Embodied Integrative Healing Podcast Episode 3 - Exploring Somatic Awareness

Join me in this episode as I explore how through somatic awareness, we learn to bring the healing presence of awareness into the feelings, sensations and emotions in our body.  Together we'll look at the practice of somatic awareness, which is part of embodiment. 

In order for healing to really happen, it needs to be experiential. Here we are focusing really specifically in our bodies, because it can be easy for things to get intellectual and just stay mental in our heads as theories and ideas. There needs to be an experience in our bodies in order for us to actually change and feel better, heal and have relief, and have more peace and less anxiety and less pain. Somatic awareness is like a powerful alchemy that brings about this result.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:17

Well good morning, everyone. Um it's morning where I'm at, wherever whatever time it is where you're at. Um I hope it's good and I hope you're doing well. Hope you're experiencing some peace in your life. Hope you're um moving through any challenges that you have. And um in today's episode, I wanted to talk about one aspect of the healing practice or the method of healing that I use here at Embodied Integrative Healing. And um that's uh somatic practice, which is part of the embodiment. Um, so you know, embodiment meaning focusing really specifically in our bodies, because it can be easy for things to get intellectual and just kind of stay mental in our heads and be kind of theories and ideas, but for healing to really happen, it needs to be an experience, it needs to be experiential. That's what actually makes us change and feel better and heal and have relief and have more peace and less anxiety and less pain and and and all those good things. So, in yeah, in order for that to happen, there has to be uh really a focus on the actual experience. And I really feel like that needs to be in our body. And um, and so that's what somatic practice is all about. It's really about looking at what's happening in our bodies. Um, just for example, like if you're having uh some anxiety, you could think about the anxiety and talk about it and, you know, all these things, or you can kind of just go right to noticing, bringing in awareness, like we've talked about in other episodes, just this noticing of that anxiety. So if there's some anxiety, you can just kind of notice that. Like, what's that like? What's it like in your body? Where's it at in your body? Does it have like a color or a shape or some kind of texture? Is it moving in some way? Or is it totally staying still in some way? Like you just kind of notice what it's like without any filter or any preconception about anxiety, but just noticing in this actual moment right now, presently, like what's it like for you? And so I would invite you right now, let's go ahead and just do a little bit of a somatic meditation practice. So um um, I just invite you to quiet down a little bit, let your mind quiet down just by noticing your breath. And even just noticing our breath is already a somatic practice because our breath is in our body. When we breathe in, we feel the breath going into our body.

SPEAKER_00 3:24

When we breathe out, we feel the breath moving out of our body.

SPEAKER_01 3:28

So really get into with the physical sensation like feeling air going in your nose.

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Going down through your neck, into your lungs. Same thing as it comes out, feeling that. Notice how your body moves as you breathe.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

Notice any tension in your body if there's any places like maybe your shoulder is tight, your shoulders might be tight. But you can just notice that.

SPEAKER_00 4:14

If your shoulders are tight, you can just just notice that. And as you notice the tightness without trying to change it, noticing how it is actually changing moment to moment.

SPEAKER_01 4:39

Sometimes it's a little bit more tight, sometimes a little bit less tight. You can even notice what is that tightness like? Like you know that it's tight, but like what's the texture of it? Does it have like a shape?

SPEAKER_00 4:52

Can you like see the shape of the tightness almost in your shoulders? Does it have any kind of color?

SPEAKER_01 5:03

Like, I'm noticing there's a little tightness in my shoulders, and it's almost like a little bit kind of gray, very light gray. This this kind of almost rounded rectangular shape.

SPEAKER_00 5:14

Just noticing what that tightness feels like.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

And oftentimes, if you just notice all these qualities of that sensation, like this tightness, you'll just notice it start to shift. Really, the more you just allow it to be there and to notice it, uh, that awareness comes in and you'll notice a shift. Like you might notice, oh, I noticed that tightness is a little bit less. Or sometimes I even, like just now, I just noticed now there's like this warmth in my shoulders that wasn't there before. So I just notice that, allow that to be there. And we can do this anywhere in our body, noticing all different parts of our body, maybe your gut, maybe there's like a nice peaceful feeling in your gut down in your lower belly, that sacral chakra. Or maybe that's anxious, there's maybe there's like some kind of dark color there, some kind of weird, swirly feeling, maybe. Sometimes recently I've been noticing I've been working through uh releasing this clench in my solar plexus, this uh solar plexus chakra. That there's just been this clench there. So sometimes I just notice this tight clench, and I just notice what it's like. It's like a little fist holding on, and I just kind of see that. And then other times I notice, wow, it's really peaceful there. And then I don't just brush that by, I just allow that to be there. Just notice, wow, it feels open and peaceful. So in addition to noticing any areas of tightness or stuckness or unpleasant feelings, also notice areas of openness, areas of movement, areas of pleasant feeling, because those are there too. A lot of times we might focus on the negative ones, and which is it's totally fine to notice that. That is important because that's there. But we don't want to exclusively notice that. We want to notice everything that's happening. And so be open to anything else that you notice in your body. Like maybe, for example, like right now, my right toe feels nice and pleasant. And might not usually notice something like that, but by bringing in this awareness with this somatic practice, I just notice, oh, that right toe. Yeah, right toe feels pretty good. Feels nice and relaxed and kind of warm and almost even a little bit peaceful, interestingly.

SPEAKER_00 7:52

Can allow that to be there.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

And as I notice that, I notice things shifting. Like I notice my left shin some kind of energy movement there, and my right knee a little bit of energy. I'm just noticing right now my shoulders feel pretty relaxed. I just noticed that. Now they feel pretty relaxed. So I just invite you to do the same thing. Just spend a little time allowing you to just notice these sensations in your body. And as you notice them, try and kind of in your mind, or really just in your direct experience awareness, just notice what they're like. Like what the shape and color is like, if it's moving or still, or has it like a texture, quality?

SPEAKER_00 8:43

I'll give you just a little bit of time to explore that.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

Like it's too much, or you don't want to go there, you can always come back to your breath, which is really safe. Safe breath. You just breathe in. Everything's fine. I'm just breathing in, that feels safe. That's okay.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

Breathing out, that feels safe. I'm just breathing. I'm okay, just nice and simple.

SPEAKER_01 10:16

And then as your breath helps to calm yourself down, feel a bit more safe, you might feel like you can explore again a little bit these sensations and feelings in your body. And and as you're exploring these, in order to help you feel safe, you can also allow yourself to explore the feelings or sensations at whatever level feels safe. So you don't have to dive in deep, you know, fully take it all in of whatever is there. You can just do it a little bit, like, oh, I'm just noticing this anxiety in my stomach. I'm just gonna look at it a little bit, just kind of maybe the top layer, just ease into it just a little bit. See what that's like. I don't have to go way in deep if that's a lot. I'm gonna just see, kind of like looking at it from a distance, like, oh, what's that like? Oh, let's see what that's like. Be with that for a little bit. But if it does feel too much, you can always, ah, I'm gonna I'm gonna take a step back, go back to my breath. Or maybe I'm gonna notice that right toe that feels really good, or my shoulders feel relaxed, or find that other kind of nice, peaceful anchor point.

SPEAKER_00 11:32

So we'll just explore this just for a few more moments in your body, in your experience.

SPEAKER_01 12:16

So something I like to explore a lot in my work with people and in this podcast is that life energy, that chi, that prana, or just life energy, what makes things alive, that aliveness that heals. You might notice that that with this somatic practice, that arises in your body. Um, I've often found that when I'm looking at something that's painful or unpleasant, and when I just do that practice of describing it, noticing it, allowing it to be there, seeing how it changes, just that allowance, it brings this awareness, and then this life energy often comes in. You might feel this healing energy kind of just pouring in, and it just goes to that area, and then there's this shift, this healing dissolving into this healing energy, this ah, life force. And if that happens even a little bit or a lot, however much, just notice that. Oh, yeah, allow that to be there fully.

SPEAKER_00 13:22

That energy of life. And then we can gradually wrap up this meditation and come back to our breath again, noticing our breath as we breathe in, and as we breathe out.

SPEAKER_01 13:59

Thanking our bodies, thanking our nervous systems, all that they do for us, giving them compassion, letting them letting our body, our nervous system, our energetic body know that we're that we care about it and we're taking care of it.

SPEAKER_00 14:21

And then we can gradually just open our eyes and if our eyes were closed, and reorient ourself to where we are in this moment. Yeah, so that's just a little exploration of somatic practice.

SPEAKER_01 14:39

And I hope you can get a sense of at least starting out to get a sense of what it can be like to really see what these experiences in our bodies are like. It's a very experiential thing without, you know, really analyzing it. So, like if you're noticing that feeling and what it's like and the color and the shape and texture, you're actually just noticing it. You're not really trying to analyze it or see why it is like that or what's it doing, why trying to figure it out. You're just really just observing it. Same way as if you were looking at a tree and you're just noticing what the tree's like. You're like seeing all the green leaves and the branches, and and you might touch the bark and feel what it feels like. And yeah, just looking at the tree and feeling, you're just kind of like noticing it. Not like trying to figure it out. And that noticing, which is really the awareness, that's what's um really so healing. And so, yeah, I kind of I want to look at how somatic practice can be connected, integrated with other healing methods and other ways of healing. Um, one practice, one method that I do is the work of Byron Katie, which is an inquiry method, which basically means we're kind of questioning things, inquiring into them, trying to like be curious about them and discover. And with this uh work of Byron Katie, what we do is we actually inquire into thoughts. And so with this work, it's really kind of it almost seems kind of mental in the sense that you're like looking at thoughts and questioning your thoughts. But what happens is you're doing that process, you actually get into your body too. Uh, because as you notice these thoughts, you actually notice these feelings that come with these thoughts, because these thoughts create feelings. And as you notice these feelings, you can allow them to be there in your body, do the somatic practice, see what it's like in your body, notice it. Like, oh yeah, when I'm believing this thought. Like, for example, if you have a thought like nobody likes me, and if you're believing that thought, you can feel this feeling. Maybe there's like a pit in your gut, like this, oh, dark, kind of round, dark, anxious feeling in your gut when you're believing people don't like me. And you can see how believing that thought creates this experience in your body. And then you can notice that, what that's like. Oh, yeah, it's dark and down in my gut, and it's like round and kind of hard and heavy. And just that noticing of the experience, which is the somatic practice, goes along with noticing how you react when you believe that thought. Because that's the that's really that's this third kind of step of this method, the work, is noticing how you react and what happens when you believe that thought. And with the somatic practice, you can see, oh yeah, when I believe this thought, people don't like me. This is what happens. I feel this feeling in my body. I can really see what it's like. Yeah. And so that's how you can kind of connect this somatic practice to inquiry work. So you're like working with thoughts, looking at thoughts, and then how thoughts affect you. And one of the ways that they affect you is your body. They affect you other ways too, like how you perceive people, how you behave, and how you react, and and they make you believe in other thoughts. Like if you believe the thought people don't like me, then you'll probably believe other thoughts like, oh, I shouldn't go to this event with these people because people don't like me. And and that person probably is thinking this negative thing about me because people don't like me. So when you believe one thought, it creates other thoughts that are kind of related to it, and you believe the beliefs kind of all go together. And so you can notice that and notice how they all affect each other. But with the somatic focus, you're also just noticing how they affect your body. Like how does it go into your body, what happens in your body just by believing a thought, right? That's really powerful how our mind is. Our mind can create experiences in our body. Because in one sense, our body is really just like um a reproduction machine of what we believe. And we can really see what happens when we believe something. Um, and so when we're doing this inquiry work with the work of Bayer and Katie, we're usually questioning stressful thoughts. That's what we're inquiring into, because stressful thoughts cause us pain and suffering. Um, but it's also just in general good to notice through somatic practice, like we were looking at in the meditation, all these um positive experiences and healing experiences and spaciousness and warmth and you know, life energy moving, you can notice, you can um notice all those things too. And you can notice how thoughts can create those experiences, other thoughts. So if you have like this opposite thought, um, so let me backtrack a little bit. When you're doing the work of Byron Katie, the last part of that inquiry method is you take the original thought and you turn it around. You like flip it the opposite in different ways. So with the original thought, people don't like me, you might, after you do all this inquiry on it, you then you might flip that thought around into people like me. And then you try that thought out and see what that's like. See if that's true. And if you look at that, that thought, people like me, you might notice how that makes your body feel. And you might notice, oh yeah, when I'm believing people like me, my heart kind of softens and opens up a bit. And like my forehead lightens up. And my shoulders relax, and I feel kind of like this aliveness in my body, that life energy, kind of I feel it moving around a bit when I believe people like me, and it's like I get kind of uh energized and feel happy, and you can notice what's that happy feeling like? Oh, yeah, then like in my chest, there's this kind of like happy, warm, joyful feeling, and it's kind of like yellow-goldish and smooth and kind of almost this like rounded shape. And so you know you can do that too with all the positive experiences and how they they're affected by your mind. So, yeah, I hope this is really helpful with kind of exploring somatic work, embodiment work, looking at how our bodies um are affected by what we think and believe in positive and negative ways. And I also just want to mention and look at a little bit how um our when we're doing the somatic work, a lot of times what we're finding in our body is things that we've been believing for a long time, or these patterns of energy and holding that have been there from the past, actually. And they're not necessarily being created well. Are in one sense they are created in the moment because they're being recreated, but in another kind of experiential way of looking at it, it's like they've been there for a long time. You know, so sometimes we might say we're walking around and we see someone and then we feel some anxiety in that moment. That might be just arising in that moment. But a lot of times when we're looking into things and we're looking in our bodies, we'll find these feelings and traumas that have been held there for a long time. And they're actually not really just like being created right now. They're kind of already have been there. Kind of in the same way like your stomach has all just been in your body for a while, you know, a long time, your whole life, right? And then, you know, your bones have just been in your body, they're there. So that in another way, there's these like energetic patterns and holdings that have like been there. Um, usually since childhood, that's a lot of times how they get started, and then they kind of develop from there. But not not always, they can happen in adulthood too, through different kinds of train traumatic experiences. And um and so when you're doing the somatic work, you might notice like like this pattern of something that happens. Like, oh, whenever I feel anxious, it's like it I notice like it makes this particular shape, maybe, this energy that like maybe it's like it's in my lower belly, and then it's also like in my chest, and a little bit to the left of my chest, and it like does it that way every time. Or for example, something that used to um happen to me is I would have this kind of tight little ball of density um in and near my uh liver, really, and and it was like, oh, it would be there, this like tight little ball of density. And it was always that same, it wasn't there all the time, but when it or when it noticed it all the time, but whenever I did notice it, it would I noticed it the same every time. Right? So that's one example of something that's being held onto and kind of patterned in this energetic pattern and holding where it's like it's kind of that same way every time. And those things, they're often really just the energetic holding on or patterning of uh of thoughts and beliefs and experiences that we had from something in the past that we weren't able to process. And so when you go into somatic work, you notice that, and as you're noticing that, I'll just give a little example here. Um I'll give a recent example. So recently I was working with um, I noticed some I was working with panic and anxiety, and I noticed in my lower back is where all of a sudden I was like feeling this kind of dark intensity, and it's like, oh no, kind of near my sacrum. Like, oh, this sense of like, oh my gosh, oh no. And I looked at it and it was like dark and kind of big and kind of vibrating, and then ooh, and I stayed with it, and then it was it was it was challenging and hard, and but as I stayed with it, noticing it, describing it, really being aware of it, and letting it be there, noticing where it was in my body, then eventually it it released, it really just changed almost instantane not instantaneously, but what I mean is it was there for a while, but then when it did change, it changed instantaneously. It was like whoop gone. And then there was this beautiful peace just kind of flowing out of my sacrum, my lower back and uh just this life energy there and peace and warmth and you know, like happiness and joy really. And um and when I was looking at it initially, I could see that it was uh it was this holding on of fear. It was this holding on of like, oh no, things are scary and bad. And and at some point in my life I like held it there. I experienced something scary and bad that felt too b too much, and I just had ended up holding it there. And so it been then it had been there down in there in my sacrum until it was here to be released. Um so you just that might happen for you when you're doing this kind of exploration is you'll find things that have actually kind of been there for a while, and they might relate to things that are happening currently or feel like they relate to happening things happening currently, but actually they're kind of these holdings. Because for me it was like I was getting anxious when I was driving and and when I was looking at that fear, and it was basically because I was looking at driving and feeling anxiety when I'm driving. And then I as I looked at it more and it released and everything, I realized, yeah, it wasn't really about driving. It was about something that had been held on and and and it was just kind of coming about in that situation. So I invite you to do that too, like in your daily life, if you're experiencing challenges, notice them in your body, and then you can ask yourself, like, what does this remind me of? Or is this from something else? You know, maybe you can be open to like, maybe this isn't about what's happening right now, maybe this is actually about something from the past. And um that can be helpful because then it can make the present moment seem easier, like, oh yeah, this situation's actually not that hard. This is about this thing that was hard back then. And then I can, you know, look at it in my body, explore it, inquire into it in my thoughts. So yeah, so I just want to encourage you with all that. And I hope this uh helps you get a sense of how important and helpful it can be to work somatically, working with experience in your body. Because you know, our body's where we kind of hold everything and it's how we experience this world, really. So yeah, so sending you um lots and lots of encouragement, lots of love, lots of peace, um, and encouragement in your practice. And and as always, um I offer uh one-on-one sessions in this work with the sematic work and with the work of inquire work of Byron Cady. I also do guided meditation practices, help you to connect with awareness and presence and the peace within yourself to find that grounding, that anchor. And I also do uh qigung work to help you kind of uh invigorate your life energy, move your life energy, connect with it, um, as well as uh Reiki energy healing to help heal energetically um challenges in your body by sending Reiki in your energy. Um, and yeah, so wishing you well and looking forward to being with you in the next episode.