Connor Beaton interviews a somatic practitioner about using body techniques to regulate emotions. The approach has three stages: pause between trigger and reaction, use breathwork or physical release to shift your nervous system, then consolidate the change. Repeated practice rewires how your body responds to stress.
One crucial thing that is absolutely foundational to the awareness stage is what I call the pause. Like really creating a space between your whatever trigger, whatever situation you're going through and your response, like giving that time is what create, creates that space for something new to emerge. So it's not just about, you know, becoming aware and paying attention to the fact that you are having this response and why this response is happening. But it's also taking a moment before you go to your, you know, your, your habitual coping strategy, which can totally be, you know, what you do next. But creating that space, that gap is what with time allows something else to emerge. And so that's where know, we start laying the foundations for this work. So that's why stage one is so important to create this habit of not going immediately to the response, but just slowing everything down. Especially for example, we talk about anger. So that's definitely one of the examples, right? Instead of like going full blown, get angry, but, but just give yourself some time before you do whatever coping mechanism you are used to do. And that's the first step in stage two, regulation. That's where we bring in the body. So we introduce these short body based interventions so that you can essentially create.
Change how you're feeling by creating a sense of safety, a state of regulation in the body. So this is the stage where we see a lot of results and aha moments for people because they realize that by doing this very simple practices, they start feeling more in control of how their body and brain respond to situations. And so this is, you know, like I would say this is these two stages alone are enough for people usually to get relief within, you know, within the first few weeks. But then comes, you know, the restoration part, which is where we need to go.
Can you give an example of the body based exercise? Like when you're, when you're saying that is that. Because I think that just, just to contextualize it for, for the listener and so that they have something that they can be like, oh, I can go and do that, I can try that.
So this is where somatic practices come into place, right? We, we hear a lot about somatic practices. Somatic practices are simply physical.
You know, practices, body practices where we are essentially changing something in, in our physical response. And that change at the body level creates a change at the central level. So for example, the physiological side or just a relaxation practice, like things that engage a certain group of muscles or a certain group of sensations that essentially create a change and sort of force the body to relax. This Relaxation, this letting go at the body level creates a change in the way we perceive that emotion, because physical response and emotional response are the two sides of the same coin. So if we change one, we are bound to change the other. And so because it's very difficult to change the mind with the mind, we're changing it with the body. So we're using the body essentially to create that change, that shift at the emotional level. And it works really, really well. And so once you start doing that many times, you're retraining your nervous system to move from those higher states in the alertness elevator that we discussed to the lower states. And when you start doing that again and again and again, that's where neuroplasticity comes in and your body starts to do that automatically and you learn to let go more easily without having to put all the effort into it. So that's why these two stages are so foundational.
And.
Does the embodiment exercise or the somatic exercise, like, can you give a tangible example? Like, would it be doing like a box breathing? Would it be doing something like laying on the ground and bringing.
So if we just want to keep it to the breath, which is a very, it's a very powerful way to regulate in the moment. One of the, the most effective, that's, you know, that's been proven by research by David Spiegel and Stanford. Even more effective than meditation. This physiological sigh. I can show it to you. It's essentially two in breaths, but like, so you're doing two in breaths and then a slow, long out breath. So in these two in breaths, essentially what you do is first you reach, let's say, halfway through your lungs and, and then you completely feel your lungs in the second part of the in breath. So it's.
Like you're really, you know, the out breath is really, really long and slow. And if you do this several times, it completely changes your biology and your regulation in the moment. So it's one of the most effective practices to, to regulate in the moment if you're experiencing anxiety, et cetera. It's just really, really powerful.
I'm also a big proponent of somatic practices that essentially relax the neck and shoulder area because these are areas where we typically tense and carry a lot of tension whenever we are stressed. And then releasing.
The area of the abdomen and the lungs, et cetera, really rele all of the upper part of the body, like the tension that is held at the upper part of the body. And so I have a few practices in the book that I show. But, yeah, really, I think depending on what people prefer and what their specific areas of tension are, they can mix and match and choose different things. But I would say.
Start with the. Start with the physiological side and then test all these other ways to essentially release different muscles groups.
Yeah, it's, it's, it's funny because. So my background was in music. I was a classical singer. And I joke around on the podcast a lot that I have a degree in breathing. And like, that's, that's really all that I did. It was, was learn how to breathe. Procurement properly and effectively and, and in prolonged ways. And one of the fascinating things, like, I was a hockey player growing up, and so I carried and I, you know, worked construction and, and worked out a whole bunch. And so when I actually started singing, I carried a tremendous amount of tension in my shoulders, across my chest, in my abdomen, in my upper back. And so I spent years inadvertently doing somatic releasing exercises. You know, I, I went through Rolfing and what's it. It's like Feldenkrais or. I don't know. I went through all these different, like, modalities and learned how to, like, release tension in all my body. And, and it really was incredibly powerful because in, in hindsight, once I started to study psychology and, and the nervous system and the body was like, oh, that's what I was doing that entire time. Like, I was learning how to breathe and release tension and regulate my body. It's like, this is so wild. So, yes, I'm sure that people can definitely refer to the book because there's some really, really phenomenal exercises in there.
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