Your Body in Conflict, Part 3

Your Parasympathetic Response

Your parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for getting you back from your high state of arousal, allowing your cognitive functions to come back online, your digestion to resume functioning, and lowering your breathing and heart rate to more comfortable levels. Clearly, when we are in conflict or negotiation, this is a much-preferred state to be in.

The Vagus Nerve

However, there is one response that is governed by the PNS, specifically the vagus nerve, that can really throw you off. When we sense threat, one branch of the vagus nerve (the dorsal vagal branch), sets us up for a very primitive protection response. This is one of the oldest responses that we have and which we often see in animals who are on the verge of being eaten by a predator: playing dead.

Playing Dead

Depending on the acuteness and level of the threat, as well as the general state of our nervous system, this response can vary between mental and emotional disconnection from the social environment to a disembodied “not being here”, to actual physical collapse. This extreme depression of our normal responses to environmental and social cues serves to trick the attacker into thinking that we are already dead, so no point in trying to kill us. Generally, not a useful response in situations of social conflict and negotiation.

If you think that this must be a rare occurrence, think again. Most of us live stressful lives where our mental and emotional reserves are often on the verge of depletion. In this situation, the level of threat that we experience from relatively minor conflicts and other threats can be enormously magnified.

 Most of us, at one time or another, have experienced a feeling of complete deflation and a desire to crawl under the covers for days after a nasty remark from a powerful or important person in our lives. At other times, in a conflict situation, we may experience a feeling of complete intellectual and emotional shutdown; not knowing what to say or how to respond to something while in hindsight you know exactly what you should have said or done!

In short: when we are in a situation of prolonged conflict with seemingly no way out, we are at higher risk of dorsal vagus reactivity, and therefore despondent behavior and intellectual shutdown.

Consequently, when we look at conflict from the perspective of the sympathetic nervous system on the one hand and the para-sympathetic on the other, we want to cultivate the ability to stay in -or otherwise return as soon as possible to- a balanced performance between these two branches of the autonomic nervous system.  What does this look like? We want to have enough arousal and energy coming from the SNS to be able to energetically make our point, but also enough calm, intellectual and emotional openness, through an optimally activated PNS, to effectively engage with others in a process of emotional give and take.

It is important to realize that your conflict partner(s) deal with the same processes and what’s more: they can feel where you are in your process, if they have learned to be aware of their own and other’s physical expressions of sympathetic and para-sympathetic arousal.

Shortcuts to Rebalancing the Autonomic Nervous System

So, what can we do to balance our sympathetic and parasympathetic arousal? While we are unlikely to fully control these autonomic responses, there are a few techniques available to us that can dampen high states of arousal. The most practical and useful techniques that I use are a combination of a certain breathing pattern and a focus on specific physical sensations. Granted, these are not techniques that will be available to you without a significant amount of practice, but they are well worth the effort.

The breathing technique is to inhale deeply, and very slowly release, taking at least twice as long for your out-breath as you did for your in-breath. This technique will decrease your heart rate and increase the oxygen supply to you brain.

Focusing on specific physical sensations involves choosing an area of your body, such as your legs, buttocks, hands or shoulders that you monitor for increased tension with the intent to keep those body parts as tension free as possible. This technique will allow you to notice when the tension is rising and relax before the stress levels get so high that you cannot influence it anymore. Do not focus on anything that you can’t actively relax, such as your heart trying to explode out of your chest, or your churning guts or your splitting headache. Using these techniques will also allow you to decrease the threat of tunnel-vision that we referenced in our discussion of the sympathetic response, thereby regaining our ability to think creatively about solutions to our conflict.

Good luck with you practice!

Your Body in Conflict, Part 2

A slightly deeper dive into the Autonomic Nervous System

In part 1 of this series about the body in conflict we referenced the fact that the emotions and the bodily responses that we experience during conflict -or any life event for that matter- are mediated by the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS). Let’s take a look at what that really means.

