Building Capacity For Our Emotions

Somatic therapy facilitates resolution of trauma and PTSD responses. We can’t always think our way out of traumatic experiences. One of the biggest issues that we face as human beings is that we can feel trapped by our own physical and emotional states. These are the times that we feel panicky and anxious, without the ability to calm down.

Other times, we feel depressed and unmotivated and can’t seem to accomplish simple tasks. The brilliance of somatic interventions is the ability to directly intervene by developing new neural pathways and behaviors that provide alternative ways of responding to your environment without getting stuck in the habits of the past.

Transcript

Hi, It's Arielle here. I want to do a little bit of a share today around being with our feelings, Being with emotions. We have a lot of messages that we get in the world about how we need to manage or control or not show what we're really feeling and I think that as a result we basically learn to clamp down and constrict or pocket away our emotions, Our true feelings, Our discontent, Our anger, Our sadness, Our grief, Whatever it might be. And then of course what can happen is that life continues to happen and maybe we get triggered by something or provoked or something brings these emotions out and then all of a sudden we drop into some kind of big explosive expression or overwhelming expression of the feelings, Whether it's through panic or whether it's through feeling rage, Right? And that what we want to learn how to do is basically find ways to connect in on a regular basis as a regular commitment to self to take care of and attend to all of those feelings so that they don't build up. Now I don't think what I'm sharing here is rocket science but it's really more just some of the tools of how do we learn how to be with ourselves. And so I'll share some of my favorite ways of really attending to and being with the emotional body. The first is to just even start to do a checking, Kind of a an emotion inquiry, Right? That sometimes we can scan and notice what we're thinking about or we are checking in with the world and what the world needs of us at a doing level but at a being level we can forget to ask. And so even to take a and just ask yourself, What am I feeling right now? What's present for me? What am I noticing? And if you're one of those people where your first kind of awareness of that is, I don't know, I don't know what I'm feeling. I've grown disconnected. That's information as well. But if you can start to sense what you might be feeling, You might notice that there's a somatic experience. That might be the front end of an emotion, Right? It might be that there's a heaviness in the chest or a tightness in the belly or a knot in the throat or maybe somatic symptoms of a headache or jaw pain, Right? So we tend to hold on or clamp down, Not just energetically but somatically as well. And then we can begin to work with the body and how these emotions get held or restricted here. And that's where our breath comes in. So that when we can really turn towards those areas of tightness and allow yourself to amplify or notice more about that area by sending your breath there. So maybe it's breathing into a sensation in the chest. Maybe you bring your hands over an area of tension in your throat or your neck or your jaw or your forehead, Right? And you allow the breath to spread into these places. Now, Of course, We don't have lungs in our head or in our shoulders per se, But we can, Through breath, Send our attention there, Right? So it's a way of extending that awareness and that attention through imagining breathing into some of these places. And even though we might not have lungs there, What we do have are sensory receptors. And so we have these subtle ways in which as we move and we bring more sensory awareness that we're sending feedback back up to our brain, Right? So that we have more access to what we might be holding there. And sometimes when we're holding in the body, It can be helpful to imagine what part of you is holding this, Right? Is it a young part? Is it a child? Is it an angry teenager, Right? What's being held and to in a way characterize this by a part of self and imagining then that if it was indeed a young child or an angry teen, What might that part of you need? And from there, You might begin to explore meeting that need. So if it's a child that never got seen, Who could come in and offer caring, Loving witness to that part of you? If it's a part of you that never was protected, Who could come in and help protect that part? And if it's a part of you that carries wounds of shame, Who could come in and offer the most deep caring acceptance for that part of you? Sometimes when it's a part that's carrying fear, We might explore what would a loving adult come in and offer to that part that's afraid. So rather than saying, Get over it, What's wrong with you that you're so sensitive, All these messages that we get, We can come in in the most loving way and really offer reparative experience. And then coming back to the soma of this to the somatic experience, We also can ask the body, What's incomplete? If we think about stressful experiences in the world, If something stressful happens, Ideally, Once that stress resolves, We have some way of moving it out, Right? Whether it's a through the breath or shaking it out or running or pushing, Right? We have some way in that the body gets to complete the action. So we're not stuck in fight or flight, Or we're not stuck in some kind of collapse. But when there's an incomplete experience of trauma, There's kind of this thwarted impulse in the body. There's this way in which what longed to happen never got to complete. And sometimes that longing is even the longing or the reaching for connection, Or the ability to set a boundary, The ability to really stand on your own two feet, Right? So we can use those metaphors to explore what needs to happen now in your body. So if you feel, For example, An experience in the chest of collapse, Maybe you press into your feet and really feel your own empowerment and strength that's available to you now that maybe wasn't available then. Maybe you get up and you walk or you go for a brisk walk outside. If the experience is one of not being able to set a boundary or saying no, Maybe you give yourself that opportunity to have that in your voice, Or to stand up and press your hands against the wall and really feel the strength through your upper body and your arms. It's one of the things that I love about getting on my yoga mat is I can feel that empowerment all the way through the limbs of the body. So that trauma that gets truncated or stressful experiences that get truncated that are held in the chest or the belly or the throat have more capacity to sequence out or move through the arms and legs. So these are a few tools for you that I'll offer in this short share for today. You know, Feel free to use the comments to share your experience of what helps you feel more capacious in response to your own emotions, More able to express your feelings in the most healthy and loving ways. And, You know, Just to share what it's like for you in the world right now, Because there's a lot that's going on. And certainly my biggest hope is that through these sharings that we can all feel a little less alone. Thank you.