Had a second appointment with the speech therapist. I had been too preoccupied to do all my exercises but were hiding this fact. New and relevant things were:

– One exercise to check for how many repetitions of an upper body stretching exercise I can exhale a soft “f” sound for (should be at least 8).
– Foot massage things with a tennis ball, aiming to relax the feet. Doing so does cause some changes in sense of stresses, and made me think of posture. More on that below.
– Extending previous exhale-pause-inhale-pause routine to try it in “w” and “f” and “w->u”, and in both head and chest voice.
– Trying the same but starting to read my poem as I do.

Ideally I’ll actually do all this during the next month of travel, seeing how well it goes. I contacted my insurance provider and am now waiting to hear if they actually will cover it or not. If they don’t, I will challenge it, but in the meantime in that case pay these first rounds myself but probably not do more sessions until it does end up being covered.

The more interesting part: In the pause stages of the exercise I mentioned, the idea is to let arms hang limply at sides. This is actually really difficult for me, and I was surprised to find how. I keep doing posing; assymmetric body postures where I position hands and hips and arms. I did this for a long time but more of it since beginning transition. As it turns out, letting my hands fall (or most postures that are very relaxed and simple) feel weird. They include no body positioning that I can think of as female-coded, so it makes me perceive my body as male/null/fleshsuit/etc. In other words, if my body position is neutral, I feel bad over how it does not come across to me as feminine; and this happens to an extent that it is uncomfortable to me to relax physically.

This was in fact one of the awesome things about the tantra workshop; under those conditions I felt validated enough that I could relax without being dysphoric. I also come to hope this is something that can be changed over time under medical transition; that it could make me recognize my body as female without having to make an effort, and therefore to be able to feel comfortable in it under more situations. Curious.