The autonomic nervous system is the part of our nervous system that we generally don’t have control over, meaning that it will do its job without our conscious direction. It is roughly divided in three parts:

 

• The Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS); responsible for readying the body for action through increased heart and breathing rate, release of cortisol and epinephrine (adrenaline) and a host of other responses that come in handy when one needs to work, fight or flee.

 

 

• The Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS); responsible for getting us to sleep, digesting our food, sexual arousal, repairing damage to bodily systems and other mechanisms to keep the system in working order.

 

• The Enteric Nervous System (ENS);                in addition to obvious tasks related to digestive processes, the ENS is responsible for the production of the majority of serotonin in our body. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter (chemical messenger) that contributes to a wide array of bodily functions but is best known for its role in creating a feeling of well-being and happiness. The ENS has a mind of its own and works largely independent of the brain, which is why it is an important additional source of information: that gut feeling!

 

 

As stated in part 1, how we experience conflict and how we respond to conflict is in large part determined by the state of our autonomic nervous system. Now that we have identified the three parts that make up the ANS, we can take a closer look at these interactions.

Your Sympathetic Response

Conflict is always the consequence of a perception of threat. This threat can be physical, emotional, financial or status related. When we perceive threat, the autonomic nervous system jumps into action. Generally, we see activation of the sympathetic nervous system as the primary response; a readying of the body to respond to the threat by fighting or fleeing. Our heart and breathing rate increases, we start sweating, our blood pressure rises. While these responses are very useful when we are actually going to fight or run away, they generally are less helpful when we have a conflict at work or with our spouse.

One of the less useful features -in a modern context- of the fight or flight response is the narrowing of our conscious awareness. The body is primarily focused on survival and less important things, like hanging onto one’s job, are not so much in the picture. We also have less access to the prefrontal cortex of the brain, which enables us to perform high level cognitive functions, such as situational analysis. Instead, the brain makes quick and dirty decisions of the yes- or- no and black- and- white variety. Obviously, this does not support thoughtful and nuanced discussion about difficult subjects.

In part 3 of this series we’ll discuss the parasympathetic nervous system and its role and contributions in conflict situations.

Your Body in Conflict, Part 1:

Emotions, Expressions and the Autonomic Nervous System

Conflict is an inescapable aspect of everybody’s social life. No matter how great a communicator you are or however nice a person; you will encounter conflict. While many people try to avoid engaging in conflict, sooner or later we will have to confront it, or suffer significant consequences to our health, productivity, relationships and happiness.

Which way are you going with this?

Communication rules our Life!

Conflict, ultimately, is always the consequence of something that was communicated, not communicated or poorly communicated. Because communication is the lifeblood of any relationship, an inability to fully and precisely communicate what you intend has consequences that may range from not being able to reach one’s goals to intractable and paralyzing conflict.

What are you communicating?    

 We are virtually always communicating something; by the way we dress, what and the way we speak, our facial expressions, how we hold and move our body and even by the way we breathe or sweat.

What we communicate affects our audience first on a physical-emotional level and only secondarily on an intellectual level. This is even more acute in conflict situations. To manage our conflict situations effectively, it is crucial that we are both able to accurately read what the other party to the conflict is communicating as well as what we are communicating on this physical-emotional level.

The Stress of Conflict

Conflict situations are inherently stressful. Depending on our personal and professional history we have all developed a set of skills and defense mechanisms to deal-or not deal- with it. Hopefully, our conflict behaviors are heavily weighted towards social-emotional skills and less towards defense-mechanisms.

A defense-mechanism is a way to cope with the unpleasant emotional, physical and psychological effects of the conflict on us. It can take many forms such as aggression, dismissiveness, defensiveness, rationalization, avoidance and infinite combinations of those. I’d like to touch just lightly on one defense mechanism that I have observed in my personal life as well as in my capacity as a mediator and communication coach.

What are you saying to me..?!!!

