💚 How to Get Back Into The Body

This is the second article of a two-part series. Last time I talked about the role of the nervous system in burnout and strategies for regulating our nervous system. I see this as a prerequisite for developing a stronger connection to our own bodies, so if you haven't yet, head to Part 1: The Nervous System. 

🤼 The Mind vs. The Body

I used to be someone who lived from the neck up. I saw my mind as my most important tool and didn’t pay too much attention to what my body had to say.

When I ran into challenges, I felt that everything could be solved with reason and logic. Even mental health and relationship challenges. For those, I turned to talk therapy and journaling. I even had therapists who tried to teach me how to feel into my body but for whatever reason I felt resistance to it. I’d participate in the session but then ignore the lessons once it was over. In relationships, I’d share my thoughts and feelings without the awareness of how those emotions were showing up in my body. 

When uncomfortable or painful emotions arose, my go-to was  to run away from them rather than settle in their presence. This looked like anything from scrolling social media or reaching for a drink to getting lost in a romantic relationship or sprinting full-on at whichever work or personal project was absorbing me. Years of repressing emotions and never fully learning to listen to my body did not end well. I careened straight into burnout, the event that led me to fully face the fact that I'd been living this way.

Since then, a huge part of my healing work has involved learning how to listen to, and be present with, what I’m feeling in my body. And to act based on my body’s wisdom. I’m still not “good” at this. It doesn’t come naturally. It’s work for me everyday. 

Today, I want to share some of what I’ve learned and a few strategies for you to tap into your own body.

🧘🏻‍♀️How To Get Back Into The Body

I’m going to talk about three strategies for becoming more present with our body and tapping into its wisdom. 

The first is a practice called interoception, which is all about sensing our bodies’ basic messages. The second is related to attuning to where emotions show up in our bodies. And the third is all about tapping into our body’s intuition. 

I’ll also provide an exercise for what to do if you can’t really feel your body in the first place. And I’ll discuss getting support from professionals with this work.

I want to caveat that I’m not a doctor or certified in these areas and am simply sharing what I’ve learned and what’s worked for me, which might be different from what will work for you (healing is deeply personal). So feel free to just notice what you’re curious about and leave anything that doesn’t feel right for you at the moment.

1. Interoception

First, let’s talk about interoception, the practice that would’ve allowed me to hear my body’s messages before I hit my full burnout.

Interoception is the process of the body's senses communicating information about its internal state to the brain, both consciously and subconsciously. Think things like heart rate, breathing, hunger, thirst, temperature, pain and also emotions. Interoceptive awareness can help us respond to our body’s signals and interpret our physiological states, which can influence our emotional experiences and responses. 

According to Deepak Chopra: “The signals being sent to you by your body are just as meaningful and intelligent as your thoughts and insights. The greater your perception of physical sensations, the more connected you are to yourself as a whole.” 

Studies show a lack of interoceptive capacity tends to be associated with prolonged maladaptive stress responses — aka the fast track to burnout. I wish I had been better at practicing interoception. It would’ve helped me avoid prolonged periods of high stress and to better regulate my emotions. It would’ve allowed me to understand when I’d hit my limits so I could pull back, rest, and make changes. And I would’ve been in a much better place to navigate all of the challenges that come with running a startup. 

To cultivate your own interoception, entrepreneur and nervous system expert Johnny Miller suggests observing the following in yourself:

• How’s my mental state? Are my thoughts racing or foggy? Or are they calm and alert?

• What’s my awareness like? Is it narrow and protected? Or is it expanded and receptive? 

• How’s my posture right now? Is it tense and collapsed? Or is it open and relaxed? 

• How is my breath in this moment? Is it shallow and rapid? Or deep, slow and soft? 

• What emotion(s) do I feel right now? Do I feel joy? Sadness? Gratitude? Fear? Anxiety?

Taking time to regularly check in on these can improve your own interoception, enhance your productivity and emotional regulation, and avoid prolonged stress. To get into the habit of checking in, try setting a timer to go off a few times a day or add 5 minutes in your calendar to check-in on the above.

