3 Keys to be more your body (& less in your head)
— By Somatic Trauma Alchemist Ellie Wilde & Caitlyn Cook
Your mind is a great asset for strategy, logic and assessing. But it’s not a place to spend too much of your time.
Though for some of us, we get stuck there! And this can mean feeling anxious. Disconnected. Imbalanced. Frazzled. And a little… out of touch with ourselves and others.
Whereas being in your body can mean…
… feeling deeper levels of relaxation.
… feeling more connected to yourself day to day.
… digesting emotional highs and lows differently.
… sex and intimacy having more flow.
… trusting yourself more.
… know what is the right or wrong way to go (intuition).
… inhabiting more power and charisma, you become magnetic.
… feeling solidly ‘here’ and ‘now’.
… connecting more deeply to your soul and spirit.
… the more deeply connected we are to ourselves and to others.
Being in your body can do all that? Yes. This is how:
Think about meditation for a second: meditation is about becoming present and then opening to the possibilities of peace and the healing that brings.
Presence is key.
In meditation, you often start by bringing your attention to your body. The breath, the feeling of your body on the seat…
Why?
Because the body is our access to the present moment. The body operates in the here and now.
When you’re connected to your body — and the emotions and feelings that are there — you can heed their guidance. Your deeper intelligence opens as you begin to hear your intuition and feelings about certain actions, decisions and needs.
The body is also true — it never lies. While the mind can create false stories (for example all those self limiting beliefs), the body is what it is. In this way, the body is like a child — authentic. Unmasked. Real. And how wonderful and refreshing is it to be around the realness of a child? That’s the nature of your body.
And speaking of nature… the body has a natural instinct. If you have access to this, you’re more in touch with your own rhythm. You find yourself interacting with people — and life — in a playful cadence rather than feeling kind of off. The mind tries to strategise what to do next, whereas the body knows without thinking. It’s relaxing in that place!
The body is connected to nature and nature is perfect. Have you ever heard a bird singing out of tune? The rain with an awkward rhythm? An ugly cloud? Nature is intelligent and your body has this intelligence! When you’re in touch with your body, you’re in touch with all of creation.
What takes you in or out of your body?
When you feel safe, it’s natural to inhabit your body.
It’s the feeling of being under threat (needing to fight, flee or freeze) that takes you out of your body.
The mind becomes hyper-alert and focused on avoiding the threat, so all attention goes on that rather than being here and now.
We can also come to spend less and less time in our body if we are experiencing uncomfortable feelings (often related to the threat) that we don’t know what to do with. Subconsciously, our solution is just to avoid the feeling (which is IN the body) all together.
Of course, it doesn’t mean the feeling goes away. We are just dissociated from it. And like a piece of undigested food, overtime there can be a kind of constipation — a stuckness of emotional energy. This can express itself in many ways like…
Physical and emotional problems
Like anxiety, chronic pain, adrenal fatigue, Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)), etc.
Relational problems
Like perpetual toxic relationships that perpetuate, trouble expressing one’s needs, inability to set boundaries, etc.
Progress problems
Like fear of failure, playing small, procrastination, lack of drive, inability to make progress, etc.
Consistently spending more of your time in your head rather than your body is a learned behavior. It’s actually quite a simple (and common!) way to get through the day without actually feeling what’s there because it’s painful and overwhelming.
1. Resourcing: build your capacity to feel by finding your layers of support
Whether it’s the feeling of wanting to run away or an anxiety that feels like too much, the reason we start to leave our body is because the experience is overwhelming.
In these moments of overwhelm, we tend to leave our bodies because we don’t have the resources inside us to deal with the situation at the time.
t’s like being a little table with four little legs and an elephant steps on top of you — your little table legs would strain under the weight. The table would crumble or get bent out of shape.
Resourcing is the practice of inviting the mind and body to focus on the felt sensations of safety, neutrality or goodness.
By attuning to an embodied feeling of “okayness”, you gives this ‘table’ extra legs to be able to easefully hold the weight that the elephant brings. In other words, it gives the capacity to feel intensity and then come back to a state of calm while being in your body.
5 Steps to practice Resourcing:
Get comfortable and close your eyes.
Bring your attention to a time, place, or thing that makes you feel good. It might be physical or immaterial, inside you or outside you. Examples could be…
The feeling of the chair or ground beneath you
Your breath
Your heartbeat
A wonderful place in nature you really love
Your heart or soul
Your Higher Self
A beloved animal
You might choose a few layers of support so the feelings don’t consume you completely.Once you’ve found your resource, hang out there with it for a few minutes or as long as you need. Rather than thinking, tune into feeling sensations. Notice everything you can about it: What qualities does it have? How fast or slow does it feel? How do you feel when you’re with it? What does it make you want to do with your body? Let your body do that in slow motion, or just notice it.
Anchor this resource by giving it a name, e.g. a forest might be your resource and you might call it ‘Playful home’. At any time, you can go back to this resource when you say ‘Playful home’.
Complete by opening your eyes and coming back to the room
When you practice this regularly (even just micro-practices for 10 seconds), you can find yourself feeling safer and more present in your body.
2. Things take the time they take — don’t rush
Our bodies don’t operate on the schedule our mind has. We may want to be healed faster, already more ‘embodied’ TODAY. But, just as the time it takes a seed to grow to an oak tree, your body has its own timing for transformation. There’s intelligence in that timing.
One of the keys to being in your body is to trust your body’s timing. Let go and trust. There’s a right time for everything and your body knows.
3. Orientate toward the beauty and wholeness that’s already in you
The thing that often happens with people who are on a journey of healing themselves is they can begin to have a single-focus that’s centered on HOW TO HEAL and FIX their problems.
This is actually an effect of trauma (or intensity that’s hard to handle) — it creates single-point focus thinking, a one-track mind. It’s like all we can see is the problem or threat and if we just fix it, we’ll be okay. We’ll be safe.
If you’re doing this, it’s really hard to stay in your body when your mind is running away with solutions and hyper-vigiliance to see if you’re safe yet.
The key is to orientate toward what IS already working, what is stable and what does bring joy already, rather than focussing solely on the problem. Amplify your attention on the good.
Overtime, the issues diminish (and remember, where attention goes, energy flows). They occupy less of our attention. We don’t spend all of our time fixating on the problem.
You don’t have to ignore what’s here. It's not about trying to get rid of the thoughts or feelings, but on purpose amplify what’s beautiful and what’s good.
Ellie Wilde is trained somatic trauma resolution coach. She helps people become more connected to themselves and align to their natural blueprint of wellness. Work with Ellie.
Caitlyn Cook is an Embodied Healing Practitioner, with emphasis on mental and emotional wellness. She’s also an ISTA Facilitator and student of the Bwiti Tradition, a traditional mystical school of Central Africa. Work with Caitlyn.