Defensiveness in Conflict 

 Defensiveness. This is likely the most discussed and recognizable of the common defense-mechanisms. A person is defensive if they are pre-occupied with the need to come up with reasons and excuses for the behaviors or transgressions that they are accused of. Often it will take the form of a counterattack: “but you…”, or “I did it because you always…”. The problem with defensiveness is that it interferes with your ability to actually listen to what is being said, much less to understand the emotional impact the alleged behavior has had on your conflict-partner.

Listen if you want to be heard…                                                                                         

Being able to truly listen and acknowledge how the other person feels is not the same as admitting to the behavior or its alleged intent. People, generally, are only able to listen to your side of the story if and when they feel that they have fully been heard by you. This is where truly skilled communication comes in. To allow your conflict partner to feel truly heard, it takes more than “I hear you”.

I feel you!

Emotions Speak Louder Than Words   

More important than the words, is the emotional message that you are conveying. The emotional message is expressed by your body language, your facial expression, the tone and rhythm of your voice. These bodily expressions are closely tied to the state of your nervous system. We’ll discuss the role the autonomic nervous system plays in communication -and conflict situations specifically, in a future post. Suffice it to say right now, that your ability to be aware of and intervene in your autonomic nervous system responses, largely determines your success in managing conflict.

Emotions are experienced and expressed in and by the body. Conflict always has a strong emotional component. If we are not emotionally invested in an issue, then there is no point in having conflict about it. Body awareness is therefore a crucial component of being a skilled and effective communicator and conflict manager; what you are not aware of, you cannot manage…

Globalism, Multi-Culturalism and your Brain

How an increasingly global, interconnected world will challenge you to adapt or perish.

Our brains and body have evolved over the last few million years in response to a number of factors. Going from primarily quadruped to biped, traveling larger distances to forage for food, using tools, developing sophisticated symbolic language and living in increasingly complex communities, among them.

Pressures and opportunities

It seems reasonable to say that the rapid changes in our human societies in the last one thousand years and even more so in the last one hundred, have accelerated pressures and therefore opportunities for human evolution. Of course, when speaking of evolutionary change in species, this time-frame is just an insignificant blip. It is, however, reasonable to assume that we will continue on this path for the foreseeable future -if we don’t destroy ourselves first.

Mono- or multicultural adaptation

As our world metaphorically shrinks, we have two basic ways of responding to the demands that this shrinkage brings with it. We can either retrench and try to hold on to what is no more (our culturally unchallenged, homogeneous environments of yore) or we can try to figure out what adaptive behaviors, both in our short individual lives and from an evolutionary perspective, will serve us best.

We can see how people in all realms of life are trying to figure out which path to take, be it in politics; reactionary or progressive, in work life; follow the old career pathways that worked for previous generations or reinvent what the meaning of work and career should be now, in communal life; build community online or in person, and in the way we communicate; iPhone or eye-contact.

It is likely that adaptive behavior will look differently depending on the person, their stage of life and development, and from an evolutionary perspective; what allows us to survive and thrive in the short term may turn out destructive for the species in the long run.

The future is global and multicultural

What does this all have to do with the title of this post? The long-term trend for human behavior, adaptation and evolution has been in the direction of travelling larger distances, dealing with new physical and social environments and developing increasingly sophisticated ways of seeing, communicating with, and interpreting the social world. It has helped us to conquer the planet -often to the detriment of other species- and prevented us from going the way of the Dodo and Dinosaurs as well as other competing hominins (=modern humans, extinct human species and our immediate ancestors).

The challenge

It seems that we have reached an inflection point in human history where our technical prowess maybe taxing our emotional, social and cultural flexibility and ability to the breaking point, at least as far as it concerns current generations. Here again we confront the question: do we fight it? Or do we acquire the skills that we need to adapt as fast as we possibly can? If history is any indication, then it’s not much of a choice: adapt or perish. Given the fact that our line of homonins has been able to adapt quite spectacularly, I’m optimistic that we will.

What does it take?

