and how does it feel in your body?

…and how does it feel in your body?

This is a question my clients must be tired of hearing, lol. But it's a really good one! So much of the work my clients and I do is around the understanding and validation of the communication and language we can develop within ourselves. Not just with our thoughts, but with our bodies and the systems around us. 

Over the past month, I have noticed that I've been having a lot of conversations around this topic. I've been discussing this in the context of:

• anxiety and panic that takes creates a feeling of fear around being out of control in one's body

• a feeling of disconnect during sex or physical touch, feeling "stuck" in one's head

• somatic numbness as a result of the prolonged stress of the pandemic

• activated trauma responses - feeling that fight/flight/freeze happen in response to reminders of the past or very real difficult moments in the present

• experiencing a surprisingly big reaction to someone - a child, a partner, a family member

The first step in understanding what our bodies are trying to communicate is to be interested in the cues we can observe. This investigative data gathering can be really enlightening. Check out this really fantastic list of body sensations created by Meenadchi at Trauma-Informed Non-Violent Communication.

* a quick note about this compilation - I loved this because it was so creative and expansive, but that might not be the right vibe for you. No worries - we are simply tuning in to sensations - temperature, texture, pressure, tension.

We are empowered to listen to what we notice in our bodies. We can breathe and stay with the sensations, we can interpret and process them to give us more information about what's happening to us, we can learn more about what we need, and we can even create new responses.

I think a really great place to start is by doing a quick somatic inventory twice a day. Running through your bodily sensations perhaps in the morning and evening, or even trying midday, just out of curiosity.

Thinking of all of you!