Somatic Exercise For Anger, Anxiety, And Feeling Disconnected

A quick containment exercise for moments when rage or anxiety is building and a big outburst would not be appropriate, or when you feel scattered and not fully in your body. Sitting with your feet planted, you press your palms into your outer thighs while your thighs press out into your palms, hold for a count of four, then let go and rest to feel what happens. Notice the effect each time and repeat as many times as you like, usually two to four rounds, noticing whether your energy level shifts. This content is educational and is not a substitute for one to one professional care.

Transcript

Hi, Beautiful people. Today I'm going to share a really quick somatic skill with you. This is called either a consolidation exercise or a containment exercise, And it's good for a couple different things. A few options for when to use this exercise. The first would be if you're in a situation where you are feeling like you're going to explode with rage or with anxiety or panic if you just feel things building and rising internally. But you don't want to explode or it's not an appropriate moment to have a big reaction, A big angry outburst. That's one experience where this exercise might be really helpful for you to help burn off some energy and help you come back into your body a little bit and be able to manage that level of activation. Another really cool time when you can use this technique is if you have an experience of dissociating a lot, Meaning kind of leaving your body or not really fully being able to be in the present moment very often. Dissociation is a really common experience, Especially for those who've experienced trauma. And it's a normal response of our nervous system but it's also not always very pleasant and it can be nice to have some tools to help bring yourself back into your body, Back into this house where you can feel a bit more present and a bit more whole. Because with dissociation often comes this feeling of fragmentation, Feeling like we're just not totally put together in this complete package, We're scattered. So those are two examples of wonderful times to use this containment exercise. The purpose of this exercise is to help consolidate your energy in your body to give it a purpose and a function so that it has a route to discharge and release. As we know, When we're feeling really anxious or really angry, We're moving a lot of energy in our body. I have this little slinky here to demonstrate just like Peter Levine does. Anger in the body is a lot of activation. Same with anxiety and panic. We've got this fight or flight energy moving and it can be so intolerable just to sit with it and not do anything with it. So let's go ahead and get started. You're gonna find a comfortable seat with your feet planted firmly on the floor. If you're a little bit shorter and your feet tend to dangle off the chair, Bring something underneath your feet like a couple books under each foot so that your feet can really push down into something or rest onto something. Then you're going to sit up straight with your hands. Knees about hips width distance apart, Your feet planted and bring your hands, Your palms, To the outside of your thighs. So either upper thigh or somewhere in the mid-thigh. Now what we're going to do is we're going to organize our muscles. Start to push your palms into your thighs and at the same time push your thighs out into your palms. So we're creating this force in both directions. The hands are pushing in, Engaging the arms, The shoulders, Even the core. And the thighs, The legs are pushing out, Engaging through the legs. The pelvis. Hold for four. Breathe. Two. One. And release. And just rest for a moment there so you can feel what happens when you let go and you come back to neutral. Is there any whoosh of energy leaving the body? Maybe you notice more energy kind of moving and cycling through your body, Maybe some heat building. You might find that wasn't enough and you'd like to do another round. So again, Bringing hands outside of your thighs. Pressing hands into thighs and thighs into hands. The goal here is to really engage, Get all those muscles fired up. As you press in opposite directions, Feel how every muscle in your body organizes to do this movement. There's your body coming online. As you are ready. Let it go. Just allow yourself to rest again and really important to take that time and notice. What is the effect of this exercise? As we know with somatic exercises, Sometimes they do what we want. Sometimes we need a different tool, So. Taking note if this felt like a nice exercise for you to feel a bit more present or maybe if you do experiment with this and you use it in a moment when you're about to lose your temper and you do this instead. I'd be really curious to hear if it helped you out at all or if something different happened instead. So feel free to do that exercise. I'd say as many times as you want, But really if you're engaging all the muscles of the body, You probably won't need more than two to four rounds to feel some kind of a shift in your energy level.