The Power of Suggestion (& What I Learned From an Ecstatic Dance Event)

Episode 70

If you've ever felt frustrated by a therapist or coach responding to your request for tools with something like, "Well, what do you think a helpful tool would be?" then today's chat is for you. in this episode I share what I learned in attending my first ever ecstatic dance class and how it demonstrated for me the importance of suggestions in our healing journeys. When you've lived so much of your life inside a specific box, it can be really hard to see anything else. 

Join me as I discuss the balance between being client-led and offering guidance in therapeutic practices, emphasizing the importance of context, choice, and connection for creating a sense of safety; and as I reflect on my desire (and maybe yours too) to feel more free.

Here's the 3 takeaways:

1. If you, like me, don’t have a practice of moving your body, of dancing freely, here's my invitation to start. Remember, "the weirder I move my body, the more I fit in."
2. Healing requires action and changes in daily living. Seek out practitioners and spaces that offer practical tools and suggestions to support your journey.
3. I’m sending you my love and support as you also figure out how to learn to feel more free. As always, we would love to support you. My calendar is open for those of you interested in booking a discovery call to learn more about our 1:1 coaching program, doors to the membership are always open, as is my inbox (amanda@riseaswe.com). I love love love hearing from you.

Looking for more personalized support?

• Book a FREE consultation for RESTORE, our 1:1 anxiety & depression coaching program.
• Join me inside RISE, a mental health membership and nervous system healing space.
• Order my book, Healing Through the Vagus Nerve today!

Website: https://www.riseaswe.com/podcast

Email: amanda@riseaswe.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amandaontherise/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@amandaontherise

Transcript

Welcome to regulate, and rewire and anxiety and depression podcast where we discuss the things I wish someone would have taught me earlier in my healing journey. I'm your host, Amanda Armstrong. And I'll be sharing my steps, my missteps, client experiences and tangible research based tools to help you regulate your nervous system, rewire your mind and reclaim your life. Thanks for being here. Now let's dive in.

Today, I want to talk about an ecstatic dance class that I went to a few weeks ago while visiting a good friend of mine in Colorado. And I want to talk about how specifically, this class modeled for me the importance of being offered suggestions in your healing journey, verse what I experienced for the first while in my healing journey, which was a practitioner who just continued to ask questions like, Well, what do you think? What do you think might be helpful? How do you think they feel about that? How do you think you feel about that? Well, what do you think you should do? And some variation in version of that question over and over and over again? And while that question has a time and a place, and it's a question, our practitioners ask people all the time, at this stage of my healing, I had such low capacity for thinking outside of the box that I was living in that asking me what I thought could be a different way of being or doing things, was not getting me anywhere, and led me to feeling really frustrated, really stuck, and, and, in my opinion, led to what became a season of just shut down in my healing journey. So that's the conversation I want to have. And I'm sure other things will come up, and we'll see where it goes. 

For context, this was my first ever ecstatic dance event, it won't be my last, it was really fun, I see a lot of value in it. And I'll talk more about that in a little bit. And for those of you who don't know what this is, let me take a minute and explain. I'm, like I said, I've been to one I've been to wide. And so I am no expert on this, I'm sure there's a wide range of what you can expect from something labeled as an ecstatic dance. But the basic overview is that it is a form of dance and movement and community gathering that really helps you to find flow to feel joy to release emotion. So the benefits can be emotional release, exercise, mind body connection, cultivating joy, playfulness, all of these things I experienced in this class. And some key elements seem to be really free movement. So participants being invited and encouraged to move in a way that they feel with no specific there's no choreography, there's no steps, there's no sequencing to follow. There's music, there's little to no talking. And it is almost always done in a safe, non judgmental space. And there's that element of community. If you want, you can just YouTube ecstatic dance, and you'll quickly see what I'm talking about. And as you watch it, you will likely have an immediate reaction of either Oh, that looks fun, or those people look insane. And there's no way I'm ever doing that. And I know this to be true, because not so many years ago, I would have been the person to have thought the latter and now I am for sure the former invite you to keep an open mind. 

