Contributed by Meredith Little
Do you ever find yourself saying things like: “I am so stressed out.”
“It’s all just so overwhelming.” ? Do we say these things and then try to adjust or notice what else is happening? Or are these things so par for the course that they come out of our mouth with very little follow-up?
Stress pops up everywhere—the world is moving fast and we feel like we’ve got to move fast to keep up. But this push to add more, keep going, comes at a cost to our body.
At its core, stress is a natural and adaptive response to perceived threats or challenges, triggering a cascade of physiological and psychological reactions designed to help us cope and survive. However, when stress becomes chronic or overwhelming, it can disrupt the delicate equilibrium of our emotional well-being, leaving us feeling frazzled, drained, and emotionally depleted. Experiencing a stress state is not bad-in fact, it is adaptive. Getting stuck there is the problem.
It seems like more and more we are having to turn off the cues that our body gives us. We have to stop listening to body to remain current, productive, whatever. But the cost to this is huge.
Our body will find a way to be heard. And if a small cue is ignored, body will just get louder.
What might this look like??
One of the most common ways in which the body holds and feels stress is through muscle tension. When we experience stress, our muscles tend to tighten as part of the body’s natural “fight or flight” response. This can lead to a range of symptoms, including headaches, neck and shoulder pain, jaw clenching, and backaches. Prolonged muscle tension can even contribute to conditions such as tension headaches, TMJ dysfunction, and chronic pain syndromes.
Sometimes we are so used to feeling stress and tension that we might not even know it anymore?
What does ease feel like?
We all know too much about discomfort…and so much of our attention and time goes into avoiding it. But what does ease feel like? What if we gave more attention and time to ease and that experience…and allowed that to broaden.
The next time you notice tension in your body…what if you also worked to notice a place that felt ease—by ease, I mean, light, comfortable. Often, moving our attention to a place of resource can help us balance the discomfort and pain.
I am so thankful for the move in therapy, research and knowledge that is turning towards bodily awareness and a a felt sense of our bodies. Dr Bessel van Der kolk’s work in “The Body Keeps the Score” began a revolution in the field that has changed the course of healing in psychotherapy.
Our bodies have so much to teach us about our very self but also so much to teach us about how we can heal.
What if healing and moving through our experiences must involve our body and what body experiences. If the Body Keeps the Score, we must listen to it. Yes, our body holds stress and tension…and it can also be the way we release it! Somatic therapies focus on allowing the body to be a guide through the healing process.
We really can trust “the wisdom of our body.” (See Hillary McBride’s book)