10 February 2025
Have you ever felt stuck inside a pattern no matter how much thought and effort you put towards correcting it?
As a long time meditator, I recognize these patterns as part of my experience as a human. Yay! I’m a human. I am alive. And I struggle with the same old “stuff” over, and over, and over again. Boo : (
Close to 25 years ago I discovered somatic practices. This discovery opened my eyes, and many doors that otherwise would have likely remained closed.
Essentially I realized that my mental and emotional parts could (and did) greatly influence my physical parts. And at the beginning it was enormous comfort to know that I could work in reverse too. I could work with a physical sensation, a body part, or a movement to influence my mental and emotional parts. Sounds simple, but back then my 20-something year-old self’s mind was blown. This was a new reality.
Sometimes seeking, and oftentimes stumbling, I started wandering into more and more doorways that led to epiphanies. Well, to be clear, sometimes those thresholds held more like glimpses, or little pieces of wisdom rather than full blown a-ha moments.
In my last post I shared about Phase One of my very personal “Operation Yikes – I’m turning 50.” Phase One was Journalling a 50 day gratitude practice. I made it. It was sweet and beautiful. It was also very well timed for the crazy external world we are currently experiencing.
After taking a few days off, I decided that I would continue on with Phase Two. I chose another contemplative and internal practice. I started Day One of 50 Days on the first of this month.
As I mentioned earlier, somatic practices (or exercises that use noticing sensation in the physical body to connect to the other layers of being – such as emotional, spiritual, mental or energetic, in order to move stuckness or calm agitation) are essential to my personal and professional wellness. So for Phase Two I’m using a Tibetan meditation technique which asks me to intentionally tune into body sensations.
The practice consists of four steps: “meeting, being, waiting, and communicating.” What makes this activity somatic, or bottom-up processing of an experience, is that we meet an activation that occurs as a response to our everyday life. We be (or sit) with the thing, whatever it is, (anger, jealousy, sadness, neglect) by locating it as a sensation within our bodies. This makes a mental or emotional exercise into an embodied practice. This is the key to somatic practice.
I mention all this because sometimes it can be challenging to describe how integrative or holistic health care services really work. How an integrative approach to bodywork, such as massage, physical therapy, craniosacral therapy, or even therapeutic exercises such as yoga or core strengthening can be supercharged when applied via somatic practices.
Getting to the root cause of a physical movement pattern, a worry, or a persistent pain issue sometimes means working alongside a trusted practitioner (or multiple). When we meet, and be with any difficulty sometimes the most potent “medicine” is the slowing down, and waiting for the body to unfold its inherent wisdom. Then we can start the conversation, listening for what body parts need support, what needs to move, and what needs rest.
This deep level of communication can facilitate a profound unwinding of longstanding patterns. We then have new ways of relating to our bodies, our vocation (running, skiing, sitting, or playing,) and our lives.