So like I was saying this was a trip I took to visit one of my really good friends in Colorado who also happens to be a mental health practitioner. And so as practitioners often do, we have these really light hearted girly conversations around how to best help our clients navigate trauma healing. So on our way to class, what we were specifically talking about was the balance as practitioners between being fully client led and offering suggestion in our work with clients, discussing the pros and cons of both the balance of both that tends to best serve the demographic of people that we work with. Awesome, amazing. We ended that conversation we got there. And then in the most cosmically designed way, in my experience in this class, I was able to integrate and be on the receiving end of the power of suggestion in navigating something you've never done before. And not only have I never done specifically in ecstatic dance class, traditionally, I have exclusively moved my body in very specific, rigid, predictable ways. And so what I mean by that is I was a hurdler, so I did hurdles on the track and field team in high school and in college. And then after closing out my career as a track and field athlete, I moved into competitive powerlifting. So that's where you squat bench press and deadlift. As heavy as you possibly can, very rigid, very repetitive movements. I did CrossFit for a while. And what I have done in regards to moving, my body has had a right or wrong way to do it, good or bad form optimal and less optimal ways of moving. And what I'm not saying here is don't lift weights, because it's a rigid movement pattern, actually, please do strength training. And, and can we look for opportunities to also allow our body to move more freely. 

And this brings us back to this ecstatic dance event. And as I share, I want to bring you into this experience the best I can. So let's start with the setting. So we walk in the door, there's a table of smiling people where we register, and then we turn and it is a big open room. There's a group of people, there's music, and a woman is guiding the experience. And when the time came, she rounded us all up in a circle, and opened a class by setting some guidelines for how we were going to move through class, the do's the don'ts, she reminded us that this is our class, that she was simply there to facilitate to offer guidance, but invited all of us to really tune in and let our bodies our minds, our systems guide our time there. And as we circled up, she invited us to take breaths together to turn and look at the person on our right and our left and connect. And then the music started. 

And before we talk about some of the things that came next, I want to share why how she started class was so valuable, because there's three things your nervous system looks for to determine safety, especially safety inside a unpredictable, unfamiliar experience. And those three things are context, choice and connection. And she offered context by outlining the flow of class what it was what it wasn't, she set a container of expectation. And while I'm sure for any of the folks there who regularly attend this event, that felt redundant, they already knew for somebody like me who was there for the first time, that was really important, then she offered a choice that second C, by reminding and inviting us to stay tuned in to what we needed. Even if that was contrary to her guidance, she trusted that our bodies our systems knew best and wanted to empower us to know that too. And she also offered places outside of that open room if we needed to go so choice and agency, we all had permission to be there to not be there to do to not do what felt good for us. And so often trauma happens, because there's a lack of choice or lack of perceived choice around an experience or an event. And so healing that has to come with that context, that choice. And the third thing is connection, that instructing us all to circle up to make eye contact with the people around to breathe, she made sure that we all knew that we were in this experience together. 

So then the music started, she offered invitations to start walking, and then to change direction, to walk in silly flowy unpredictable ways. I think she said something like, make sure the person next to you doesn't actually know where you're going to move to next, helping us especially those like me, who tend to be pretty linear, pretty rigid, pretty predictable, and movement to be more playful, more flowy. And so throughout this class, this event, the rhythm of the music changed, there were invitations to bounce to shake to audibly sigh all his ways of releasing, and then re emphasizing the element of connection every 10 or 15 minutes, she invited us to look up and around again to offer eye contact to others in the room. 

And actually, with that I want to sidebar really quick. This is so so so important, this idea of looking up and making eye contact and connection with those around us because the reality of our world right now is that we walk around ourselves and amongst others, who spend more time looking down at a phone than up and around at the world and the other people walking through it. And this is my invitation. I want you to pay attention this week to how often you pull out your phone while you're standing in line on a walk at the airport. And there's no shame there's no shame or blame here because I am as guilty as the next person of filling a void time with social media or scrolling through emails, whatever it is. And this is something that for the past few months, I have tried to be way more conscious of, if I'm in line at a store, and I either number 1, I am Already scrolling, or to notice that urge to reach for my phone, I've turned it into a little game of like, how often can I catch myself in this mindless scrolling pattern in this urge to reach for my phone? And I always check in and ask, Am I grabbing my phone? Because I actually have something to look up a way to be intentional in my use? Or am I grabbing my phone to simply fill in space? And when it's that second answer, I have started to choose something else instead. So sometimes I do some color spotting. That's a practice I've talked about a number of times before on the podcast. Other times I scan to look for somebody to make eye contact with. 

