced a variation of the cyclic breath, inhaling through my nose to fill my chronically hardened stomach with air before letting my breath out in a long, slow extended exhale through my mouth.

Focused breaths, a soft, dropped belly, sensory system check-ins, and placing attention on my back body became essential somatic tools, allowing me to remain present so I could metabolize raw emotions and sensations rather than automatically escape into the land of unregulated pain and disconnection.

A year or so ago, as part of a graduate certificate program in Applied Somatic Jungian Psychology studies at Pacifica Institute, we were assigned homework involving simply bringing awareness to a daily task like brushing our teeth or making a cup of tea. We were to observe our movements, stop periodically during the activity to notice what was happening in our body, and then take notes about the experience. I recall how irritated I felt at just having to take the time to watch myself doing something so banal—it felt more like a waste of time.

Thank goodness my compulsive need to always complete all homework assignments to the best of my ability pushed me through my resistance because those observations led to so many eye-opening truths about the somatic “conversations” I was having with myself. I realized I had pushy, herky-jerky movements when I was doing, well, pretty much any activity. I was being so harsh, either treating myself like I was a dawdling nitwit who couldn’t get her act together or was dealing with a non-compliant 2-year-old and I was the exasperated, irritated mother prodding her and yanking her along from one chore to another.

I realized I shampooed my hair with painful scratchy fingers and eyes squeezed so tight I saw bursts of light. I chastised myself over any “misstep” I made, things like not being able to carry all the groceries in one load from the car, getting all the way upstairs only to realize I forgot to bring up the towels to put in the wash, or having to make a second tour of the kitchen because I forgot to put a fork in the dishwasher. My unkind, ill-tempered impatience with myself lurked in my unconscious and under the surface of all my movements, continuously sending my nervous system into fight, flight, or freeze. Someone was verbally and emotionally abusing me and that someone was me!

I met this exasperated, irritated, drill-sergeant part of myself many years ago in therapy when a bad breakup impacted my ability to maintain a freelance writing career and complete a graduate degree. She’s an expert planner, negotiator, and project coordinator. She can predict and foretell ANY and ALL possible scenarios to be on the lookout for, and her goal is to always be SUPER efficient and effective! I am in total awe of her and know she’s the driving force behind so many of my achievements. She’s amazing, but she’s also inhumanely demanding. Letting her have the reins means I will blast toward my goals but with my body and heart exhausted and dragging behind. Her bootcamp approach also projected outward to friends and family, leaving me feeling isolated and lonely. I really thought we worked out an understanding those many years ago in therapy. Clearly, she believed I hadn’t held up my end of the bargain, covertly taking back the jobs of CEO, Director, and Punisher.

Last year, in a depth psychology training focused on sustaining inspiration and creativity, we were introduced to the concept of body mapping as a means of increasing awareness of and tending nervous system responses—a key component in being able to tap into our imagination and creativity. Recording somatic signals like my toe scream has helped me to connect these bodily sensations to patterns of thoughts, beliefs, and feelings. I use this continuously evolving body map as a way of learning the language of my own uniquely habituated Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) responses.

Early years of cultural and social conditioning formed these brilliant nervous system responses, constructing default strategies for survival. Whether they reflect factual information in the present or are based on clingy beliefs from past experiences, knowing what my body is reacting to helps me to gently reset and reorient my system so that I may move through the world in a harmonious collaboration between mind and body rather than be at odds and fighting with a system that is only attempting to protect me. Honoring the underlying good intentions of my ANS, which really, is a lovely form of self-compassion, became an essential first step toward choosing my actions instead of defaulting to old, often destructive habits.

This inner journey has been thrilling, enlightening, and full of love and self-compassion. Francis Weller, author of The Wild Edge of Sorrow, has a lovely phrase he uses when speaking about how to accompany our grief: “Be your own apprentice.” I have poured countless hours into the study of so many other subjects, people, art forms, etc., but I have never considered what a wild and wonderful field of study existed inside myself.

I soon realized limiting the friendly fire from that well-intentioned but wildly over-controlling part of myself involved instituting daily embodiment and mindfulness practices and making space for unfurling a backlog of ignored somatic messages. I signed up for every movement, breath, or embodiment practice, workshop and training I could find and know my ongoing work of grounding my presence in my breath and body, being intentional with self-compassion, and inserting ample space in my schedule for personal inquiry has translated into more grace for myself and others, enriched connections with family and friends, bold moves in a new career path, and a greater awareness and compassion for all our journeys and interconnectedness in this life.

So, ultimately, I feel grateful for my pinky toe’s SOS, for the odd twang of music my too-tight iliotibial band makes when it flicks across my hip bone with each step, and even the ache of my tightened psoas muscles when my ANS thinks I am in danger and has clenched my lower back for too long. Whatever somatic messages appear, I am doing my best to read them like the lifesaving guideposts they are, drawing me in to continue learning about this incredible, mysterious landscape of me.