From Freeze to Creative Flow

A Somatic Perspective on Melting Internal Blocks

Hi dear one ♡

Ever feel like you’re dying to move forward with your projects and brilliant ideas, but you can’t?

You have the knowledge, the raw material and the lived experience, but you find it literally impossible to bring it together in a somewhat coherent vision?

The task of choosing, bringing clarity and creating structure in your goals feels like death?

And every time you get a mental glimpse of a possible way forward, you can’t begin to move towards it sustainably, without burning yourself out?

If you’ve answered yes to any of these, then you’ll want to read on.

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I’ve been deep in exploration over the last years, eager to figure out why it’s so difficult to create aligned movement in my life—in career, money, relationships.

Mentally, I knew I was capable of more, and that I wanted a life deeply chosen. A life where I am an active creator— not someone to whom life just happens.

Through discovering the world of somatics, I understood that I had been stuck in a state of functional freeze for the majority of time— functioning “well” on the outside, but completely disconnected from my truth and my gifts on the inside.

As I’ve explored in my previous article Becoming More of You, authenticity can only thrive when the system feels safe. And so does creativity.

For me to stay connected to my environment and people, i.e. to be safe, I needed to sacrifice who I was, in part.

This resulted in shrinking, staying small and minimising my self-expression to what felt safe.

Fast forward to today, I’m here to tell you: it doesn’t have to stay this way.

This brilliant strategy, we can call it adaptation, had its time and place, and we thank it dearly for bringing us this far.

Now, we can look to create and strengthen new ways of operating that are in alignment with our truest expression— because this is what we are here for.

Functional freeze can be described as a state in which you might live “a normal life”— you go about your day, are in employment, have relationships and engage in social activities, but parts of you are frozen or collapsed— totally unable to express themselves, draw boundaries or find movement in a desired direction.

Due to trauma, neglect or just life happening, the nervous system learnt this pattern so deep that it became the default mode of being.

This internal conflict of wanting to experience certain things but not being able to move in their direction, is deeply painful and exhausting—leaving us to experience symptoms like chronic fatigue, stuckness and a general sense of life being too much.

In this scenario, our felt experience is one of powerlessness, lack and stagnation.

But here is a truth you might need to hear: That thing you truly want in your life? It wants you back.

You just need to become resourced enough to let it in.

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How might we go about this?

We need to show our body and our psyche that another way is possible, by offering a different felt experience where it is now safe to move.

FREEZE = LACK OF DESIRED MOVEMENT

FREEZE → DESIRED MOVEMENT

By showing our system how to resource itself—internally or externally, we help it gently let go of those protective strategies. In doing so, we can begin to engage in movement that comes from safety— not survival.

This, in turn, allows us to finally be able to create and express authentically.

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In my exploration of this work, and with the help of incredible coaches and teachers, I’ve come to identify a few steps needed in order to move from freeze to creative flow and self-expression.

Here I name them, and briefly share what they each serve:

1. CREATING SAFETY - we arrive in the body and notice what’s present; we orient outwards in our environment; we anchor in the here and now.

2. BUILDING CAPACITY - we explore layers and textures of sensations; we feel into discomfort/pleasure; we attune to subtle rhythms; we notice where movement already happens in the body, i.e. via the breath.

3. OPENING THE GATES TO FLOW - we begin to invite conscious movement, in small ways and bigger ways; we ask: if this feeling could make a sound or a shape, what would that look like; we hang out at the edges of our comfort and explore what’s possible.

4. EMBODIED ACTION - we ponder: what is a reasonable ask of my body right now? what is the next best step, no matter how small? can I allow myself to take it?

Personal share: I am just coming out of a freeze episode. As I recognise it very well, I knew not to push.

I applied the concepts I just talked about, surrendered to the process and experienced a gradual return to creativity— not through force or trying to “figure it out”, but through working with the wisdom of my body.

Just because now I have tools to navigate these states, it doesn’t mean I no longer experience them.

Quite the opposite.

There are always new layers to move through, new parts of me seeking expression.

Same goes for you.

Today you might be working with boundaries. In time, you learn how to express them. Through practice, your system feels safe to have boundaries, and no longer needs to freeze in order to protect.

Tomorrow, you might work with your sexuality— a realm still unexplored and very much armoured. That’s your new layer.

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CREATIVE EXPRESSION = ANYTHING YOU WISH TO BRING TO LIFE

I'm brewing something around the idea of moving from freeze into creative flow & self-expression — through a combination of theory, practice and coaching.

And I need your help to do it in a way that serves you.

Please complete the survey below or feel free to DM me to share your journey with stuckness and how it relates to your self-expression.

Disclaimer: not all internal blocks are a sign of freeze. Life happens in cycles of contraction and expansion. I want to teach you not to fight this, but to work with it— to discern when there is really a time for action and forward movement, or a time where contraction and non-action are necessary for the creative process.

with lots of love,

A x