Episode 19 | Why You Can't Relax... Even When You Try...

Welcome To The Womanhood Podcast.

In this weeks’ episode, we’re exploring why we sometimes struggle to TRULY rest; to be fully present in the moment and feel our FULL-BODY relaxation - Which is something I feel we all deserve to feel. 

I end with X1 Mini Somatic Practice to invite the exploration of what feels like rest and what may be holding you back from rest, and I also end on X2 Somatic Cue’s to encourage the embodiment of this Womanhood Wisdom, so you can integrate it into your life for lasting effect. 

RESOURCES:

🤸🏽‍♀️ Beginner Somatic Practice (Start Here): https://youtu.be/I-0RYEQkZiM 

🧘🏼‍♀️ Beginner Breath-work Practice (Also Start Here): https://youtu.be/5vOedYwt1g4 

🌟 Book An Energy Session With Me (Info Link): https://www.somaticbody.com.au/one-on-one-consults

🌟 Book An Energy Session With Me (Buy Link): https://buy.stripe.com/cNifZg8lz2Mp3JodjY5EY08

🌀 2-Day Portal Into Stillness Mini Course (Info Link): https://www.somaticbody.com.au/programs-courses

🌀 2-Day Portal Into Stillness Mini Course (Buy Link): https://buy.stripe.com/7sYcN48lz1IldjY5Rw5EY0j

🎧 Episode 8. Dysregulation, Regulation & Optimisation: A Somatic Perspective (Spotify link): https://open.spotify.com/episode/3qpDusRrpj4O4tbqjipEH1?si=vUWRk435Q3yJ31o2FVL2Zg

🎧 Episode 8. Dysregulation, Regulation & Optimisation: A Somatic Perspective (Apple link): https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/womanhood-by-shannon-harrison/id1856661674?i=1000751357325

🔥 The Level Zero Masterclass (Link To Access): https://www.somaticbody.com.au/resources-education

📚 Permission To Pause & Over-functioning Trap Mini Guidebooks (Link To Access): https://www.somaticbody.com.au/shop

Connect With Me:

IG 📲 https://www.instagram.com/somatic.body/

Website 🌐 https://www.somaticbody.com.au

With Love, Shannon

🔻 Somatic & Energetic Integration Specialist for Women,

🔻 Creatress of the Feminine Harmony™ Program and the SomaCycle™ Method.

🔻 Feminine Systems Educator | Reclamation Guide | Ritual Facilitator

🔻 Foundress of Somatic Body™ - a space devoted to helping women reconnect to their feminine bodies.

00:50 Introduction: What This Episode Is Covering

03:57 What It Looks Like To Feel Unsafe  

06:10 Why Rest Can Feel Unsafe: Core Wounds

09:22 The Crux Of It All: Exploring Suppression & Expression

12:19 The Solution To The Core Issue(s) 

12: 59 Why Somatic & Energetic Practices Are Part Of The Solution

14:30 A Mini Check-In: Can Your Body Explore Safety & Find Rest?

