Get out of your head and into your body

The stuff dogs, toddlers, and drunk people have in common.

Get ready for a liiiiittle stream of consciousness because this is on. my. mind. So I am writing it from scratch today instead of polishing one of the five drafts I’ve already started. It feels important.

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Something I keep seeing repeated (I’ve seen it four times today) is that “distracting myself isn’t working”. Well-intentioned advice givers even suggest, “just stay busy”, “distract yourself,” or “distract your mind by doing x, y, z” when people are going through big emotions or having anxious thoughts.

I am a very distractible person. I think our flash and trash society has made most of us pretty distractible. You should see me try to clean my own small NYC apartment. I am bouncing around to new tasks or back to other tasks in the middle of doing another one. You’ll see me talk to myself and acknowledge the distraction. You’ll see me check my phone and play with my dog and maybe even write a whole substack post about embodiment. My apartment is less than 700 square feet. It’s impressive how distracted I can get. (Look at that, I even wrote this entire paragraph about how distractible I am in the middle of a post about body work.)

I can even forget what I was originally doing because I got so distracted. (Not this time, kids, back to it-)

But rarely does being distracted mean I forget the big monster thing entirely. It’s more like I’ve piled a whole bunch of other shit on top of the monster. Eventually it will be the only thing left to growl at me again. I have the most lock-tight elephant brain for anxious little monsters despite forgetting where my keys are every other day.

But. If my brain does somehow manage to forget, my body still does not.

Our bodies will hold onto things forever if we let them.

They will tap their toes, jiggle their legs, pace, and fidget trying to release. They will give us headaches, gut issues, inexplicable cramps, and chronic pain. They will fuck with our menstrual cycles and libido. They will scream until we listen.

My best friend is going to help us listen. Instead of distracting ourselves, he’s going to help us get out of our mind completely and into our body. Instead of trying not to see our feelings, we’re going to let them go.

Cooper, the embodiment expert

Emotions will stay in your body until you release them. One part of practicing embodiment is the act of releasing your emotions through your body.

My dog does this so well and I am actively learning from him.

• In the morning, he stretches, he releases the morning sleep and his dreams and wakes his body up. He doesn’t go anywhere after laying down without stretching first.

• He shakes. All of the time. It’s how he releases emotions. If he’s sniffing something and I make him move on, he struggles and he must shake first and then he happily trots away. If we are transitioning from the bed to the couch, he shakes. If we come in from outside and he’s ready to settle, he shakes.

• His sadness is. When I leave the house and watch him on the two cameras I set up and track on my phone, I can tell he is doing his heartbreaking cry without even turning the sound on. He throws his head back and sings his sad tune to the apartments above us.

• He RUNS so hard and so fast. Those classic zoomies release stress and also excitement.

• He yawns when he’s unsure or stressed and his yawn echoes through his whole body, ending with a little head shake.

• After a bath, which is when he is most anxious, he goes physically NUTS. He runs across the carpet and onto the hardwood making sharp turns that keep his little legs pumping while he skids. He rolls his face and body all over the floor. He pulls his bed out of his crate and shakes it and pulls the stuffing out.

• He comforts himself. He spins around and curls himself into the tightest ball when he is cold or wants to be cozy. Cooper loves to be cozy. As he gets more comfortable, he nuzzles into blankets and flops his legs to the side as he relaxes. This boy does not care what he looks like.

• His joy is palpable. He hops up on his hind legs, he spins, he paws at my legs. His joy is not constrained to his teeth and lips.

• He barks. All of the time. Yes, this is the way he communicates because we don’t have buttons like Bunny the dog, but it also reminds me that sometimes releasing an emotion is guttural and is just sound instead of words put together by my brain.

Shake it off

I shake all of the time now. When I have a moment of frustration, I shake. When I realize the dishes are making me more annoyed than I should be, I shake. After I write something, especially something heavy, I shake. After I have a hard conversation, I shake.

I shake like the standing-on-two-legs bitch that I am. I think about four year old me, being a dog. I wish she had felt free to keep playing dog forever, but I let her play now.

Dance like no one is watching

I hate and love cliches so much. As a writer, they make me cringe because I feel so unoriginal when I want to use one. I’m more creative than this shit! But as a human, I love them. I love them because many cliches or sayings are based in truth, they have a long history. I love thinking about who first came up with them. And I love when I think of all of the people who might have thought it before and thought how true it was.

