Episode 27 | How Our Bodies Respond To Change

Welcome To The Womanhood Podcast

This week we’re discussing a holistic perspective of how our entire body (all 4 bodies) respond during times of change. I end with 3 Somatic Cues (micro practices/tools) on how to embody this Womanhood Wisdom and integrate it into your life.

RESOURCES:

🙋🏻‍♀️ The 3 Somatic Cues: found at 20:16 (minutes) in this episode.

❤️‍🩹 Grieving with Somatic Processes & Safety: https://youtu.be/sdqaFHE4lVQ

🎧 LINKS TO CHANNEL ⬇️ for the episodes mentioned below:

• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/42tk6kj7AOQ79DulpxyzGZ?si=5e97bb6139ab4aae
• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-womanhood-podcast/id1856661674

🎙️ Episode 23: Sarah Poirier: Using Somatic Integration To Build Trust With Your Body

🎙️ Episode 8: Dysregulation, Regulation & Optimisation

🎙️ Episode 2: Turning Burnouts Into Breakthroughs 

Connect With Me:

Book an Embodiment Session 🔮📞 A gentle conversation, never a sales call: https://www.somaticbody.com.au/book

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

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

💸 Support the channel & get a shout-out in an upcoming episode: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2568636/support

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

01:57 All The Excuses I Previously Used To Resist Change

03:43 A Cure To Specific Thoughts That Can Block You From Change

04:47 The Discomforts & Resistance To Change & Growth

05:50 The Default Body Reaction To Change (To Be Aware Of)

06:46 What ‘Comfortable Discomfort’ Looks Like In The Body

09:04 Somatic Cue’s For These 3 Resistant States Of The Body

10:26 How Fawning Can Be Another Resistant State

11:37 THE WHY: Why Do We Resist Change?

