Liberated Movement
The joy of stimming
As a late identified autistic, unravelling your sensory experiences is a rather strange process to shift through. My sensory needs were (mostly) not a revelation to me - I was aware of many things but I wanted to better understand myself, and it was this need that ultimately led me to seek support and official diagnosis. Part of this journey has been noticing how I move in the world, quite literally, bringing awareness back into my body after a period of deep burnout, and a lot of dissociation, and re-learning what my body truly needs. I needed to learn how to listen again, and that need brought me back to my yoga practice.
For context, I am a qualified yoga practitioner with over 10 years experience and a specialism in Yoga Nidra meditation and Yin Yoga (a beautiful, slow, connected practice). So I have a lot of knowledge, but when I was really struggling last year, the idea of carving out enough time to practice ‘properly’ was too much, let alone finding the ‘right’ clothing, organising a space for my mat, keeping the small human distracted long enough that I didn’t become a climbing frame… too much, too many steps, when I was already deep in burnout.
This year I have gone back to basics. Bear with me here, this will come full circle in a moment, but I need to throw some yoga philosophy your way first: What most people understand as yoga today is a very physical, westernised distortion of traditional yoga, which is far more philosophical than physical. Yoga philosophy not only reminds us to connect with our body, but also our mind, and our environment. It is rooted in awareness of energy, and how that connects us with ourselves and the world around us. It is a philosophy to be drawn into all elements of your life, to be embodied. At the time, I was feeling rather lost, shifting through burnout and not entirely sure of my identity. I wasn’t able to connect with the world in the way that I wanted, unless I could come home to myself, to my own body/mind. What helped me the most at that point, wasn’t a complex sequence of asanas, but BEING.
The first yoga practices were seated, breath focused and meditative. Just being. Drawing awareness to your inner experiences, your felt sense, noticing without judgement or the need to ‘fix’, and listening to what your body is trying to tell you. This space creates softness, and with softness the nervous system is able to rebalance. It’s by no means an easy space to get to, and I am constantly working on it, but I noticed SO much when I was able to shift to this space again after what really, was years of disconnect.
Slowly I noticed all the little things my body needed - how it wanted to move, rather than how I expected it to move, or felt it SHOULD be moving (ick). Like this moment, catching myself, hands hovering over the keyboard, thinking about how to frame what I want to say, and all the while my fingers are dancing away. Until I really started digging into my neurology, stimming was something I hadn’t connected with. As is with many people, until all too recently my ideas of what stimming is, and looks like, were based on outdated learning and stereotypes. I saw my child flapping and spinning and repeating phrases that brought them joy, but I didn’t see that in myself. SPOILER: Everyone stims! And I stim a lot.
As a female, my experiences of the world have inevitably been altered by societal expectations of what being female means, and that has played a considerable part in me being missed as autistic - there are many layers to this masking malarkey. Consciously and unconsciously I had been avoiding stimming in ways that were not deemed acceptable, things I had been shamed for in the past, told not to do - stim dancing around the house is perfectly fine as a child, but as an adult? Less so. But twirling my hair, twiddling necklaces, playing with my rings - all very lady-like, and even desirable, playing into the delicate quiet female stereotype. Masking and fawning… not the best survival strategy.
Stimming should be celebrated. It’s another way to connect with the body, to regulate, it’s honouring the body’s needs - and it’s an important way to engage with the world. I am aware I’ve been talking about connecting with the body, I’m teetering between yogic philosophy and science here, but I guess what I really mean is that we are becoming aware of our sensory experiences; our interoception (that felt sense of self, our internal experience) as well as how our environment is impacting that experience, and as our interoception connects us with our emotional experiences too, it in turn helps underpin our overall sense of Self.
Which brings me back to my experience of being late-identified. The sense making, the meaning making, that is part of coming to understand yourself is something that shouldn’t be rushed. I say this knowing full well that I went full pelt into everything and made it out the other side purely because of some epic support from my community (BIG love to you folks, you know who you are).
I read this quote today from Christine Caldwell and it really resonated with me:
“...that blurring of the old identity actually involves a kind of letting go of any identity for a little bit of time, which occurs when we occupy the experience we are having with discipline but without control, and we let a new identity emerge on its own from the body.”
Being able to reconnect with your body is an invitation to slow the process, to be gentle with yourself and rest in a place not of urgency, but of curiosity. It’s bringing focus to something that is needed, but softly so there is space for growth, and safety in knowing that while you may not have all the answers, you don’t need them. You start to trust that they will arise at the right time. So I’ve been trying to bring acceptance to that emerging space, and it's a true practice of self-love - to meet the uncertainty with curiosity and kindness.
This awareness of movement, this deeper connection with how our bodies want to move, is what allows us to trust when something resonates with us, when things feel right. And there is liberation in that freedom of movement, freedom in the liminality of standing between past and future self, and so much joy to be had in the unfurling of Self - if we can just take a step back and breathe.