2. Feeling Emotions in our Bodies

Did you know that your emotions are felt in your body? Recent neuroscience tells us that emotions are a combination of somatic sensation (or body-based feelings) and situational context.

A 2013 study examined where people felt certain emotions in their body. You can see the results in the figure below. (Note that this may or may not be consistent with your lived experience, which is also completely valid even if it’s different.)

The practice of compassionately observing where emotions are felt in our bodies can be a powerful exercise in processing our emotions. 

Before I get into how to do that, I want to touch on the notion that often, the emotional pain and discomfort we feel today can be tied to the trauma we’ve experienced earlier on in our lives. (And this can mean both ‘Big T’ trauma like physical or sexual abuse or severe neglect, but also ‘Little T’ traumas like gaslighting or not having all of your emotional needs met, which may occur repetitively over time.) 

What happens is, when the original trauma occurred, we didn’t process our feelings properly. We may have gone into a state of freeze or dissociation. And so to our bodies, the trauma feels unresolved. Our system doesn’t yet know that those events are over. And so there’s energy stored in our bodies that needs to be released.

That’s why sometimes situations or people can ‘trigger’ us, and cause us to feel stronger emotions than the current situation should necessarily elicit (and to disproportionately react to the situation at hand). The person or situation might be reminiscent of an early trauma that we were never able to fully process. We may then feel that distress that's been trapped in our bodies rise up. Maybe a rising of heat and energy, or contraction in our chest, gut or shoulders. 

You can see how this trapped energy can start to cause issues in your present day relationships, work, and experience of life . For example you might be someone that avoids certain situations because of the discomfort it brings up (that’s not actually related to the current situation but a situation from the past). Like a manager who avoids confrontational situations, like giving necessary critical feedback or setting boundaries with others.

Instead of letting these emotions and patterns unconsciously guide our decisions in life, what we can do is to start to become aware of them. When we can be present with the experience of our emotions in our bodies, we can safely process them. 

Learning to feel emotions in the body and hold compassionate space for them allows us to process those emotions and come back to a more peaceful state. Instead of distracting away from them or stuffing them back down (where they’ll fester and likely manifest in a more harmful way in our bodies or relationships), try these steps next time you feel a heavy, difficult or complicated emotion come up. 

(I got the steps below from this beautiful post by Yumi Sakugawa).

1. Acknowledge the truth of what you’re feeling and experiencing. This can be as simple as “I’m feeling overwhelmed, frustrated, sad, inadequate, etc.”.

2. Get present with your body (a few deep breaths, do a body scan). Take a moment to feel where in your body this emotion is showing up. For example, “I feel heat rising in my chest, and muscles clenching.” Or “I feel a contraction in my throat and chest.” 

3. Give a color, vibration, texture, or shape to your emotions. How would you describe them in those terms? For example, “A ball of red fire rising up” or “black tar churning”. 

4. Breathe mindfully and deeply into the part of your body holding your emotions. There’s no pressure to change or fix or hide or analyze what you are feeling.

5. Ask yourself what you need right now in order to feel safe and supported. What would feel good right now? This could be anything from a glass of water to a hug to kind self-talk.

6. Validate what you are feeling. You don’t have to minimize it, fix it, deny it, or rush to find a silver lining or important lesson. 

7. Be as gentle and kind to yourself as you would be with a small child. Let your inner child share with you their uncensored thoughts and feelings. 

8. Thank yourself for taking the time to hold space for your own feelings. 

Next time you feel sad, angry, scared, overwhelmed, or any type of heavy emotion, give the steps above a try.

3. Connecting With Our Body’s Intuition

The body is also an incredibly powerful tool for tapping into our truth and our intuition and for navigating the best choices for our lives. 

Many of us have been socialized to ignore the body’s messages, and to think that the mind is much better equipped for all of life’s decisions. 

But consider this: It’s estimated that the body sends the brain about 11 million bits of information per second, but the conscious mind can process only about 40 bits. If you’re someone that lives by “it’s better to use data to make decisions than intuition”, consider those data processing stats!

This is something you’ve likely experienced. 