Few weeks ago, actually, in the airport security line, I was totally scrolling, caught myself, chose to put my phone away. And I had the best conversation I have with a dad who was dropping his kid off to play basketball at a university near me, this dad coaches high school basketball as well, I used to coach high school track for a little bit. So we connected over that talking about how important it is, as coaches to young athletes to remember to develop them as humans first, an athlete second, so few of the kids that we work with, and I'm talking to somebody whose two sons are actually on track to be in the NBA, his nephew is already in the NBA, a couple kids on his high school team are likely going to be in the NBA in the next couple years. So this is a guy who does actually put people on track for careers in athletics. But we were still able to connect on this realization in this reality that so few of the kids that we work with, were actually headed to make careers out of sport. And instead, how we could use their sport to prepare them instead for life. And it was just a really cool connection, one that I would have missed out on had I have continued to mindlessly scroll away on my phone. 

So the point, let's bring the sidebar together. The point I want to make here is that there is no substitute for human connection. It is at the heart of our felt sense of safety and belonging and well being. And so bringing this back to this dance event, her invitation for us to come up and out of ourselves. And our experience every once in a while to remember that we weren't alone was so, so valuable. Now here's the part that connects back to that conversation we were having in the car on the way there about this balance of being client led versus suggestive and our work as practitioners.

For me, at the beginning of this class, I felt a little stuck a little frozen. I was like I've never done anything like this before. I've never moved my body freely or flowy. I don't know what that looks like, I don't even know what it's supposed to feel like my system has this natural inclination to be like, Am I doing it right? Is this right? Is this wrong? And in an environment where there isn't a right or wrong, I struggled to figure out exactly how to start. So at the beginning, I'm just kind of walking around the room, I'm swaying, I'm moving. And just looking around and learning from the people around me, I would see someone specific. And it was like my brain and body. We're like, Yeah, man, we have no idea what we're doing here. So I'm going to try that and see how it feels. I would see somebody moving their arms or their feet or their hips in a certain way. And I would mimic it. And I did that periodically for the first 20 or 30 minutes thinking like, oh, oh, that looks fun or interesting. Let me try that. And sometimes it was fun. Sometimes it felt weird or not my thing. So I would just move on to moving a different way. And as we got about now, maybe halfway or two thirds the way through this event, I noticed myself doing that less and less, I had loosened up and I was moving more intuitively in my own way. 

And on the drive home, I was sharing with my friend, this connection I had made about how helpful it was for me to have been offered these suggestions of ways of moving my body to invite me to try this new thing. Because I don't believe I would have gotten into the flow of things as quickly or as easily had I had been trying to do it alone. Or if it was just up to me to figure it out. Having those suggestions by way of just being in a room with other people they didn't actually know they were inviting me to move a certain way. And yet the suggestion was there and that this here is exactly what our practice at Rise As We is designed to facilitate that there's this power in community that there is power and value in suggestion. So stick with me for the next handful of minutes. I might wander off into the weeds for a minute but I promise to bring it back and I hope that as I do, I can offer you the space to reflect on what you are getting or maybe not getting in the support that you've sought out for your healing journey right now. And if you are one of the many therapists or other coaches who listen to my podcast, there's also a lens here as a practitioner to take a moment and pause and reflect on how to navigate this in the work that you do with clients. 

So in our coaching program, we work with a lot of people who have spent time in traditional talk therapy. In fact, I would say not definitely not all, but the majority of our clients have, and their experience have been everything from you know, talk therapy was wildly helpful, but it just felt like something was missing, or I just got to a point where I felt stuck. And that's usually when they sought out working with us. Or the other end of the spectrum that people have experienced, has been that talk therapy felt like it wasn't a good fit, that it was a waste of time, or in some cases even made them more anxious or increased their feelings of hopelessness. And regardless where on that spectrum, they have found themselves, a common frustration has been lack of guidance, lack of suggestion, lack of tangible tools offered for them to take what happened in session and apply it to their everyday life. 

For example, just last week, on a discovery call, someone said, quote, I needed therapy when I needed it, I needed that safe space to talk through things. But I am tired of just talking about it. And when I asked my therapist for tools to help with my anxiety or panic attacks, she just asked on repeat Well, what do you think you need? What do you think would be helpful? And she continued to which I wanted to reply, but never did. i If I knew, I wouldn't be asking you, if I knew what I needed. If I knew what would be helpful, I wouldn't be paying you. And this conversation isn't an either or, remember, mine or my friends conversation was not about whether we should fully be client lead or fully be suggestive, but on how we can best navigate that balance in a way that serves our clients best. 

