how can you use somatic inquiry?

Somatic inquiry… such a juicy topic.

As we go into the holiday season I invite you into a challenge: can you notice and track, in your body, when you’re activated? Maybe it’s a conversation with a family member, an incident while out holiday shopping, etc. When something comes up that disrupts your mood or your day, can you take note of it?

And from there, you can start tracking your body responses. When that thing happened, what happened in your body? Did your heart start racing, did your pulse increase, did you start sweating, did your chest tighten, did your shoulders raise?

This is somatic inquiry—getting curious about your physical responses as a way to address beliefs or stories that you carry in your subconscious.

Because the truth is that you can talk about your experiences all you want, but it doesn’t discharge the physical feeling. And that residue gets stored in the body and comes up whenever you’re in a similar situation or story.

The best way to move through something is to drop to the neck down—to join with a somatic symptom, to turn toward it, to amplify it. This is how your nervous system will move from distress to neutral to calm.

So let’s say that you get really activated when you have to give a talk in front of a group of people. You might notice that your body automatically shifts into nervousness—sweaty palms, dry tongue, tight throat, increased heart rate. This is a somatic response to a previous moment that got stored in your body. Maybe you were made fun of as a kid for a lisp. Or maybe you completely tanked a speech in grade school. Or maybe you were told to be quiet by adults. Whatever your “story” is, it got ingrained in your body and never got discharged. So whenever you’re in a similar situation now, the same feelings come to the surface.

Somatic inquiry involves exploring that feeling. Imagine that you could join with that feeling. Envision how it would move… maybe it would curl up and get small. Notice how that feeling wants to move and let that feeling lead the movement. Maybe you want to scrunch up. Let yourself do that. Honor that feeling so that it can discharge.

And maybe before you give a speech, move in that way for a bit and then envision the way you WANT to feel and move in that way before actually giving the speech. By working with your body to honor these physical reactions, over time, you’ll train your body to associate well-being and safety when you’re experiencing similar things.

Sooo many thoughts and new knowledge related to this. It’s part of the reason I’ve been loving teaching SoulFlow™ classes, which uses foundations of somatic inquiry to heal from within. You can learn more about SoulFlow™ here (and please message me if you’re interested in a class!).

xx

Court.

One of my most grounding places in Colorado.