18:35 It's Is Not About Trying - It's About Inviting Safety Into The Body

19:50 The X2 Somatic Cues To Explore The Wisdom From This Episode

21:00 Finalising The Episode & Whats Next On The Womanhood Podcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Welcome to the Womanhood Podcast. I'm your host, Shannon, Somatic and Energetic Integration Specialist for Women, founder of Somatic Body and creatrice of the Soma Cycle Method and the Feminine Harmony Program. And I'm here to inspire you to reclaim your rhythms, remember your wisdom, and root into your womanhood. Each week I'll be discussing topics centered around our womanhood from a multifaceted, somatic, and energetic viewpoint, weaving together both science with spirituality and masculinity with femininity. We'll be talking cyclical natures and rhythms, intuition, instincts, ancient womb wisdom, and grounded embodiment strategies. Find yourself a cozy space and let's get started. If slowing down makes you feel anxious and rest feels uncomfortable and you feel like you're exhausted, but you just can't stop thinking, like you're mentally exhausted, then this episode is for you. We're gonna be exploring the reasons why women, because this is the Womanhood Podcast, why women feel like they can't relax even when they're trying. And maybe the whole point is we shouldn't have to try. So let's get into it. So first thing I want to reframe is that women aren't bad at resting. What actually happens when you're trying to rest and you can't, it doesn't mean you're bad at resting. It just means that your body associates stillness with vulnerability. High functioning anxiety and overthinking are often trauma adaptations. The body learns that staying busy equals staying safe, that being productive equals being valuable. So while we're here to talk about why you think it is you can't relax sometimes, what we're really here to talk about is why your body doesn't feel safe enough to truly relax. Because at the end of the day, bottom line, why we can't relax is equal to an unsafety, a feeling of unsafety. The body can't soften when it believes it must strive to survive. And this is something I've come to experience personally, as well as professionally witnessing it through cases and clients. When we feel unsafe, we feel like we can't relax. That's a normal response. That's a normal body response. But sometimes we feel unsafe in moments where we're not actually unsafe. Some examples are living in chronic on mode, that higher achiever, the hustler, being hyper-independent, you know, that flight mode, wanting to flee at the nearest sign of any form of offered support or help. You know, you just want to flee. And that's what that hyper-independence is. And then we have perfectionism and superego being another example. Going into fight mode whenever our identity feels as though it's like under threat or under questioning, like being judged. And it's really like fears it's not enough. Like it's not being enough. It's not going to ever be enough. So that's that perfectionism in the superego. Another example is numbness and stuckness. Sitting in one place for a really long time, not literally, but also it can be literally. But sitting in one place for a really long time, feeling like you're going nowhere, like you're in limbo, which is freeze mode. And you'll notice I mentioned the three states of the nervous system, like the three stress states. Flight mode, when you're hyper-independent and you flee at the nearest sign of any kind of offered support. Fight mode, when your perfectionism kicks in in the superego, you're wanting to fight for approval or fight to justify why you are the way you are, because that's a part of your identity and it's it's so binary. And then we have the freeze mode, which is that like numbness and stuck feeling. All of those feelings and presentations, all of those descriptions make up for what that chronic feeling is of being just on, what it feels like to be unsafe all the time inside your mind, inside the mental body. I guess we're really here to talk about what it feels like in our nervous system, in our mind to feel unsafe. And I know this sounds like it has nothing to do with the ability to relax, but when we don't feel safe, we cannot fully relax. So I will keep coming back around to this, I promise. But yes, you'll notice I talked about the three nervous system stress states. We got fight, flight, and freeze mode. There are other modes that have been newly adapted over the years, like fawning, but three main ones I brought up as an example. And that's because the body speaks in sensations, reactions, and survival states. That's how our body expresses when it's feeling unsafe. Because sometimes the mind can play tricks on us and we can tell ourselves, well, I should be sitting here. Why can't I relax? Like I'm doing the things I need to be doing. Why aren't I relaxing? But it's actually that underlying energy, that subtle energy body and physicality of your physical body responding to the fact that it feels unsafe. It's that semi-conscious and subconscious reactive state. And that's where the nervous system comes in. Because your mind can consciously think, oh, I'm here, I'm doing all the things I need to do. Here's the logistics. I'm sitting down on a beautiful beach on vacation and I can't relax. Why can't I relax? Well, it's there's there's nothing logically that makes sense. So we