Can you think of a time when you felt really icky, tense or sick when you were about to make a decision that was wrong for you? Accepting a job that was great on paper but actually not the right fit? Or staying in a toxic relationship?

Or a time when your body felt lit up or relaxed when you were presented with something that was right for you? Maybe finding the right apartment or house? Or getting a download for a company idea?

Ever since I started using my body to make decisions, it hasn’t been wrong. 

It’s a practice that steered me towards coaching, writing and design after burning out. It’s what led me to New York, where I am so happy to be living. When I started seeing my fiancé, it told me he was safe and good for me. It even helps me decide what I want to focus my time on each day. 

And when I go against what my body is telling me, I always wind up saying “yep, I should’ve listened to it in the first place”. 

So how can we tap into our bodies’ wisdom? 

I invite you to try the following exercise. It’s one that I learned in my coaching training for how to help clients calibrate their own “Body Compass” (as it’s referred to by Martha Beck).

1. Body Scan: The first step is to create awareness for how your body is currently feeling by completing a body scan. You can do this sitting, standing or lying down. You may wish to close your eyes and take a few deep breaths, noticing your connection to the seat, ground or whatever surface is supporting you. And then gently bring awareness to each part of your body, starting with your toes and moving all the way up to your head. As you complete your body scan, just notice, without judgment, how each body part is feeling (or if there are any parts with no feeling at all). 

2. Learn your “no”: Take a moment to recall an unpleasant or uncomfortable event or time in your life. Vividly recall the situation. Notice how this memory is making you feel, physically in your body, and name those sensations (e.g. a knotted stomach, tense shoulders, etc.). Then, imagine a scale from -10 (the most unpleasant sensations) through 0 (neutral) to +10 (the most positive sensations). Then for this negative memory, rate that sensation from 0 to -10. 

3. Learn your “yes”: Take a moment to focus on a moment of joy, pleasure or wellbeing. Vividly recall it, and then notice how this memory makes you feel. What bodily sensations are connected to this memory? (e.g. expansive chest, a tingling or a floating feeling). Then rate those positive sensations from 0 to +10 on the scale. 

Great! You’ve calibrated your Body Compass.

4. Practice: Now practice using it. Try using your body compass for smaller decisions (Sriracha vs. Franks’ Red Hot) before using it for bigger ones (quitting your job or trying to get pregnant).

✋ What if I Can’t Feel My Body at All?

If you struggle to feel emotions in your body at all, don't worry. This is totally normal if you’ve been operating from the neck up for a long time. It can take some gentle, intentional practice to start to cultivate that feeling again. 

Set a timer for three times a day where you’ll take a few minutes to check in with yourself. Ask yourself (and journal the answers if you’d like):

1. What’s happening in my mind? What thoughts am I having?

2. What emotions am I experiencing?

3. What do I feel in my body?

This practice will help you start to cultivate awareness of what’s happening in your mind, emotions and body. Be gentle with yourself and keep showing up. 

If you think you need some additional help with this, then keep reading the next section.

❤️‍🩹 Working with Practitioners

If you’re looking for a professional to help you work with emotions in the body (which is especially recommended if you know you want to do trauma work), a therapist or coach trained in somatic experiencing is a great idea. 

According to Somatic Experiencing International “Somatic Experiencing (SE™) aims to resolve symptoms of stress, shock, and trauma that accumulate in our bodies and nervous systems. Trauma, from an SE lens, is focused on how it shows up in the nervous system and how that dysregulation impacts life. When we are stuck in patterns of fight, flight, or freeze, SE helps us release, recover, and become more resilient.”

Two coaches that work with founders that I know are certified in SE are Tracy Lawrence and Amanda Baudier. And here’s a directory of additional somatic practitioners and trauma-aware bodyworkers.

In terms of other body-based healing, I’ve personally had the privilege to work with two incredible healers that have allowed me to deepen my healing via energetic and physical modalities.

Dr. Margarita Rusolello blends traditional acupuncture with coaching, breathwork and energy medicine. In my sessions with her, we start with coaching on whatever I’m currently working on healing and then she designs an acupuncture, breathwork and energy protocol specifically for what I need. It’s hard to fully put to words the transformation I experience from working with her, but I leave each session feeling lighter, more connected and capable of being with whatever life throws my way.