13:00 The Growth Path & The Loss That Comes With It

14:54 Honouring The Loss Along The Way

16:21 Dissecting The Pain Body & It’s Response To Change

17:27 The ‘WHAT IF?’ Mentality: Seeds Of Doubt In The Body

18:10 Tools, Practices & Tips For Navigating Change

20:16 X3 Somatic Cues & Tips To Integrate the Wisdom Of The Episode

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

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

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, thematic, and energetic viewpoint, weaving together both science with spirituality and masculinity with femininity. We'll be talking cyclical natures and rhythms, intuition, instinct, ancient womb wisdom, and grounded embodiment strategy. Find yourself a cozy space and let's get started. Today we're going to be exploring change. And this one's actually going to be a little bit activating for me because I'm still navigating how my body responds to change, how my emotions respond to change, and yeah, just how my whole body responds to change when it's in particular big life changes. So for those of you who are just listening in, hey, I'm Shannon, somatic and energetic integration specialist for women. And when I first started doing somatic embodiment, it was such a profound experience for me because it finally allowed me to become more body-led and get out of my mind and really tap into the aspects of me that do want to create change, that do want to chase dreams rather than sitting back and waiting for it to happen or asking to be invited. You look at my astrology and human design chart, and it all makes sense. I'm a Taurus Sun, Cancer Rising, Aries Moon, and there's that inner conflict between certain aspects of my chart, and I'm also a projector in human design. And so it feels comfortable. Like I think a lot of us think if I wanted this, it would come easier. Or if I really wanted this, I wouldn't be resisting it so much. But the body doesn't always operate that way when we're talking about the nervous system and the physical body. And so when we start to use somatic practices to drop in, we just get that little bit extra, you know, part of the picture. When there's that little piece of the puzzle missing, we can think things like, oh, if I really wanted to do this, I wouldn't be resisting it. Or if it really was the right path, none of this bad stuff would have happened. It's like you're missing a part of the puzzle. And for me, I'm like currently living this experience of exploring how my body reacts to change because it's always been such a big thing for me throughout my life. My nervous system just gets shot and I become like emotionally reactive and resistant to big life changes. And one I'll give you an example of at the moment. My partner and I are looking to get a puppy very soon. But this is a big life change. I was given a puppy for my 14th birthday, but my puppy wasn't really mine then because I was quite young still and it became the family dog. And so that responsibility wasn't mine. But buying this dog with my partner currently means that it's mostly my responsibility, our responsibility. It's a shared, you know, family dynamic that we're going to be inviting a new family member into the house. I'm the one who's going to be home most of the time, being that I work from home even more than my partner does. And so that responsibility is going to fall to me. That's going to be a big life change. And it's a long-term life change as well when you bring someone in. You know, I want to be a good dog mum. And then in the future I may even be a good mum, right? So it's a big responsibility. It's a big change. And I've grown out of that thought of, oh, if I really wanted this, it would have already happened. Or if I really wanted this, there wouldn't be so much resistance, or I wouldn't be resisting it. I've already started to shift that mindset into more of an open and curious mindset of like, huh, why does my body respond that way to the idea of big life changes or respond that way to when curveballs hit and there's big life changes that occur? I would have to say that that is one of my biggest resistances. And so we're exploring that today through the nervous system, through body-led wisdom, because that's something for me that has been so grounding and useful, like very profound for me on this journey of navigating change and how we respond to it. And so when we come back to the physical body in terms of change, we can even just simply look at how the nervous system and our body, when in a regulated state, finds the regulated state through safety, through familiarity, through predictability, through routine, through known outcomes. And the nervous system will always prefer that if it wants to stay regulated. But then yet, as soon as a change occurs that's outside of the predictability, outside of the routine, outside of the known, which nothing is truly known when we really go deep with that, but outside of the known realms of our day-to-day, and things start to get uncomfortable, then the body interprets this as uncertainty, unsafety. A big shift in life means that things are unstable. That's how the nervous system and the body interprets it. When really it's actually all these uncomfortable things are actually the path to growth, the path to expansion, the path to change. And so rather than allowing our body to tell us that it's a potential threat, which the nervous system would often rather choose a familiar discomfort over an unfamiliar possibility. And so rather than buying into our body that there's a potential threat, we can start to get curious about what our potential is outside of those threatening alarm signals when the alarm signals start going off in our nervous system and in our body. I truly do believe that the nervous system would often rather choose something that's familiar and routine and predictable over something that's unfamiliar, even if it means that it's more uncomfortable and there's less possibility. And what I mean by that is like we can get ourselves into situations, especially me being a Taurus sun and a projector, where we sit back and watch our life unfolding and we know we're not happy with it. We're feeling really uncomfortable in all aspects of our body, heart, mind, soul, and physical body. We feel uncomfortable, but yet we're safer, we feel more comfortable being in that state because it's familiar and predictable than making the change necessary to start to embody a new way of being, to start to embody something that we truly do desire, that we actually want to shift into, something that could be possible. And what is possible is the unknown because we're stepping into something new. That's that newness. I just find it so interesting that our body chooses familiar discomforts over unfamiliar possibility and expansion. And what this might look like when it shows up, when we're in that state of familiar discomfort, it might look like fight, flight, and freeze. So when we are in that fight mode, we feel frustration and control, you know, like OCD and perfectionism and pushing harder, which is something I relate to from previous years when I used to do that. When I used to resist change and resist unfamiliarity because it felt unsafe, I'd go into fight mode and have those emotional reactivities, that frustration, that needing to control things. And when things weren't in control, I'd get like frustrated. And then you can also have a response of flight. This for me was when I went past that mode of fight mode, I'd then go into flight mode, which is where I would start overthinking and stay busy and avoid things, create distractions to avoid going deep, to avoid looking into what it is that I want. And then