Returning To Safety - Somatic Practice For Anxiety

In this series of three talks, I will guide and explain to you three simple somatic exercises that will help you to self-regulate your nervous system from a state of survival (fight, flight, or freeze) into a state of calm. You can do them easily from home or wherever you are having a calm place for yourself. This first exercise is working specifically well when you feel overwhelmed and anxious.

Picture by: Masaaki Komori

Transcript

Hi there,

I'm Hannah.

I am a neuroscientist and somatic healing educator and today I want to show you a little tool of how you can regulate your nervous system.

So why do we need somatic releases or somatic practices?

They are some type of therapy that focus on restoring a type of self-regulation of regulating the nervous system and to release states of survival that were kind of like boxed and that energy that was like held in that state of survival and that so those somatic releases they allow our nervous system to to move back to a state of safety and to natural responses and not reactive or triggered responses.

So today I want to introduce you to a pose that you can do super easily at home.

You just need two towels or two a little bit like bigger thicker pillows and you can roll the towels or place the pillows on top of each other next to you and you sit on your on your bones next to next to that bulk of towels or pillows and sit there with the long length like at the long length of your towels and with your hip right placed next to the long end of the towels and then you move your legs you know your hip is right next to the towels and you move your legs away to the other side that's your starting pose and then on an inhale sit up really tall open your chest and on the exhale you turn your body and your face towards the pillows and the the pillows and the towels and you slowly rest your upper body and belly your chest and your face with your cheek on that little bolster let your hands and arms rest on the side just let them drop and relax your shoulders now you can stay there for a few minutes and then slowly come back and do the same thing on the other side