Listen to your body talk
Have you ever walked into a room where every fiber in your being wanted you to turn around and run the other way? But then you stayed, because that would be rude? Have you ever met someone that just gave you the creeps but stayed in the conversation because they were “perfectly nice” and you didn’t want to appear foolish? Why? When did it become foolish or rude to listen to your body?
Body language
We read it even when we aren’t paying attention. The subtle cues in a face, tension in the shoulders, even body position all tell a story you might not even be aware of. Body language gives context and nuance to every conversation and encounter we have with other people. They read your body language at the same time you're trying to read theirs. Your body translates those cues and sends signals to your primitive brain about what’s safe, what’s not, how you should feel and what you need to do about it.
These signals are primitive and instinctual. They operate through the autonomic nervous system and translate sensations from the gut- brain axis, communicating to the amygdala (the brain's fire alarm) whether all is well or not so well.
Any situation that’s determined to be a threat to your survival triggers a message in the form of sensation usually in the gut that’s sent to the limbic brain through the brain stem. There that sensation is encoded as some kind of emotion that requires action. Then and only then, do we form a thought about what we should do. From our perspective these things seem to happen at the same time. And it’s so fast it seems that way sometimes but there’s an order to it. And the rational thought process happens last.
Survival of the Fastest
It’s incredible how fast you can communicate back and forth from the body to the brain. In fractions of a millisecond you can already be running away from a situation before you even understand why.
That’s the power of the fight or flight response. It saves us before we even know we need to be saved. Imagine if our survival depended on our complete rational understanding of a situation before taking action.
Modern Day Survival
We don’t spend as much time these days in life or death situations. That doesn’t matter to your fight or flight response. It hasn’t had the evolutionary time to be able to differentiate between the threat of a looming deadline and a looming tiger. It can’t tell the difference between the memory of something that happened years ago and the present moment. It will react first and let you ask questions later.
Many of us spend most of our energy suppressing the sensations that we feel coming from our bodies. We’re taught to ignore our “gut” feelings, squash the “butterflies”, shove aside that prickling on the back of our neck in favor of good manners. Some careers depend on being able to shut down the natural fight or flight response. First responder's, EMT, military, they run towards the burning building, towards the gunfire when most people are running away.
Just because you’re able to ignore those sensations doesn’t make them disappear. That energy has to go somewhere. If it can’t get out then it goes in, into the muscles, joints and fascia.
Body Translation
There are consequences to bottling up all of that emotional, mental and physical energy. If you ignore it long enough, at some point it will start to scream. Eventually you find a breaking point and all that suppressed stress starts to overwhelm your system.
If you can learn to read those messages coming from your body, then you can take action and give it what it needs to be able to release that energy in a safe way.
How do we begin to translate what the body is trying to tell us?
First we need to understand how the body speaks. Then we need to cultivate some awareness of those messages. Then we can find where we are in our stress response. Then we can make choices about what will help us move forward.
How does your body speak to you?
If you know that all of your reactions to stress begin with a sensation in the body, you can start to “listen” for sensations. Notice and observe sensations that you feel. This can be difficult at first because you might have spent your life trying not to feel. Reopening those lines of communication can be disturbing.
Start by keeping your curiosity in the body. You can practice by using guided body scans. This is a type of meditation that directs your attention to different areas of the body. It allows you to practice witnessing the sensations you notice in each body part with reminders to resist the temptation to attach judgement to whatever you find there.
Observation Without Judgement
The purpose of these types of exercises is simply to feel what you feel. Notice if there’s anything emotional that comes with the physical sensation. It’s important at this point in your process to let go of “good” and “bad” or “right” and “wrong”. The body doesn’t recognize those concepts.
Find Yourself
Once you’ve begun to notice the physical responses that are happening in your body you can use that information to find where you are on the stress curve. In trauma release exercise we use an effort scale of 1-10 (similar to RPE we use in exercise classes) with the goal being to keep intensity low, ideally below a 5. That’s helpful when we are talking about purely physical tension or effort. It’s less clear for mental and emotional tension. As physical tension is released from the body sometimes it also releases it’s mental and emotional baggage. If our goal is to release it slowly we need a way to know where we are with mental and emotional tension. So we can use the Polyvagal Curve compiled by Steven Porges.
You can see 3 main areas: Social Engagement, Fight/flight, Freeze. Our nervous system is not as linear as this chart may lead you to believe but it's a good start. We roll through many of these layers many times in a day. It’s when we get stuck in one place where we can start to become overwhelmed.
An emotion is difficult to place on a number scale. Each emotion could have it’s own 1-10 value. And because no two people are alike, this polyvagal curve can be a more accurate representation of an individual stress response.
You can use this chart to find where you are on the curve and this can start to help you learn what actions you might need to take to slowly and safely down-regulate your stress response.
How to know what the body wants?
It’s important to remember that every one of us has come to this moment in time through our own experiences. Our reactions to stress are influenced not only by our histories but also our perceptions of the world around us. That’s why there’s no one size fits all “cure” to stress, tension and trauma, we’re constantly being exposed to it.
Instead we need to build our own collection of tools that work for us. The key is to always begin where you are.
The chart above can help direct us to the types of tools to start with. For example if you find you spend a lot of time feeling irritated - (fight) - you might choose some kind of moderate intensity exercise. If you struggle with anxiety - (flight) - breath connected movement might be a place to start.
Keep in mind, while higher intensity exercise can be a great stress reliever it can also exacerbate the problem depending on where you are on the curve and if you return yourself to a high stress environment after that work out.
To help you get started collecting your resilience tools I’ve created a FREE e-book called Getting Unstuck: Your guide to self recovery from stress tension and trauma. Inside you’ll learn how to turn any workout into a stress reliever, how to eat for resilience and 8 things you can do today for better sleep tonight.
I believe that each of us has the capacity to heal ourselves. We owe it to ourselves and the people we love to do everything in our power to fortify ourselves with a strong collection of resilience skills.
My name is Ericka Thomas and I’m a Certified TRE® Provider, Trauma informed Yoga instructor and Health Coach.
I help people just like you reclaim their resilience through trauma release exercise + yoga online and I’d love to work with you! Let’s make it happen!
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