from there, if I let it go on even further, so this is like the timeline of it, I'd go into fight mode, then flight mode. Then if I continue to ignore my body and continue to ignore my wisdom by distracting myself, staying busy, continuing to be emotionally dissociated or frustrated and reactive, then I'd go into freeze mode from there. And those are like the steps of burnout when we think about it. I've talked about this many times in previous episodes and in a recent episode with Sarah as well, where you know you go into fight, flight, and freeze mode, and that's that cycle of burnout. Fight is when we could see ourselves as going, go, go, go, let's do this, let's get things done, let's be perfectionists, let's have control of our lives, let's push ourselves harder. And then it swings back to the other side of the pendulum where you go all the way into freeze mode because you weren't listening. I believe when we notice ourselves in flight mode, distracting ourselves, avoiding things with doom scrolling and watching TV and creating a hyper awareness of busyness, because it's not usually that we're that busy, but we exaggerate our busyness to keep distracted, which is something I used to do, especially during uni, in order to deal with it all because it was all new and fast moving and things that were out of my control would happen. And that's that's that fight, flat, and freeze mode. And what I'm getting at here is if I can speak to you with what those three stages look like, you can then start to understand it for yourself, like and start to get curious. Like, how do I feel about change? For those of you listening. So I notice myself in flight mode when I get frustrated or seek control or you know, perfectionism kicks in and I start pushing myself harder. Is that in a moment where there's a resistance to change? If I notice myself in flight mode where I'm overthinking and avoiding and there's this busyness, is that where I'm at a point where I'm resisting a change? And when I'm in freeze mode and there's procrastination and complete burnout and I'm sitting on the couch and I'm overwhelmed and I'm numbing myself with TV, again, that kind of plays into flight mode and distraction as well. But when I'm in that mode, what change am I resisting? And I guess the more specific question with any of those modes is what change is my body resisting? If we can come back to the body, we can come back to that nervous system reaction, that unconscious reaction and start to understand it and start to bypass it or let go of it because we become consciously aware of it, we understand it now, we have clarity. And so once we do become aware, the awareness is there, we have the clarity that hey, maybe I am resistant to a certain change. And the thing is, often we know what the change is. We just need to take the time to really feel into it, not overthink it, but feel into it. And then another side of the nervous system, which I haven't touched on, is fawning. So we've got the three main states of fight, flight, and freeze. And then fawns like that fourth one that not everyone talks about. But fawning can also look like when we seek approval from others, when we start abandoning our own personal needs and we start to people please. And this can play into the other modes, like when we're in fight mode, we are in perfectionism mode and pushing ourselves. And that really plays into the fawning mode where we're abandoning our personal needs in order to appease others and people please. But within that, we're also burning ourselves out and pushing ourselves harder, which is the fight mode and striving for perfection, which can also be an approval thing. You know, it's a fight mode thing, being perfectionist and appearing the best while we fight for our lives. But it's also a part of the fawning where we're seeking approval within that perfectionism. And so they all kind of interplay. I know I've kind of scraped over it a little bit, but I'm not going to go into it in depth because there's plenty of other episodes which I'll link below that go into nervous system states, you know, those four main ones and sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system states, our stress responses. So check that out in the show notes below if you want to go deeper with that. But we're coming back to how our nervous system and our body specifically responds to change. Which leads me to the real question is why? Right? We're here to explore. So, why is it that we resist change, that we are uncomfortable with change? Because, like, you think about it logically. I want to expand, and in order to expand, I have to create change. Great, let's do it. But then why can't I do it? Why does it why do I feel the resistance? Why does that happen? That's the real question. Why does my body and my nervous system respond in a stressed way? Why does it tip me out of regulation? When we have change and there's room for potential, room for expansion, room for growth, that should lead us into a regulated state and optimizing from there. I talked about how we can optimize our nervous system again in a previous episode, but that should be the way we look at change. And for some of us out there, you might be listening thinking, oh, that's quite natural. Like I'm actually pretty good at adapting to change. But my bet is if you've clicked the title of this episode and you've really resonated with it, it's because you're like me and you do struggle with change for whatever reason. The reason, coming back to it, why is that? Let's start to explore that. And when it comes to answering this, what I've come to believe on my journey so far with change and the evolution of, you know, becoming more familiar with change is that I think every transformation and every change involves a loss of some kind, even a positive transformation or a positive change. Because growth really does ask us to let go of, you know, old identities and to let go of coping strategies that otherwise kept us safe. And growth also asks us to check our beliefs and question them and redefine them for ourselves and to reframe thoughts that we have on our day-to-day, to really check ourselves, to hold ourselves accountable, which can be uncomfortable. And I think that's where the loss is, you know, like these familiar versions of ourselves that we've we've grown to learn over our lifetime, in this lifetime and even previous lifetimes, become our safe zone because they're familiar, even if they're uncomfortable. And that's what I was talking about at the start of the episode. Growth asks us to release certain parts of ourselves that feel familiar, but in order to outgrow them, we really do need to like let go of them. And that involves a loss. When it comes to losses and goodbye, there is an element of grieving, even if it's not from the loss of an actual person, but a loss of an aspect of ourselves. We can grieve that. And I think deep down, that's the part of grief that I struggle with is the grief of the self, of letting go of old identities, old beliefs, old ways of being in order to evolve. And we need to go through that grieving process. And I'm gonna drop the episode on grief in the show notes below as well. And so, yeah, sometimes we are not afraid of becoming someone new. We're not afraid of that change. But it's actually that we are grieving who we can no longer be. That's that's what I'm coming to learn as I explore it. And I'm not sure if that's gonna hit home for you guys, but you know, take what resonates, leave the rest. I always say that. But that's something I'm coming to realize is that when there's change, it's my body's response, the nervous system response, is a calling for me to check in with my body to go deep