Call me biased, but I believe that the glue that hold our complex societies together is communication. We have evolved to be a super-social, interdependent species. However, being a competent communicator in one’s own cultural environment doesn’t necessarily translate to competency across cultures.

To be a competent cross-cultural communicator one first has to learn to truly see and preferably feel-in-to the shared principles -with their associated emotional significance- that guide people’s behaviors in other cultures. It is only then that we can infuse our communications -verbal and otherwise- with the sensitivity-to-context that makes them effective.

What does it do?

Practicing multicultural communication is a high level emotional and cognitive skill. We are challenged to use our highest level emotional, cultural and executive intelligence to piece together a new reality that was not truly visible to us before. As with everything; practice makes us better, and what we practice is what we become. Becoming a competent multicultural communicator allows us to roam the world, opens doors, enables us to truly see, and empowers us to pick and choose what we want to engage with in order to live our best life.

The practice

Becoming a better communicator in any (multi) cultural context always starts at the same point. We practice listening deeply to those who are different from us. We take advantage of the fact that we are all humans with the same basic mechanisms for meaning making, the same basic fears, needs and desires. We all wish to be seen for who we truly are, we require safety, connection, dignity and respect. When we listen from that place, we facilitate expanding our ability to see beyond our own cultural limitations and to understand what we could not before.

As always, I look forward to your comments, questions and experiences.

P.S.  A Photographic Cultural Voyage to Andalusia

I was recently made aware of a unique opportunity to expand your cultural horizon in an exciting and extremely fun way. The Cultural Psychologist/Executive Coach Anne Ferrier and International Photographer Wayne Eastep have banded together to offer a cultural photography voyage to the South of Spain. The goal is to guide you to see Andalusian Culture and Landscape through a new lens -literally and figuratively. Jam-packed with cultural experiences, cultural competency and photography classes, it promises to be both an experience of a life-time as well as a life-changing personal growth opportunity. For more information go to:

www.globalcitizentours.com/workshops/

Your body, your story

Adaptation means survival

As we go through life, our minds, emotions and bodies are modified and shaped by our experiences, habits and environments. We are adaptable beings who generally will do whatever it takes to survive and fulfill our needs as best we can.

Your body is shaped by adaptation to circumstance

Just like a plant’s body will grow towards the light*, so too will the human body develop in such a way that it can maximize its chances of survival -both physical and emotional- depending on the environment that we find our self in. Of course, this shaping is constrained by our genetic make-up to a significant extent. However, it is easy to see how a child who grows up in the city will develop differently than a child who must hunt for food.

The basic needs of safety, connection and dignity

This is also true for the way our mental and sensory processes are shaped: how and to what we pay attention in our social and internal world is based on our need to fulfill the basic needs of safety, connection and dignity in the context of a  specific cultural and familial/communal environment. In other words: how we perceive and process the world and our place in it will be different if we grow up in a rural, communal, religious and fundamentalist village than when we grow up in a multi-cultural, individualist, materialist, metropolitan area. The resources available and skill-sets required to fulfill our basic needs will be different in each place.

Creating neural pathways

The need to attune to our environment will strengthen certain neural connections in our brains preferentially over others. In the jungle it is more important to have an acute sense of hearing and the ability to differentiate precisely between different rustling sounds so as to be able to detect the approach of a large predator, in comparison to a big city dweller who has to rely more on visual processing to detect dangers from cars and other humans. In this way our brain is shaped to optimize functioning in a particular environment. While these adaptations are crucial, it is important to realize that when we move from one, cultural, emotional or physical environment to another, those adaptations might not serve us so well anymore.

Our body and way of moving tell our story

Our story is reflected in numerous physical, emotional, and mental adaptations. Often, we can recognize part of someone’s story by observing the way they hold and move their body. When a child feels unsafe in the parental home, she may develop a cowering way of holding the body, appear nervous and hyper-vigilant with quick movements, or alternatively a tendency to remain immobile. As social beings, other people will almost always pick up on the message of un-safety surrounding this child. Depending on the onlooker’s own history they may feel inclined to protective behavior or alternatively have a desire to ignore or get away from the child, among multiple other possibilities.