And so if you remember, the pyramid of healing that I've talked about the foundation, that bottom layer, being education and awareness, then regulation, rewiring and resourcing on top when I have had clients, so how I would navigate that question differently. When I have had clients asked me for tools, here's how I usually approach it. Number one, because of the way our programs are set up, I know that this person has watched at least the first three modules in our healing program. So they have been exposed to the education and the context for understanding their symptoms through a nervous system lens. And then together, we build out that awareness phase, we explore how panic or anxiety shows up specifically for them, what places it happens most frequently. And then we might talk about certain reactive regulation tools, tangible tools that shift their physiology pushing back against their body's stress response in real time, that can help them take the edge off the intensity of that experience. And then we do them together in session to see which ones their nervous system responds most favorably to towards. What often follows if there's time or in subsequent sessions is we then might visualize or talk through a real life example of how or when panic might show up for them. and reflect on the feasibility of them engaging in the specific tools that we talked about in that environment. And then what they do is they go out into their real lives to give it a try. And either it works or it doesn't. And we keep workshopping it. 

But inevitably, without fail, every single one of our clients has been able to build out a toolbox of tools that they can use in the moments they need most. And then because the goal isn't just to play regulation, whack a mole for your whole life, eventually, we do need to do the deeper work to look at the parts of you that feel unsafe around imperfection, or that shut down with conflict or who believe that other people aren't safe or that Driving isn't safe. But what we have found to be so helpful is that number one, we have to teach them about their mind and body, how it works. And then number two to give them tangible tools that work. This builds confidence it gives you buy in hope and capacity to do that deeper work and make the lifestyle changes needed for more well rounded and regulated living. And our clients have such a favorable response to the role that suggestion plays of Hey, okay, you understand your nervous system. Let's explore that together. Because this is the way our physiology works. Let's try this. What do you think about this? Could this be realistic? Why don't you try that on just like I would see somebody waving their arms above their head and I was like, okay, I'll take that suggestion. Let me try it. And then that space was held for How'd that feel? Did that work for you? So while we believe wholeheartedly as practitioners that you have better answers inside you to meet your needs and to heal than we could ever give you, part of opening you up to being able to hear that intuitively, comes from the power of context connection. And that suggestion, while we have powerful moments that come for our clients, when we ask them, Well, what do you think our clients also have equally incredible shifts, after we offer them something like, quote, here's what I'm hearing. And here's what I think, do you want to try this together, and then you can let me know how that feels for you. And to the many, many therapists listening who are thinking I do that. I do both. I know that you do. This doesn't change. The fact that many of our clients and many of the other people here listening, have had experiences with other therapists who didn't. 

Last year, someone shared that when they asked their therapist for tools to help with anxiety at work, which was the place that they had experienced their trauma. Their therapist said, when you feel that anxiety, pause for a moment, and think about a way you could be grateful for what happened to you. That awful thing that you're in therapy for. A tool when you are in survival mode, when your prefrontal cortex is completely offline, cannot be to pause and think for a moment about gratitude. We need to help them understand the physiology of what they're experiencing, and how to use a tangible tool to work with that experience. 

Another example is that last month, a client shared that they repetitively asked their therapist for support, in not wanting to get out of bed in the morning. This person is a mom, she needed to get up and take care of kids. And repeatedly, the therapists response was that when we've worked through enough of your trauma, that desire to stay in bed will just naturally go away. And while that might be true, that person needs tools and support right now for how to navigate their life in an hour by hour basis, before some undetermined a trauma healing timeline. And for us, at Rise As We that support comes wrapped up in doing our best to provide you with those three C's context, choice connection. And following that four phase pyramid of healing. Healing is as much about learning as it is about unlearning. 

Because I'm sure as a kid, in fact, I know as a kid, I let my voice and emotions and my body flail and dance and move in unpredictable ways. And eventually, society and life and my sport of choice created rigidity. my four year old kid spins in circles for no reason he vocalizes he loud when he cries, he jumps up and down when he's excited. He naturally comes in and out of eye contact with me when we're having a tough conversation. He makes fists when he's mad. He asks for a hug, when he needs help calming down, all instinctively. Those are all ways our body regulates and moves through emotions. And he does this without hesitation because he's allowed to, no one has yet told him that he's too much or too loud, or that he risks our connection unless he suppresses these things. And inevitably, he will be told those things. And it makes me emotional, just thinking that are saying that I will inevitably tell him those things, through my own wounding the world will give him rules to live by. And the same is and has been true for all of us. 

