“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
Victor Frankl
Let’s start this week with a body awareness exercise. First, take a moment to notice how your body is positioned. Are you standing, sitting, or laying down? What parts of your body feel supported? You may feel the soles of your feet pressing into the floor or your hip bones supported by your chair. Now take a quick scan of your body, from the top of your head to the bottoms of your feet. What do you notice? Do you feel any aches, fatigue, or perhaps dullness anywhere? What about constriction or tightness? Your neck may feel strained if you are reading this on your phone. If you are seated, notice if you press down more on one side compared to the other. Take your attention all the way down to your ankle and toes. Are your ankles crossed? What are your toes doing?
The next step in this exercise is to notice your breathing. Are you breathing through the nose or the mouth? Pay attention to the breath cycle. Is it soft and full, or fast and shallow? Compare the inhale to the exhale to see if one is shorter than the other. Where does the air go when you breathe in? Notice how you exhale. Is the breath released all at once or slowly with control? Do you hold your breath?
Now take a moment to review the sensations and breathing patterns you noticed. You may have been overwhelmed, noticing lots of different pressure points, tightness, constrictions, or pulsations. Perhaps you didn’t feel anything at all, got bored, and skipped the exercise. Whatever the response, make a mental note of what grabbed your attention. Which was easier for you: noticing the physical sensations in the body or following your breath?
You may recognize this exploration of body sensations as part of mindfulness-based practices such as yoga, deep relaxation techniques, or meditation. I once had an anesthesiologist use this exercise while administering a pain block before shoulder surgery—making this procedure, which is typically very uncomfortable, much more tolerable. His approach was well intended as studies have shown becoming attuned to body sensations is associated with several health benefits, including improved blood pressure, a lower heart rate, decreased inflammation, improved digestion, and an enhanced immune system. This “somatic awareness” supports our ability to control how we both use and conserve our energy. Developing this awareness helps us to craft habits that will improve the rhythm of our lives, making it easier to maintain an optimal level of health.
Somatic awareness is the foundation of our ability to self-regulate, a key component in finding balance and staying healthy. Self-regulation is a broad concept that has applications across many domains such as health care, education, and organizational behavior. It offers a diverse array of tools that include cognitive, behavioral, and physically based strategies. In the arena of health, self-regulation is related to our efforts to purposefully direct our energy and attention in ways that help us control our responses, making choices that support flourishing rather than simply reacting to the next crisis. Self-regulation is more than self-control which focuses exclusively on the inhibition of strong impulses such as avoiding sugar, controlling alcohol consumption, and not smoking. Exerting a much broader impact, self-regulation reduces the frequency and intensity of our impulses, leveling out our highs and lows by influencing how we react to stressful events and how quickly we recover when we are thrown off balance.
Being healthy is not a destination, but a pivot point upon which we continuously strive for balance. Most of us want to be healthy but we don’t always make the best choices. We all struggle to establish supportive habits and try to stay on track when faced with stressors and unexpected obstacles. Health doesn’t guarantee immunity from challenges, obstacles, or stressful situations. It is how we respond to challenges that is the true measure of our wellbeing. Studies have shown that our ability to navigate and recover from stress is correlated with our quality of life. Self-regulation offers us two simple tools that help us face stressors more skillfully: tuning into our body sensations and regulating our breath. By learning how to shift our awareness inward, we can create a pause, and it is in this space that we are able to change the trajectory of our lives.
How we move through life is strongly influenced by where we direct our attention. What we focus on is influenced by three factors: our emotions, our thoughts, and our bodily reactions. These three factors cannot be understood in isolation as they operate in unison as a feedback loop. Stimulate one of them and the others react. When someone yells at you, it is likely you will experience an emotion, a gut reaction that will initiate a physiological response. The body responds by secreting the “fight or flight” hormones that enhance your ability to fight or flee. If you think the person who is yelling is a threat, you’ll react by becoming defensive or running away. But let’s say it is your spouse who is yelling. Perhaps he (or she) broke a toe. You may initially feel fear when you hear the yelling which, like the first scenario, initiates the stress response but, upon realizing what happened, your thoughts change how you respond. Rather than run away, you override the stress response, and instead help your injured spouse.
The feedback loop between emotions, body reactions, and thoughts drives our behaviors and influences whether our patterns help us to grow or become brittle and reactive. When we lack awareness of how these loops impact our behavior, we can easily get stuck in unhealthy behavioral ruts that perpetuate the cycle of stress. Although it may seem daunting, we can change, but to do so we must first pay attention. Once we tune into what is happening in the here and now, self-regulation can offer us new ways of directing and balancing our energy.
The first step in self-regulation is to become attuned to our body sensations. We all have the capacity to turn our attention inward, to pay attention to the rise and fall of the breath, to develop somatic awareness by tuning into body sensations such as pressure, constriction, heat, fatigue. This practice is one of noticing, not evaluating or analyzing. We learn to simply be with the sensations as they arise. Doing so, we may also notice our emotional backdrop, the general feeling tones that are recognized as being pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. Studies have shown that making this shift of attention to our internal states has an almost immediate impact on our stress response, either overriding it or interrupting and turning it off completely.
Noticing creates an opportunity for us to pause, creating a gap that allows us to step out of the feedback loop. The pause becomes an opportunity to act intentionally rather than react to our circumstances. Health is a long-term process that requires choices that support us over the long term, so we need strategies to help us stay focused on the wider view. Stress, which narrows our attention and hinders our ability to make wise choices, gets us stuck in reactive feedback loops. Noticing and then changing our breathing patterns is a powerful tool that can override the stress response when we get caught up in these reactive loops. Research has shown that slowing the inhale/exhale cycle of breath to 10 seconds is effective at turning off the stress response and initiating the relaxation response. Establishing a rhythm in which you inhale for a count of 4, hold for a count of 1, exhale for a count of 4, then pause for a count of 1 has been shown to be a quick and highly effective way of down regulating stress.
Keep in mind that somatic awareness is not a switch that can be turned on and off when needed. It is a skill that, although simple, is not easy to cultivate as it requires diligent and consistent practice. Many somatic awareness practices are simple and easy to integrate into our lives. One involves creating a pause for 60 seconds before transitioning from one activity to the next. Each time you are about to transition, take 60 seconds to do a body scan, moving from the top of your head to your toes. Perhaps you are about to leave home to meet a friend. Before starting your car, take a minute to scan your body to notice various sensations as well as your breath. Repeat the exercise when you arrive at your destination. Remember not to evaluate, just stay present and notice. Over time, your ability to pay attention will grow, helping you to step out of reactive feedback loops, create a pause, and use that gap to shape your destiny.
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