need to look at the semi-conscious and unconsciousness, not the logical consciousness. And this is where the mind can play tricks, because the mind kind of goes in and out of consciousness and semi-consciousness. And then we got unconsciousness, which is like the physical body and the energetic body. But I digress. Whenever the body speaks through sensations, reactions, survival states, it's the language of our body, after enough years of overriding the body by going through that survival state and overriding, not listening to the language of your body, not truly resting, the body eventually overrides us, starts to go, hey, you're not listening to me. And I have plenty of other resources and previous episodes where I talk about the pain body and the way our body speaks to us. But in this context, when we're talking about resting and not feeling safe enough to rest, when our body overrides us in this way, it can look like panic attacks, ADHD, sleep deprivation, cycles of adrenal fatigue, like chronic cycles of adrenal fatigue, going, woo, I'm up here, go, go, go, and then I'm crashing and burning. You know, the burnout cycle, which comes with exhaustion. And then we also have chronic muscle tension, constantly being ready to fight. Even if it's like chronic neck tension, it's like that's still that bracing, we're ready for something that's not safe. I can't truly fully relax. And so when that body response occurs, whether it's through panic attacks, sleep deprivation, ADHD, all the above-mentioned things, all of them are the pain body speaking to you, your body telling you that the mind needs to take the back seat, but it doesn't know how to at this point, which is why we can't achieve that true relaxation, that true rest. And so let's go to the why. Why does rest feel unsafe? Why does our body feel unsafe in the context of trying to rest? Why is it that we get to that point? We get to that beach on vacation and we can't rest. Like, why does that feel unsafe? It doesn't logically make sense. And again, this is where we need to bypass what our mind consciously can logistically make sense of and go into the semi-consciousness and the subconsciousness and our unconsciousness by accessing different parts of our body. We have the four bodies physical, mental, emotional, and energetic. Mental is where we have our consciousness. The other three bodies are semi-conscious or subconscious and unconscious. And these are the ones we can access in order to bypass that feeling of unsafety and have true rest. That's where we're bypassing the mind, switching it off, or at least letting it take the backseat while we start to explore our semi and unconscious states. And so why we feel unsafe? Let's look at the causes. Some women are physically tired but are neurologically afraid to stop. The conscious aspect of our nervous system is overriding us. And we can become dominant in like a thought-based existence, thinking a lot and almost numb to feeling, feeling our own emotions and our own sensations. And this is where I was talking about accessing different parts of consciousness. We are thinking based a lot. We're dominant in that and we're not feeling enough. And so that's why rest feels unsafe because rest requires us to feel, to pause from the mind and the chatter and to feel and sense things through sensation. And so when we have that mental body dominance, that overthinking, that thought-based existence, we have a disconnection from the body. That feeling of being stuck in your head and analyzing your feelings instead of actually feeling them. Or worse, you're so numb to your own feelings that you start to feel the feelings of others. This is where we become attached to feeling other people's emotions and energies because it doesn't feel safe for us to feel our own. And if we attach to someone else's, well, it's like that's their life. I'm not responsible for their life. So I can at least attach to that and not have any consequences. That feels safer to me. But all of the mental looping, the overthinking, the intellectualization of emotions, it's all thought-based dominance. And so if you're listening to all these words, the mental looping, the overthinking as a form of self-protection, essentially, and intellectualizing your emotions, or worse, not being able to feel your emotions. And so you go and start to fixate on other people's emotions, enmeshment, hyperempathy, like being super aware of other people's emotions, but struggling to be able to tune into your own and really work on your own. These are all the reasons why we can feel unsafe when we're resting. And when you look at all of those things, all of those presentations, and we get down to the crux of why it really is, it's usually because our emotions felt unsafe to feel. And sensitivity wasn't honored, it was shamed, like for being sensitive or for being emotional. Or perhaps your expressions of your feelings and sensations were judged once when you expressed them. And that's like prevented you from being able to feel safe doing it ever again. Your vulnerability felt dangerous, like you put your heart on the line and it got crushed. You know, all of these things are the crux of why it happens. We we get our softness and our feelings and our sensations crushed in some way from being judged, from being told it was weak, or that it's not safe to express your emotions with everyone in the world, but really you