The Body-mind: Working Somatically for Lasting Change
How developing a rapport with our bodies keeps us connected to our aliveness, vitality, creativity, imagination, and longing.
“Thoughts alone tend to lose out under pressure….when the pressure comes on, what is most deeply practiced in us or what is embodied is what will come forward.” — Staci K. Haines
How often have you tried to think or read your way to change? Perhaps you picked up a good book, hung a motivational quote in your office, or simply said to yourself that you were going to start doing this or stop doing that. Well-intentioned resolutions and aspirations to be different, to work differently, live differently often fall short of the real change we yearn for. Instead, we find ourselves wedged tightly in the well-worn grooves etched into the bedrock of our lives. Simply put, our thoughts alone are often inadequate to change the behaviors and habits we feel stuck in.
How, then, do we change?
The work of transformation, the process by which we reorganize the way we respond to stimuli, is the work of ‘coming home’ to yourself. This means, coming home to your feelings, your senses, your sensations, and ultimately to your sense of your body in space. Working somatically, using your body and sensations, exercises deeper layers of instinct and knowing.
For lasting change to occur, more is required from us than cognition alone. We must coordinate both the mind and the body. This means our entire selves must show up to do the work, fully participating with our whole bodies. Staying in constant connection with who we are becoming, what we love, and what matters to us in this brain-heart-gut complex are parts of the equation.
Connecting with the body can be hard work–our speedy adaptations of numbing or dissociating that were once life preservers, or even the high value we place on our logic and reason to the exclusion of how we actually feel, make us less able and willing to pay attention to what’s going on within us. What’s happening within us matters deeply.
Add to that the behaviors we developed early on as survival strategies. Those were not adopted so that we could be truer versions of ourselves but as a means to endure what we didn’t have the capacity to handle. This early patterning, while necessary at some point, can keep us from what our hearts and souls truly desire, our own wholeness. What once emerged to protect our love, safety, and belonging becomes what keeps us from experiencing those very things in life.
We already have all we need.
Our bodies, as much as our brains, are a tremendous source of wisdom. In the bodies we live in, we are a meshwork of finely tuned systems that help us navigate the world through our ability to sense our environment.
As sensing entities, we rely on:
- Exteroception: what we know as the five senses (sight, sound, smell, taste, touch)
- Interoception: our internal sensory systems (heart, gut, lungs, vagus nerve, skin, connective tissue)
- Proprioception: the physical sense of where we are in space (inner ear, skeletal muscles, and tissues)
Interoception involves noticing what is happening within us. Pausing to notice and name what’s there can give powerful insights. What are the feelings and emotions that are present? What are the internal sensations I’m feeling? A tightness in the belly? Pressure in the throat or chest? What is the emotion that’s arising? Excitement, or elation?
By design, interoceptive sensations may be less evident to us than sight, touch, smell, and the others. However, it is these intense inner sensations that drive our autopilot reactions such as our bodies suddenly flooded with discomfort. Our nervous system’s default to those deeply embedded neural processing pathways happen automatically, without conscious thought, whether we prefer it that way or not. Despite the fact our nervous systems are constantly operating, we can begin to notice what’s happening for us and create change to these reactions (if we so desire).
Why working somatically matters.
Becoming more aware of your senses, your internal sensations, and how you are in your body in space is part and parcel of the work. And, there’s much to learn as you grow in awareness in these areas.
Developing a somatic awareness increases our ability to survey our internal feelings, recognize how our feelings show up in our actions and relationships, and begin to make the unconscious patterns at play in our lives conscious. As we open to our somatic centers, we begin the journey home to ourselves, and are less imprisoned by and under the influence of the sensations that came over us at times, and that we may have tried to avoid.
While being in our heads can help us strategize and execute, being in our bodies keeps us connected to our aliveness, vitality, creativity, imagination, and longing.
When we operate unaware and unwilling to give due attention to what’s happening within us, we become stuck. Those internal sensations operating below our level of consciousness then become the primary drivers of our outward behavior. Left unchecked, we run the risk of doing things we later regret, saying ‘no’ to what we want to shout ‘yes!’ to, and acting in ways that don’t align with how we want to be in the world.
Get into the Body, as a Practice.
Embodied practices can help us explore the territory within us. Whether it’s meditation, a centering practice, breathwork, bodywork, or simply naming for ourselves when we feel joy, comfort, anger, discomfort, or shame — these practices get us into our bodies.
We can start exercising our interoceptive muscles by simply noticing what we feel inside, especially during challenging times. This internal survey can start with questions like:
- What do I feel?
- Where in my body am I feeling it?
- What sensations are present?
- What shape or color does the feeling have?
- When have I felt this before?
Pausing to take inventory of what’s occurring within us brings awareness and awareness brings choice. This practice of acknowledging our internal state builds our capacity to shift away from unconscious patterns and make informed choices about how to respond. Our newfound centeredness in the midst of difficult times can be of service to ourselves, our organizations, and those we are in relationship with.
We begin to sense and feel: Are my actions in alignment with who I want to be? Is my body working in concert with my desires, or is it working against it?
Increasing our awareness of how our body loops from interoception to exteroception, and how that can help us when we need to direct our focus or energy, helps us navigate the world in a more whole way. In other words, we’re bringing a wider perspective and way of knowing to how we encounter life by getting out of our heads and into the wisdom of the body.
The deep work of good coaching can help us get curious about what’s really going on within us. Slowing down enough to discover how to get back into our bodies, how to tap into its wisdom, and how we really feel about something, can take a trusted guide. Even when we become conscious of these underpinnings, we cannot think our way into new action. To do so, we must retrain our neural pathways in order to bring the change we seek. Coaching can support clients through unraveling and dismantling the old to transform it into what is desired.
Working somatically allows us to shift from ways of “doing” into ways of “being.” Practicing being able to anchor a somatic orientation to ourselves helps disrupt the neuromuscular patterns that keep us locked on autopilot. They help us stay centered when the going gets rough, or our triggers get flipped. Working somatically gives us ways to notice our upregulation, and practice what we need to be centered and present. The more we center during regulated times, the more available our center becomes in times of duress.
Cultivating a deeper awareness and connection with the body can start with simple practices. Here are a couple of short meditations that allow us to connect with internal sensations:
