Somatic Practices You Can Do Daily
From the inner workings of my daily life
Somatic practices saved my life. Truly. I’ve spent my entire life disassociated and disconnected from my body. And I’ve spent the second half of my life trying to understand what it is “supposed to feel like” to inhabit a body. To feel into my own lived experiences beyond the lens of numbing and avoiding pain.
I live with CPTSD. I talk about it a little in another post and how it has guided me into my life’s work. I am always coming to terms with what this actually means and deepening my level of compassion, acceptance, grace, forgiveness, softening, and care for myself. I did not commit to a life of healing purely because I think that I am broken. I wanted to know what it’s like to live fully in my body, in the present moment, and as my most authentic self. I was forced to walk this path if I wanted to stay alive.
Somatic Practices saved my life. This is one of many reasons why I’ve dedicated my life to somatic wellness and why I’m on a mission to open a studio this year to give this work a physical space to inhabit and call home. Not even or solely from the lens of therapy and clinical practices - which is where I began with EMDR, tapping, and soft explorations of feeling into my breath to bring me into the present moment. Somatics has expanded beyond the attachment to my cognitive functioning and has become a ritual to stay in my body, to feel, to return to my current reality, and to curiously look at the canvas right in front of me with fresh eyes.
In my earlier post I described what somatic practices are from a clinical lens and as defined by my experiences personally and professionally. Ultimately, I feel that the most valuable and accessible way to understand somatic wellness is to understand it as practice of presence that is body-centered with an intention to guide us into getting out of our head and dropping into deeper connection with the body and it’s language in the moment.
There are a few primary things I’ve noticed that consistently take me out of my body that I have also witnessed in others in the world, community and in sessions. These can be minimal and singular instances that happen in a moment as part of daily life or can scale all the way up to a compilation of multiple instances that occur over time and stack up to become deeper and more complex. It can be a singular event or it can become an entire foundation that frames the ways in which one views, navigates, and experiences the world.
Some of the common reasons why we experience temporary or long term disconnection from the body can be:
MENTAL TURBULENCE
• Stress
• Fear
• Anxiety or Panic
• Grief
• Rumination
• Conflict or rejection
• Emotional Pain
• Depression
• Uncertainty or Instability
• Emotional or mental abuse
• Perception of our reality, identity, or how we feel or experience others perception of us
PHYSICAL DISCOMFORT
• Pain
• Injury
• Grief
• Assault, violation, or violence
• Stress, tension, tightness, soreness
• Blocks or limitations in mobility
• Changes in appearance, size, or the presentation of ones body
• Being witnessed in an unwelcomed or undesired way
• Touch
• Body dysmorphia and how we feel in our body
SPIRITUAL MISALIGNMENT
• Moving through deep healing windows or shadow work
• Misalignment with values and actions
• Being disconnected from the earth, one’s dharma, purpose, or an understanding of personal beliefs
• Separation from community or others with common views, beliefs or values
• Imbalances with giving and receiving
• Misalignment with our assigned roles in society and what we feel is true for us
Somatic practices are not meant to heal you.
They are rituals that we can return to frequently to deepen our connection, understanding, curiosity, and care for and with our own body. Somatic practices give us the ability to return to the present moment, release, expand, and explore what is true inside of us so that we can navigate our daily lives with more clarity, ease, alignment, peace, passion and purpose. Somatic practices guide us into our deepest truths and reveal where we have blocks or sticky points that limit us from growing and moving through what feels hard in any moment. They help increase our resiliency to discomfort and also soothe us in moments that life overwhelms us. They challenge us in moments where we are experiencing ease so that in the moments that we are experiencing hardships, we can hold them in ways that also support us best without breaking us completely apart.
In this context as I share these specific somatic practices, I will be focusing on somatic wellness as a ritual, routine, or discipline rather than somatic practices as a tool to re-regulate ones nervous system during times of heightened distress (I’ll talk on this at a later time). These are practices that are most efficiently used as a day-to-day formula to keep our body-mind-heart-soul in more neutral alignment and strengthen our systems so that we can more easily navigate intense moments as they come and find more agency within our bodies as moments arise that dysregulate us or shift us away from a sense of control.
Somatic Wellness Practices to explore this month:
Focused Walking
Strength + Mobility Training
Breathwork + Intentional Breathing
Meditative Movement
Rope Bondage
Abhyanga Massage
Dry Brushing + Gua Sha Massage
Contact Dance
Earthing / Grounding
Embodied Chakra Clearing + Opening
Intentional Physical Intimacy - platonic, sensual, erotic, and sexual
These are practices that I explore frequently and that have significantly shifted my life and ability to live more presently in the world. They have helped me learn more about my mind-body connection and have supported me by strengthening the language of my body and allowing it to take the lead over the noise of my mind.
Over this next month, I will dive deeper into the above practices and share frameworks, techniques, and resources that can support you in exploring and designing your own unique formula for embodied connection and somatic wellness as a ritual. These resources will be a part of the Sensory Playspace paid subscribers benefits. Subscription is $11/month or $111/yearly. This contribution supports this work + empowers continual creation of accessible resources while balancing the demands of capitalism + wellness in the world.
Want to explore and design your own unique formula and move into deeper alignment with your most authentic, embodied self? I hold a weekly online group mentorship the INBODY LAB, in person classes in San Diego, and offer private sessions online + in person. I also work with individuals and couples who are committed to really creating shift and expansion in their life through a 90 day 1:1 mentorship container.
Take the time, create the space, feel the embodied shift.