And what I'm so passionate about. And my deepest hope is that our programs give you the awareness of how your mind body system works, and an understanding of the role your nervous system plays at the root of anxiety and depression, the importance of overall health to your mental health, to give you the perspective and space to look at the ways your lived experiences, relationships and the world have asked you to stop being you in order to be accepted. The ways in which the status quo is making and keeping us sick. One of my favorite quotes is it's no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. If you want to feel different, you have to live different and if you want to live different, it can be helpful to you be and feel surrounded by people who support that. And who will do and say both that here's what I've tried, could this work for you. And I trust you to know what's best for you. If you get both of those things enough, you start to trust that you know what's best for you, too. 

All right. I don't know if I made good on that promise of coming out of the weeds. But hopefully something I've shared in the last 10 minutes felt valuable. And before we wrap up, I want to share another really special moment that happened for me in this class, hoping that at least one of you will find value in the share. And also because in a way, I feel like these podcasts act also as a bit of a time capsule for this season of my life, something for me or my kids to listen back on and 30 years from now to remember. And I think having this this perspective, and this thought is what makes it easier for me to share and show up inside these vulnerable experiences or in the messy middle of my own healing like I did last week. But with this class, about halfway through class, I remember looking out and around the room of these people moving their bodies. And I had two thoughts. Number one was, this is a room full of people who feel free, or who are fighting for that feeling. And the second thought I had was, the weirder I move my body, the more I think I'm actually going to fit in. And my follow up thought to that was how would I live differently? How would you how would you live differently if you knew that the weirder and more authentically you showed up, the more you would fit in. And I know that many of you listening to this podcast, myself included are also on a journey that sometimes feels desperate, a journey to feeling more free. And at the very end of class, I found myself laying down I had one hand on my heart, the other on my belly, and I was just breathing. 

So for context, at some point in the nearest future, we'll be trying for one more tiny human. And I found myself talking in my mind to that future baby. And I said, quote, I'm learning to be more free for you. And then immediately following an image of a younger me, popped into my head. And as it did, tears started streaming down my face. As I turned to my own inner child and said, I'm learning to be more free for you to. And this is the power of getting out of your head and into your body. It's a way to integrate. It's a way to release and to discover so so much more. And to you, my friend that the person still listening to this conversation today I see you I see the courage it takes to continue to step into your healing, I see the desire that you have to feel free. And I am sending you all my love and support as you do. It'll be messy, and it will be worth it. 

For today's three takeaways. Here we go. Number one, if you like me, don't have a practice of moving your body or dancing freely. Please start. This can look like finding an event in your area. The one I went to was called movement mass in Boulder, Colorado. If you're ever there, check it out, or YouTube ecstatic dance. So watch a video and then put music on in your room. And let your mantra be the weirder I move my body the more I fit in. Your body wants to move it needs to move without rules in a flowy natural way and it's gonna feel so weird until it doesn't. And as you do, I want you to know that moving your body in this way helps you to process emotion release unneeded stored cerebral energy or trauma. Dance is such a powerful part of healing. And community around dance is something that we see in almost every culture from the beginning of time. 

Number two, simply talking our past or problems in circles isn't enough to heal. We need to actually start doing and living differently as well. And how to do that can feel really difficult to source on your own if you've never known anything different. And so working with a practitioner or being in spaces where people are willing to offer suggestions and the space for you to reflect on if it's the best fit for you, in my opinion, is a really really valuable part of healing. 

And number three is me sending you my love and support as you figure out how to learn to feel more free. 

And as always we at Rise As We would love to support you oh my calendar is open for those of you interested in booking discovery calls to learn more about our one on one program. Doors to the membership are always open as is my inbox so please reach out. I love love love I love hearing from you. In regards to questions about our programs, or just to reflections on the podcast requests for future topics and just connection means so much to me. All right, until next week, I'm sending hope and healing your way. 

Thanks for listening to another episode of The regulate and rewire podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please subscribe and leave a five star review to help us get these powerful tools out to even more people who need them. And if you yourself are looking for more personalized support and applying what you've learned today, consider joining me inside Rise, my monthly mental health membership and nervous system healing space or apply for our one on one anxiety and depression coaching program restore. I've shared a link for more information to both in the show notes. Again, thanks so much for being here. And I'll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai