You may have noticed it’s been a while since my last post. This is because I had a baby in August and have been slowly transitioning back to my work since then. In getting back to these reflections, I wondered how I might share something related to this very big life transition. What struck me was how transformative becoming a parent has been as a whole body experience. I’ve certainly had to adapt to different rhythms of sleep (or lack thereof) and weather some nasty back pain, but I’ve also noticed how much more attuned I am to my body’s responses. This ranges from a heightened awareness of noises around me (ie. phantom baby cries) to profound currents of joy or overwhelm that wash over me more frequently than ever before. How have these shifts impacted the way I move through the world? What inner wisdom do these responses illuminate? What of these responses don’t serve me and how might I change those patterns?
To consider questions like this, I’ve started learning more about somatics and how it can be engaged personally as well as systemically. Generative Somatics describes the term this way:
“Somatics is a practice-able theory of change that can move us toward individual, community, and collective liberation through working to embody transformation. […] Somatics works through the body (individual and collective)—and engages our thinking, emotions, commitments, vision, and action. […] In our current society, we have learned a more objectifying view of the body as a pile of bones and tendons that we think of like a science project. Instead, somatics looks at the body as a place of evolutionary intelligence and learning and as an essential place of change and transformation.”
There are many ways I hope to embed this framework more deeply into all aspects of my life, but I am thinking about engaging with conflict and harm in particular. Somatics offers a different way of reflecting, responding, and hopefully shifting patterns around conflict or harm, rooted in our body’s responses as well as its capacity to transform.
Consider this: a colleague tells you that they were upset about how you spoke to them at a meeting because they felt you were talking down to them. Your mind might jump to whatever thoughts are arising like:
How could they have thought I was talking down to them?! I’m not like that.
I’m a terrible person. I have to fix this right away.
They’re just saying this because they didn’t like the ideas I was proposing.
Usually we pay a lot of attention to those thoughts and react quickly based on them. But how often do we pause to examine our whole body response? To notice perhaps:
A sinking in the pit of your stomach
Your heart beating quickly
Sadness, anger, shame or hurt rising inside
A fight or flight response being triggered, maybe feeling yourself shut down or kicking into high gear – or even a little of both
These things are just as important, but we often don’t identify them until after the exchange, if at all. With more embodied living we may find greater awareness of these reactions and, over time, that awareness can lead to cultivating new behaviors. With time set aside for reflection and with practice (and, probably, not always getting it “right”) we may find that the next time something like this happens we can:
Take some deep breaths to slow our heart rate
Notice and name our feelings
Remind ourselves that we’re okay and that we can approach this intentionally
Catch thought patterns that don’t help us or those we’ve impacted and replace them with more constructive ones
As we keep building on these practices, we may find that we can employ them to address inequities and injustices we see in our workplaces, communities, and beyond. We can model and advocate for using the vocabulary and actions of somatics in those spaces. We can utilize more embodied living as a key to greater alignment with our values in our own lives and on a greater scale.