At the retreat I recently attended (that we will again credit for making me finally launch this substack) we talked about emotions, we FELT them, we wrote, we cried. It was a lot. And we ended every day with a dance party. Which was my nightmare until we actually did it. We turned the lights off

By the third evening, the lights weren’t off anymore. A mirror ball splashed crystals across the walls. The crowd was washed in purple, red, orange, and blue. It pulsated. You’ll never guess who got their hands on the lighting console. ;) Everyone’s movement was a version of freedom I could not have imagined. I felt it too. It was stunning in a way I don’t know if I’ll ever replicate. And I felt amazing and energized every time I left that room despite crying and feeling anxiety and excitement stuffed into the few hours before.

Ruthie Lindsey, who led that retreat I attended recently, speaks about her battle with chronic pain and the way loving herself helped in the most inspirational way.

Dogs, kids, and drunk people

You know when I was great at dancing like no one was watching? As a kid. I was constantly moving. We all were great examples of embodiment and being present in our bodies before we learned to worry about what other people thought and before all of the conditioning to sit up straight, not take up too much space, not throw things, and never never look too silly.

I am also great at dancing like no one is watching when I’m drunk. I am a messy white girl bopping around the whole place. I am uninhibited. The second I’ve had a drop of alcohol and the spiciest beat comes on, I am LIVING. I sometimes wonder if I’m an alcoholic because of how much I like to drink, but when I consider (as my coach asks) what it offers me. This. It offers me my body unconditioned and unencumbered by my brain, and my ego, and my shame.

I hope you fucking dance like no one is watching. I hope you strip all of the conditioning and “no”s off of your body and move. And then I hope you let other people see you. Because you are stunning.

My morning toddler tantrum

I extra wanted to write this piece today because it worked so well for me this morning. I was laying in bed with my partner and he was doing his bit where everything is funny when I am trying to be serious and it’s very charming, but also can build into irritation.

“I just was trying to explain! my! feelings!”

“It’s okay baby, feel your feels.”

He knows this is irritating. He’s playing, but he’s pushing a button that’s feeling particularly sensitive. I can feel frustration biting at me.

So I full out had a 30 second physical tantrum on my bed. I banged my legs and my arms against the bed and rocked my head from side to side. I growled until a roar erupted.

And the roar turned into laughter as I pulled the covers back up to my chin with a grin that played at sheepish while holding lion-sized power and relief.

I wasn’t irritated. I didn’t even need to talk about whatever thing we were talking about anymore. I felt good. Even hours later, when something else mildly annoying happened (I am known for being easily annoyed), it didn’t bother me much at all. A 30 second release made me more resilient the rest of the day.

This shit works.

Get out of your mind and into your body.

Shake. Throw a tantrum. Destroy something. Dance. Scream. Jump for joy. Stretch. Sigh. Gasp.Throw your head back and laugh. Or Cry. Punch something. Swing your legs across fresh sheets. Be a windmill. Move.

Feel with your body, not with your head.

If you need more examples for ways to get into your body, check out ways to regulate your nervous system. WEIRDLY all of these things are related. ;)

More Embodiment Work Highlights

My biggest experience with embodiment so far is using it to connect and let emotions go, but the concepts of embodiment expand even further.

• Despite our body and mind being connected, we have become increasingly disconnected from our bodies.

• Our body gives us signals and a lot of emotion is created from signals we are receiving from our body. Because we are disconnected from our bodies, we don’t take in these signals properly.

• Our body holds our trauma. The Body Keeps the Score is a great look into this and demands it’s own later post.

• Our body also holds our truth. Our minds can lie to us, anxious thoughts can run away with us, but if we return to our bodies, anxiety does not live there.

• Being in your body is the key to being present. This is the root of a lot of nervous system work.

Somatic therapy is a body-based practice of using embodiment to heal trauma and deal with emotions. My previous therapist had a more holistic approach and she often used somatic therapy techniques though I didn’t know that what they were at the time.

I still have a lot to learn about embodiment and somatic therapy and I’m sure that work will continue to show up in this SubStack. I can’t wait!