and take that space to honor the grieving process, to honor the loss that is about to transpire as I start to evolve and grow and expand. And so that's just kind of a more beautiful pivotal reframe for our minds to conceptualize change and to relate our body's responses to change as the call to action for grieving the loss that is required, like the letting go that is required in order to move forward and create real change. You know, slowing down, recognizing that healing is a process rather than a destination. You know, it's not a badge of honor to wear, and then you're done. Like healing's an ongoing journey and it comes and goes in cycles. And when we feel our body responding to change in a really stressed way, that is the calling to slow down, to recognize that we need to heal, that we need to grieve. And that's me answering the big question from my perspective is that we are grieving a loss when it comes to change. And our body, our nervous system is just calling us into the desire for, you know, somatic embodiment, energetic practices, whatever practices work for you to grieve the loss that is being called, like what is being called to let go in order to move forward. And we can look at a similar example with the pain body. I've talked about the pain body a lot. When our physical body is arcing up, not just our nervous system states, when our physical body is arcing up, we can look at this as a resistance to change as well. Things in the body become stagnant and build up, and we can have things like inflammation presenting, aches and pains starting to present, dis-ease in the body starting to present. And that's all the pain body teaching us to drop into the body, start to inquire what is there that we can let go? What am I fearing? What are the things I want to mourn over and release that I'm ready to witness, look at, and process through in order to create lasting change going forward. You know, the mind will often ask us, like, what if I fail? What if I'm rejected? What if this doesn't work? All the what ifs. But it's like underneath that, the body is responding as well to those thoughts, or perhaps it's what's driving those thoughts, the unconscious aspects of our body, like our little shadow self, our inner child, our energetic body, and all the wounds that are coming to the surface when we notice those thoughts, when we notice those sensations through the body. What if I fail? What if, what if, what if? What if I'm not good enough? You know, that's a big one for me. What if I'm not enough? We can take all those examples of what can come through when we're experiencing pain in the body. And pain in the body, I believe, is also our call to action for dropping into the body and letting go of things in order to create change. So I just wanted to touch on that a little bit as well. Because the pain body ultimately isn't trying to stop you from growth, it's just trying to protect you from previous pain. And that's why there's literally pain. That's what the pain body is. It's it's your resistance to carrying a story that, you know, your body, your whole body, heart, mind, soul, physical body, hasn't finished processing yet. And so let's get down to the practical of all of this now that we've explored it from my somatic perspective, my somatic lens, as to what I think, you know, changes in the body and and how we respond to it in the body, our defense mechanisms that can come through through nervous system and pain, why it happens, which is often because we are resisting the letting go and the loss, the mourning and grieving of something old within us, and embracing something new, or perhaps remembering something, a seed of wisdom, you know, in its place of what we are letting go of. Let's get to the practical from that. Now, first things first, when it comes to being body-led, and we want to start to drop into the body in order to move through the loss, move through the mourning, move through the grief, the letting go, and create the change. We we don't heal the desire to change by forcing ourselves through it. Like any somatic embodiment practice. It won't work if you're forcing yourself. It won't work if you're creating urgency. The body needs to feel safe and surrendered and held. And so you don't heal your resistance to change and your resistance to moving forward in somatic practices by pushing or forcing yourself. So that's like number one rule when we're gonna come into somatic practices. We heal change by creating the safety first. And then the second thing I want to mention is creating that permission to pause, which goes hand in hand with the first point I make. Give yourself the permission to pause, to slow down, to check in, reduce that urgency sensation. Because I truly believe that slowing down is a part of the healing. You know, it's so why delay it? And then the third thing I want to point out is that when we're starting to introduce ourselves to somatic practices and body-based practices, start to practice the awareness in your day-to-day. You know, start really simple. You might find a couple beginner practices on my YouTube channel, on someone else's somatic practice, you know, YouTube channel, and you might want to start practicing them. But if you're feeling like you need to force it and it's resistant, then come back to simple practices. Go throughout your day-to-day questioning what am I feeling? Where do I feel it? What does this sensation need right now? Just start simple like that. Somatic cues are a really simple way to drop yourself into being body-led. And then from there, when you're in that state and you're more dropped into your body and there's no urgency anymore, then you can start a somatic practice wherever you want to get your somatic practices from. But at the end of the day, we're sitting down and we're asking ourselves, we're creating that space, what is my body communicating to me right now? And when it comes to navigating change and how our body responds to change, we're gonna be dropping into our body and asking, what is it about this change that has me feeling so unsettled? And what are those sensations, the unsettling sensations? Let's drop into them in the body. Where do I feel them in the body? What exactly am I feeling? And what does this sensation need in order for me to either A, let go of it and move forward and create the change, or B, in order to find clarity so that I know where to move forward if I'm feeling uncertain with myself. So what is my body communicating? That's like third tip here when we're getting practical. So those are my three hot tips. The practical tips I would give you is number one, don't force yourself, don't lean into the force and the resistance. Create the safety, which is where you create that permission to pause, create the space, and then just start really simple somatic cues like what do I feel in my body? Where do I feel it in my body? What is this sensation in my body asking for right now? What does it need? And then moving into an even deeper practice from there if you feel the calling to. But really, it's just about listening to what your body needs, getting curious about what your body needs, finding the clarity and moving forward from there makes the change, makes all big changes in life a lot more grounded, a lot more regulated. And that's just what I'm coming to find and coming to discover on my own journey with my relationship to life changes, like big life changes. So I hope you enjoyed it. I didn't put like a mini somatic practice like I do sometimes in the episodes, but those somatic cues are really useful. So I'll pop them in the show notes below as well. And I will see you next week. 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.