From helpful to dysfunctional

Whatever adaptations we develop, they are generally the best option under the circumstance and with the tools that we have available, to make the best of the situation. As we or our circumstances change, our adaptation may prove dysfunctional in the new situation. One reason for this dysfunction is that other people will still see and respond to the physical expression of those old adaptations; hyper-vigilance or cowering behavior is generally not conducive to healthy relationships and therefore generally a major impediment to success in one’s personal and professional life.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

 

Strength or weakness

Hyper-vigilance and other adaptations can be a source of strength or weakness depending on our present circumstances; when you are a spy or a soldier in a hostile environment your hyper-vigilance becomes an asset. When attempting to build trusting relationships with friends and family, maybe not so much

Developing choice

To be successful in our personal and professional life, it is imperative that we have some level of choice regarding our behaviors, depending on what the circumstances require, instead of being lived by old programming. An important part of that success is the ability to have our body and movement-patterns reflect those new internal ways of being, so that other people can read accurately what is true in the moment and not just see a remnant of our old way of being. With awareness and practice we can learn to make appropriate use of our strengths, develop new ones and overcome our blind spots and weaknesses.

This is just who I am…. maybe not!

The way we are shaped by our personal history is what is normal and natural to us. We experience our mental and physical shaping as “just who we are”, instead of who we have become. It is often extremely helpful, if not crucial, to have a coach to help us see what we cannot see by our self, about our self. More often than not, when I point out a physical behavior to my clients, they will tell me that they never knew that they did that. It is important to have a coach who can help you -without judgment- interpret and put in context the behaviors and shapes that you have developed and guide you to change them where needed and to re-purpose where useful, to reach your goals in life.

Change your body, change your story

I have not yet met a person who hasn’t developed shapes and behaviors that do not serve them well in their current life and therefore present an impediment to reach at least some of their life goals… including me. I have found expressive somatics coaching one of the most powerful methods to change the trajectory of one’s life in the positive direction of one’s choosing. I urge you to try it.

As always, I’m looking forward to your comments.

*I’d like to give credit to Amanda Blake for teaching me this beautiful metaphor. Amanda is one of my teachers and heroes in the field of somatic coaching. I strongly recommend her book “Your Body is your Brain”. You can get it here: https://amzn.to/2ED2kKf

As a token of appreciation for my readers, I would like to extend you the offer of a free 30-minute coaching conversation. Email me at RaymondFerrier@SpiralsSRQ.com to schedule a session by phone.

 

 

 

Decisions Part 2

Actions have consequences…

My cousin Michael and I have this running joke about decisions having consequences. Without going into the sordid details here, let’s just say that it involves the relationship-consequences of certain decisions that in hindsight have predictably adverse consequences…I’m sure you get it; we’ve all been there and done that.

Same action…same outcome

While we often learn from those shorter-term decisions and their consequences, it is hard for most people to see how their daily decisions, big and small add up to specific outcomes in their lives. Many of us keep doing the same thing over and over again and hope that somehow, we’ll achieve a different and better outcome…not likely to happen (I’ll spare you the tired definition of insanity).

Decisions, decisions

In the previous post we discussed how we are often lured into taking culture-prescribed actions without much awareness of alternative courses of action that may prove to be a better fit for us, individually. An action requires a moment of decision. This decision maybe so automated that it doesn’t even reach our consciousness; we don’t really decide everyday anew that we are going to brush our teeth…we just do it. However, if for some reason the act of brushing our teeth is called into question, we may make a conscious decision to continue doing so, or not.

Energy-efficient decision making

From a body perspective, not having to go through a conscious decision-making process for the thousands of actions we take every day, is a matter of energy-efficiency. The brain is a power-user of our oxygen and energy supply under the best of -automated- circumstances and so it pays to be energy-efficient.

