I referred in my most recent blog post to an operation I had at age two.

Perhaps releasing some of the trauma while hiking removed an obstacle to more trauma emerging. Because it did, a week ago Monday, and dealing with it has occupied most my attention since then. It's been a few years since a new piece of trauma came up, and I guess I was finally ready.

The memory that came to me during a Hakomi session last Thursday was of lying on the operating table or gurney, being strapped down, and being surrounded by adults wearing masks. I could feel the sensation of being held down across my upper arms, and I was gasping for breath, probably as a body memory of the anesthetic, which would, at that hospital at that time, have been ether.

For other reasons, I've been thinking a lot about what it takes for me to do anger work. For me to express anger, I have to have support of some kind, or it's too difficult to feel safe expressing anger. I've done a little by myself over the years, but it's more difficult for me to do alone than any kind of work. By comparison, grieving, getting support, and predator work are easy. I've shamed myself for it a lot over the past few years, knowing I should do more to be in touch with my Warrior and not finding a way. When I've been in a group to do a piece of work, there's always been something else to do first that seemed more pressing, such as at the annual gathering of Shadow Work facilitators in January. 

My favorite kind of anger work is the kind I described in Practically Shameless, in which two people are using the safety hold to protect me from injuring myself, and therefore allowing me to dig my feet into the rug and have a whole-body experience of anger. I believe the safety hold was developed by the ManKind Project for their men's initiation weekend, the New Warrior Training Adventure, back in the mid-1980s. It's one of several MKP techniques and processes used in Shadow Work.

I asked a friend today if he knew of a group I could attend where I could do that kind of anger work, meaning a group led by MKP members for both men and women. And in thinking about doing it in a group, a new piece of the puzzle came to me. I prefer doing anger work in a group because that it directly addresses that experience at age two when I was surrounded by a group and prevented from moving. The experience of a group of people cheering me on is the needed remedy to get past the body memory of a group of people holding me down.  And I think there's a mirror there in my family as well: no one in the family wanted me to be angry, and I chose to suppress my anger and my power in order to let others shine or feel at ease.