just got to pick who you feel safe expressing it with. These are all the reasons that we can feel unsafe to drop into the unconsciousness, drop into feelings and sensation-based ways of being, and go more into mental and logical ways of being. And so from that place, once we realize we're kind of acting and being in more of a mental body dominant state, you know, being more thought-based in our existence. Once we realize that, we can also realize that we've gone into suppression mode, because this is often what will happen. It's a part of that survival response or that trauma response is going into suppression mode. We suppress what we don't express. And suppression mode looks like unexpressed emotions, swallowing your emotions, people pleasing, so being and doing as you think others would like to rather than doing what you would like to, and staying silent when you really felt like speaking up, so feeling like you don't have a voice, and disconnect from your needs and dreams. They're left unfulfilled just because you're scared to be vulnerable and put yourself out there. But whatever you don't express gets stored in the body. And this is where the body starts to override. This is what I was talking about, that overriding before. When we don't listen to the desire our body and our unconscious or subconscious states have to feel, to be sensory-based, and we stay stuck in that mental body or thought-based existence, that dominance of that way of being, then that storage becomes our threshold, our boundary for what feels safe and what doesn't. And the body feels trapped and then it starts to scream at us. And that's where the pain body starts to come in through panic attacks, ADHD, muscle tension. And when it comes to not being able to rest in the context of not being able to rest, they're the typical ones that will come through. But our pain body can speak in a number of different ways based on the ways in which it feels trapped and stagnant and contained. But yeah, we feel we feel like we have all this containment of unexpressed emotions and unexpressed vulnerabilities and softness. And when we suppress all that and store all that, the pain body speaks and it tries to break through that threshold. But when we start to build that threshold through suppression, through what we think feels safe, because it's not safe to express, it's not safe to truly be vulnerable and feel and sense things. When we start to suppress that, we build a threshold, we build that wall, that wall that tells us this is what's safe and this is what isn't. That's one side and that's the other. This is what's safe is on this side and that's what unsafe is. That's our threshold. You can also call this your wall of trauma, but it keeps us in stress cycles, unable to completely feel our emotions and emotionally process what we need to. And so, what's the solution to all this, right? You want to rest, you feel like you can't rest, and you feel like rest is unsafe. You have this emotional wall of trauma, this threshold that's telling you that it's unsafe to express to whatever extent it is as an individual for yourself, in whichever way. How do we get through that? And so, this is where we want to take the awareness of that trauma wall, of that threshold, of that feeling of being unsafe in moments of softness and expression and vulnerability in order to truly rest. We want to take all that awareness of everything we've just talked about and begin to explore through somatic practices and energetic practices. We begin to explore that threshold of what tells us what's safe and what's not. So, really, we're jumping on top of that wall, that emotional trauma wall or that threshold and just peering over a little bit to see what looks unsafe, what feels unsafe, to explore that in an unconscious way, because again, our conscious mind will always bypass that. It thinks logistically, it doesn't want to feel, it doesn't want to go to that unsafe area of feeling. And so what we start to do with somatic practices and energetic practices, we start to peer over that wall. We're staying in the line of safety, we're staying in that threshold, but we're starting to peer over that wall, having a look at what feels unsafe and dissecting, okay, let's pick that item on that side of the wall today. And let's start to dissect that. And that feels safe to me to do that. Let's just take one baby step at a time. We start to invite these feelings and these sensations and these expressions, letting go of emotions, thoughts, or energy. All of this purging can be invited into the body through somatic and energetic work when we do this. Expression helps the nervous system complete what was interrupted at the end of the day. And some examples of expression, like and ways that we can express through somatic and energetic practices, crying, shaking, movements, sound, sound, breath, voice, journaling is a somatic practice as well. An anger release. This is the way that we can encourage and invite exploring that threshold, that wall, and exploring our areas of unsafety when they're really, they're not actually unsafe when we when we unpack it all. It's just trauma responses. And so I'm gonna give you an example of what it would feel like to explore that. I'm inviting you into this right now. We can start to explore something small here. Start to bring some awareness to your jaw and just be there with your jaw, just notice it.