When we want to change our habits (automated decision plus corresponding action), it -at first- takes a lot of conscious decision making. In addition, we have to interrupt automated-decision-and-action-pathways in the brain. Those automated pathways always have a head-start on initiating a behavior, because there is no consciously deliberative process preceding it. Interrupting a process that already has gained momentum is enormously costly in terms of energy use. This is the reason why changing our habits is so challenging and exhausting.

Uncover your energy sources, build pathways

To successfully change our habits, we must automate the decision-making process as well as the corresponding actions. That requires consciously making those desired decisions and performing those actions over and over again until we have created a well-worn track. To be able to do this hard work, we must find the energy-generating drives, emotions and meaning behind the desire to change and learn to tap into them. Once we have built those new, automated neural pathways, we don’t have to consciously make those decisions any more and the train more or less drives itself.

Change your life, one automated neural pathway at a time

The process of coaching involves helping our clients build new habits that support the goals that they have set for themselves, as well as identifying the energy-generators. It is important to understand the physical changes that need to take place, before one can consistently take the actions that lead to successful goal achievement. Just having a good idea or vision doesn’t cut it.

As always, I’m looking forward to your comments.

As a token of appreciation for my readers, I would like to extend you the offer of a free 30-minute coaching conversation. Email me at RaymondFerrier@SpiralsSRQ.com to schedule a session by phone.

Decisions

As we enter the holiday season, the usual topics of discussion appear; family relationships, politics, loneliness and aloneness, food abundance and food insecurity. All topics worth of discussion, examination and action at any time of year. Ultimately, the value in examining these issues is to address the underlying questions of how we live our lives, how we relate to others, what kind of (social) world we want to live in and what we are willing to do about it.

Habits of culture versus individuality

Our lives are the outcomes of all the thousands of decisions we make every day. The decisions we make are largely the consequence of habits we have created. The habits we create are the outcome of many cultural and environmental pressures, some rational, well thought through strategies, and some are “gut” feelings. It is often hard for us to distinguish exactly in which category each habit and decision falls.

What may feel like a rational decision at a certain moment in one’s life, may just be the outcome of the expectations of the culture that one grows up in and not necessarily the best balancing of the desires, needs and abilities of a particular individual. Going to college, having an arranged marriage, choosing to be a parent or having a career are all to a large extent culturally defined, often differentiated by class and gender and expressed as stereotyped role expectations.

Being different

Those who decide to buck the expectations can expect to experience some push-back, ranging from very subtle to very harsh and overt. Often, the push-back will include the argument that making a different choice is just not smart and will lead to predictably adverse outcomes. In other words, the cultural discomfort is couched in “rational” argument.

Internal skills

Of course, there is often good reason to follow the precepts of one’s culture: there is a lot of lived experience and wisdom locked up in our cultural habits. However, in a fast changing, interconnected and increasingly global world, the ability to differentiate between a wide range of cultural opportunities presents an enormous advantage for any individual who has the internal skills to know which decisions and habits are primarily cultural and which are based on a clear appraisal of what fits their unique being.

The untangling: compare, contrast and gut check

To develop these internal skills, one first has to be aware of the cultural soup that one swims in. This requires some exposure to other cultures: if we only ever know one culture, we have no ability to compare and contrast. The differences that we observe allow us to examine the pro’s and cons of our own and the other culture’s way of doing things. In this process we have to be vigilantly aware that whatever our culture prescribes, by definition will feel “natural and logical”. It takes a truly honest and inquiring mind to pull this off. Practice, intellectual honesty and empathy are a must.

As we examine the alternatives to our cultural habits, the true measure of “fit” will be provided by our gut check. The gut check is a way to gauge the emotional and energetic significance of whatever we are engaged with in the moment.

Emotional significance

The gut check is the awareness of a physical experience of increased energy, excitement, warmth, chills or impulse to move… to just name a few possibilities. When we can reasonably connect that feeling with whatever we are engaged in, it is a sure indication that the object of our attention has emotional significance to us and worthy of further examination. While not objective truth, it is the closest thing that we have to determining what gives life to who we are in the moment. If we consistently make decisions based on what is live-giving to who we are at any moment in time, it seems a fair prediction that our lives will be more fulfilling, more meaningful and richer than when we follow a generic, culturally prescribed path to life, love, health and community.