In my work with Jason Defilipis, an integrative manual therapist / advanced Rolfer, he works (manually and energetically) on my physical and energetic systems to help find a more ease, balance, order and flow in my body and correspondingly my mind. My understanding is that our histories and traumas can influence our posture and how we hold ourselves in the world. In my case, I had a habit of making myself small, which resulted in a more hunched over posture. He’s helped me reorganize my body to hold myself in a more upright, lighter, more alert way and consequently to be in better relationship with the people and world around me.

🌌 Go Deeper

If you’d like to go deeper, here are a few resources to do so.

Read

• In The Body Keeps The Score, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world’s foremost experts on trauma, uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma shapes both the body and brain and compromises sufferers’ capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control and trust.

• The Myth of Normal by Dr. Gabor Mate examines the impact of trauma and stress and the pressures of modern-day living on our bodies and minds.

• Finding Your Own North Star by Martha Beck provides tons of wisdom and guidance on how to tap into our body compasses. (Especially Chapter 6 - How Holly Got her Bod Back).  

Follow

• @marina.y.t is a compassionate somatic coach and nervous system expert. She also has an app, Soma Share with plenty of somatic healing meditations and exercises. 

• @sarahbcoaching is a somatic practitioner trained in polyvagal, trauma healing and nervous system regulation.

Listen

• Adult Child podcast: Stored Trauma & Somatic Healing with Marina Yanah-Triner and Somatic Experiencing & Polyvagal Theory w/ Jamie McCoy.

• The Cure for Chronic Pain podcast talks about how emotional pain and trauma are at the root of chronic conditions (like back pain, pelvic pain, IBS, fibromyalgia, migraines, and long covid), and how we can heal ourselves.

Learn

• Nervous System Management, a (free.99) five-lesson course from nervous system expert Jonny Miller that will teach you how to regulate your nervous system, practice interoception and feel your emotions in your body.

📝 Takeaways 

• Getting in tune with your body can be a powerful tool for processing emotions, tapping into your intuition, and preventing burnout. 

• Interoception, the process of the body's senses communicating information about its internal state to the brain, can help us respond to our body’s signals and interpret our physiological states, which can influence our emotional experiences and responses. 

• The emotional pain and discomfort we feel today can be tied to unresolved trauma we experienced in our earlier lives.

• The practice of compassionately observing where emotions are felt in our body can be a powerful exercise in processing our emotions (both related to current situations, and unprocessed emotions from our pasts). 

• The body is a powerful tool for navigating our life’s choices. It's estimated that the body sends the brain about 11 million bits of information per second, but the conscious mind can process only about 40 bits.

• Calibrating our body compass can help us better recognize when our body is telling us “NO” or “Heck ya” in the moment. 

• Working with healers, coaches and therapists who use somatic experiencing and body-based or energetic modalities can present an alternative to traditional talk therapy that may allow us to access a different facet of our healing.

🪞 Reflection

Instead of providing journal prompts, this time, I’d like to suggest something different. Set a timer for three times throughout your day. Each time the timer goes off, take 5 minutes to reflect on the following:

1. What do I notice about my body? (am I tired, hungry, thirsty, hot, cold, etc.)?

2. How is my breathing? (deep, slow versus shallow, rapid)

3. How is my posture (open, relaxed, vs. tense, collapsed) 

4. What’s happening in my mind? (is it racing, or calm and alert)

5. What’s happening in my emotions? (do I feel joy, fear, sadness, anger)

6. Where do I feel those emotions in my body? (chest, neck, face, hips, shoulders, etc.)

Putting time aside to quickly check in on the above will help you to improve your interoception and your self awareness. And you may also find yourself calmer and more grounded as you return to your day.

Thank you so much for reading. I’d love to hear your feedback so I can improve and serve you better. Feel free to email me any feedback or you can fill out my anonymous two-minute survey here. 

Appreciate you!

With love,

Roslyn 💚