SPEAKER_00 14:47

Notice if there's any tension.

SPEAKER_02 17:33

Become sensation-based and emotion-based, curious. Our mind is still there, our consciousness is still there, but it's taking the backseat and witnessing what's there to feel and to sense. You might like to journal afterwards, journal what came up and get really curious and dissect it afterwards with the mind and get a bit more mental body dominant afterwards. That's great, that's fine. That's how we learn, is through exploring and going body-based and sensing our body and our feelings and our emotions, and then taking note of that and you can dissect it afterwards and learn from the wisdom of your body, which is why journaling is a somatic practice. We're physically moving as we do it, and our mind is just dumping all the clutter out. We're clearing, we're emptying the inbox of our mind when we do that. I really like journaling as well. You might also like to place touch where you're feeling that sensation as well. I often add that into my somatic practices as well, as inviting touch with your hands. Our hands are healing. Whether you've done a Reiki or an energetic training or not, our hands are healing. And we can heal ourselves just with touch or inviting the touch of another if we feel safe enough to. And so that's really all we need is to just come back to the body, become body-based. So if you find yourself laying there on that beach on vacation, that's just the example I'm running with for this episode, and you feel like you can't relax, it's not about trying to or forcing it to. If we do that, we're not going to feel safe. It's about inviting in body-based sensations, feeling and sensing things. And so if you find yourself on that beach on vacation, you can't relax. Even if you try, the whole point isn't to try, it's to just invite that softness and vulnerability to come up to that threshold, that wall of trauma, sit on top of that wall and just explore what feels safe to explore, even though your safety is behind the wall. But just have a peer through, get curious, invite curiosity into your minds. Let your mind take the back seat and explore all of what feels unsafe through body-based sensations. And if you are so numb that you don't know what that is or you just don't know where to begin, start with a somatic practice like the one I just gave you. I'll drop some resources of somatic practices in the caption below, just beginner ones to get you started as well. And just see what comes up and invite softness in. There's no rush, there's no force when we're doing somatic and energetic practices. And that really is what the body needs to feel safe and in order to rest, really. So, as always, I'm gonna end with two somatic cues just to get your mind thinking and your thoughts curious, right? Coming in with the curiosity. And so, first question. What part of me has been trying so hard to survive? And you can close your eyes, drop in, and even just feel in your body how that question lands in your body rather than being thought-based with your answer. Invite in the feelings of how that question makes you feel. What part of me has been trying so hard to survive? Feel it in your body. Let your body answer. And then ask yourself, what would softness feel like right now? Feel that in the body, let that land. What would softness feel like right now? And rest and relaxation. What does that feel like to me right now? Is there resistance? Does it feel unsafe? Does it feel really nice? What does it feel like? Where do I feel that in my body? What does my body have to say about that? And so those are the two somatic cues, somatic queries that I want to just end the episode on. And just to finish off, I guess I would probably want to summarize this whole episode by saying that you don't need to earn rest. You really don't. And you don't need to push through your exhaustion to prove your worth. And also your softness isn't a weakness. Like it's not a vulnerability. It's it's actually just as sacred as your strength. In fact, it's what I would argue it's what makes you strong. You know, your softness is actually your strength. Once you start to lean into it a little more with these practices and become familiar and acquainted with your softness, with what's on that other side of the wall. And so again, if you really want to put this episode into practice, I'm gonna drop some resources in the caption below, as well as my two-day portal into stillness. I feel like that mini course is a great starting point for learning how to slow down and rest and allow and invite in that rest. It's it's a two day intensive, but kind of without that force, you know, do it in your own time and space in a way that you want to. I set it up that way within the course as well. And it just really invites in that softness so that you can feel safe when resting. So I I'm really gonna pop that one in there. I feel like that would really align with this episode and everything we've talked about. And so I'll be seeing you next week where we're going to be exploring the emotional body. So today we explored a lot of the mental body and the mind and the mindset. Next week, we're gonna be exploring the emotional body in a way that I'll just keep a mystery. I'll see you then. As we finish this week's episode, remember that you are your own rhythm keeper. So just keep listening for that rhythm and keep coming home to you. Until next time, with love, Shannon at Somatic Body.