I invite you to try this at your next family and friends gatherings. Pay attention to how certain habits, ways of being and communicating feel to you. Is it really a fit? Does your gut check say this is me, or not so much? I’m looking forward to hearing about your experiences.

Happy and healthy holidays!

Your Body of Achievement

Goals

One of the main goals of Somatic Coaching is to help our clients reach their goals. Most of us have one or more goals at any one time that we strive to achieve. These may be as varied as wanting to lose weight or improve the relationship with our spouse or becoming a better leader or communicator. As the untold numbers of failed New Year’s resolutions attest to, consistently reaching our goals is extremely challenging for most of us. Even for those lucky individuals who tend to reach their goals, there maybe a few that for some unclear reason stay just out of reach no matter how mightily one tries.

What it takes

Goal achievement is a function of being able to have the vision of what one wants to achieve, the planning ability to organize and strategize, the ability to communicate and collaborate with others, and finally, to have the drive to execute.

Build new neural pathways

Each and every one of these phases requires a different behavioral pattern, a distinct way of being, a specific emotional context, a particular energetic and action pattern, all of which must be generated and anchored in the body to be consistently available. The generation of coordinated behavioral patterns happens primarily in the brain. Through consistent and focused practice, the neural pathways are built that allow for easy access to the practiced behaviors. In a virtuous cycle of practice and use in different circumstances, those neural pathways become more and more sophisticated and automated.

Embody your goal

The anchoring -and therefore embodiment– of the behavioral pattern occurs through a heightened awareness of one’s bodily sensations and associated movement- and postural habits. This embodiment serves the purpose of signaling both to oneself and one’s social environment a particular way of being that facilitates access to the goal-focused neural pathway in oneself and in others. This is an extremely powerful way to recruit others into a behavioral pattern that aids achievement of one’s goals. Lest readers interpret this as a form of manipulation; please consider that we can’t help but constantly influence and be influenced to some extent by the moods and embodiments of everybody around us. Your embodiment can be disorganized or angry or threatening, on the one hand, or focused and goal-oriented on the other hand. Either way, your social environment will pick-up on, and be influenced by whatever you put out.

How we do it

In Expressive Somatic Coaching we help our clients, identify their goal(s) specifically enough to be able to build neural pathways that support the actions and energetic- and embodiment patterns required to reach their goal(s). We build a practice that allows the client to consistently and in a timely manner tap into the intelligence of the body. This process takes commitment, practice and focus but is well worth the effort.

What are you practicing?

Ultimately, we are always practicing something -consciously or not. It is your choice if your practice helps you reach your life goals… or not. What you practice is what you become and what you become determines your ability to reach your life goals. A somatic coach can help you identify your patterns, your goals and support your new practices to become and achieve that what you desire. It will be the best time, effort and money that you’ve ever spent!

As always; I am looking forward to hearing from you. Comments, critiques, experiences are all welcome.

Expressive Somatics™ II

The Felt Sense of Who We Are and What We Embody

We all have an inner experience of our self. We are able to give a more or less detailed description of what kind of a person we are, how we feel about things, how we tend to react to events, some of our character traits and the values that we stand for.

Most of us would like to have other people see our positive traits and maybe not so clearly see our negative traits. Ultimately, virtually everybody wants to be seen for who they really are. In practice however, the advice: “Just be yourself” isn’t as simple and straight forward as it sounds.

As we go through life, our sustained emotional responses and defense mechanisms to impactful events tend to get stored in the body and expressed through postural holding patterns, habitual facial expressions and the way we move. While these habitual patterns have tremendous communitive power both internally and externally, just because they are habits, we are often unaware of them and oblivious to what they are communicating to the outside world as well as to our own psycho-somatic response system.

First, we have to ask the question: “What is your Self?” Is it the product of your socialization -the rules and roles that you have learned and internalized? Or is it that indefinable, unique combination of traits and temperament that you were born with? Or is it your soul and its purpose? Or is it some combination of all these things including your life experiences and values?

For most people, getting clarity about what they consider to be their “true self” is an ongoing process of discovery. Some of us consciously seek out self-development tools and experiences and others move forward through moments of self-reflection and examination prompted by impactful life-events.

At this point you may ask: “Why is this important, can’t I just go about living my life, go with the flow?”

Of course you can, and maybe that is exactly the right thing to do for you. In my life, I have found that going with the flow often makes me end up in places that I don’t want to be or that don’t fit my personality, goals and purpose. As the saying goes: “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there”. I have come to this work out of the belief that we all have unique gifts to offer the world. To be able to do that we must have a minimum level of clarity as to what those gifts are. This requires us toget to know ourselves, not just as a reflection of the things that we have been told about who or what we are but based on a deep-felt sense of self.

We are beautiful, complex beings who can derive deep meaning from being in close contact with our purpose, as unique individuals but also — and maybe primarily — in the context of our community.

Being in our communities as a unique, recognizable presence that reflects who we truly are and that is in alignment with our own experience of self, may be the single most important promotor of well-being, health and — dare I say it? — happiness.

Expressive Somatics supports and helps sustain this process of (re-)discovery, (re-)alignment, connection-with and presencing to this unique shape that we are, within the context of our communities, purpose and goals.

As always, I’m looking forward to your comments, questions, critiques and remarks.

What is Expressive Somatics ™?

 

What does your body communicate?

Have you ever walked into a room filled with strangers and wondered what they think of you? Why would you even think that they have any kind of judgment about you? Afterall, they don’t know you.

Well, you wonder because you know that you do exactly the same thing…have a judgment, that is. We judge because it is hardwired in us. If nothing else, we have to make a snap judgment in determining if somebody is likely to be a friend or foe; or maybe if the other is mating material or not. These things are hardwired in us because they ensure the survival of the species.

While we have all been admonished not to judge the book by its cover, we all do it if we want to admit that or not. Some of those judgments never make it to the surface of our conscious awareness. We may have a split-second feeling of discomfort with somebody but then they warmly engage with us and we never examine the feeling closer.

Ultimately, we may be right not to act upon our first impression, because that judgment may be made in error or be the consequence of circumstance, emotional state or some other factor unrelated to the person that we are having the judgment about.

Then again, how often have you thought to your self: ”I knew that there was something off about this guy. I should have listened to my gut”?

As we go through life, having these ongoing judgments about each other, it is useful to contemplate what judgments people may have about us based on what our bodies communicate. Do you think that these judgements tend to accurately reflect who you are and what you stand for? Or do you find that people easily misread you?

To give an example; when we go through life with our shoulders pulled up high, close to our ears, we give off an impression of being stressed and harried. On a visceral level this tends to elicit a feeling of unease in others because subconsciously they will try to detect if your stressed-out demeanor is an indication of some kind threat to them. This unease is not likely to make you attractive or endearing to them, no matter how much of a delightful a person you actually are. Of course, your co-workers, friends and family will over time adapt and learn to ignore that stress impulse… to some extent. During that important sales meeting or job interview however, you may not have enough time to overcome that first impression.

Do you know how you come across? Are you aware of you body-habits? Do you know why you developed them? Do they sometimes get in the way of other people seeing who you really are? Do you know how, instead, to express who you really are and what you stand for?

These are some of the questions that Expressive Somatics™ addresses.

Expressive Somatics™ is a personal development approach that is centered on the body and examines our internal and external communication. In other words; we look at what the body communicates to us and what we communicate back to the body as well as what we communicate to our social environment.

The next time we’ll discuss more about the internal aspects of somatic communication. In the mean time I look forward to your comments, experiences, questions and critiques.