by Renee Lindstrom, GCFP, Author of Somatic Archetypes
On Podcast – @ReneeLindstromofficial
Since 2007, this author has had the opportunity to work with people who have had long-term chronic physical pain. In these cases, the body has been the environmental stimulus to inner messages and emotional responsive reactions. Usually, in Canada, people in these circumstances will seek out acute care to resolve the pain complaints. In some cases, the results of seeking solutions can backfire. The backfire comes from the interactive seeds of socially conditioned language. In this health wellness area, physical constraints from pain, the evaluative assessments by practitioners are conceptual and focused on fixing strategies. Sometimes this works, and other times it doesn’t. It only works with certain personalities. In some personalities, it increases anxiety. The current socially conditioned language is such that some people take it personally, which essentially means internalizing it. Others brush it off. Both responses have their peculiar consequences.
There is another communication perspective that is grounded in somatic awareness. In this form of communication, it starts where you are in the moment. It is not conceptual. This means the first focus is not on labelling and diagnosing, it is on the behaviour. Yes, physical function has a behaviour! It’s called one’s posture and postural transitions.
Here is an example I have created to demonstrate what a somatic response might be. It’s not based upon anyone in particular. In this example, someone is seeking understanding, support and reassurance after the disillusionment of conceptual assessments and labelling………
Here is my written response:
- Nerve pain assessment:
With regards to the nerves in these circumstances, they were the last to be ignited from the environmental stimulus contributing to their flare-up. Stands to reason, if the environment calms down, they will as well.
- Somatic perspective of integration between mental, emotional and physical:
I am going to respond from a meditative mindfulness perspective.
You’re triggered. Something has happened that has stimulated past reactions to old injuries and events in your life that have come forward into the present. Perhaps not with conscious awareness in a way to catch yourself, however, somatically. It’s a somatic response directing your focus of attention through reactive conditioning. A reaction that is familiar and shaped by past events (muscle, mental and emotional memory). Does it present in the way that has been suggested? Perhaps to someone who has learned to diagnose and label living experiences as conditions.
So, let’s look at the past. Yes, you have acute situations that have created a familiar pattern of response that has reared its ugly head due to the many factors all playing out at the same time. Unfortunately, this means your physical body constraints in your movement patterns are similar to ones that have given you grief in the past. Your responsive reaction is conditioned by those old experiences.
How to engage your focus of attention differently?
- By shifting your focus of attention.
Easy for me to write as I am not feeling the pain you’re having. However, the hyper focus on it can increase the levels of discomfort more than 10-fold.
How to shift your focus of attention?
- By changing the thought sentence structure in your inner mental pattern of thinking.
Shift what if, or ……(whatever you’re saying to yourself), to, I have been here before and moved forward out of it.
Your new mantra, “I have been here before and moved forward out of it. I have been……..”
Micro Movements to shift focus of attention for calming the nervous system
The hyper focus is an aspect of your brain that is an alarm. It is a warning system of the brain, and right now, yours is in a glitch as all sorts of events have hit all at once. In meditation, we would focus on our breath. This is the absolute hardest when experiencing this glitch.
2. So, move your body in the breathing patterns I have shown you. This is where the body’s micro movement abilities can come in differently and play a big part in calming this glitch down. Right now, the glitch is telling you an elusive story that your body is letting you down, and it’s not your safe haven in the moment. So let’s change it. The body can be fluid or it can be rigid through the constraints conditioning it. Your body has gone into constraint due to circumstances. That’s all.
- What do we know from past interactions?
The physical function is not isolated from the emotional reactions and thought stories in our mental process. It’s all one process, all stimulated together and interplaying off one another. Your glitch is your emotions reacting to the stories you are telling yourself. What you’re telling yourself is stimulated by the real felt patterns you are somatically aware of. The mantra above is what you tell yourself immediately upon catching yourself having these thought patterns that are not based upon the felt senses in the moment.
- Why?
You can take care of yourself. You’ve done it before and have a historical pattern of it. You are identifying the past and what didn’t work, now identify what did. Balance it out. See number 3.
3. In meditation, we learn to create gaps between our thoughts to calm our thoughts that run together and create havoc in our emotional responses. We learn that thoughts in our mind run through in patterns that are not logical.
So we focus on our breath in sitting and watch these damn thoughts while attempting to become present in the moment. Soon, we notice that the thoughts slow down. I mean they, ….slooooowwwwwww down to the point of having significant spaces between them. That’s when the magic happens. That’s when somatically, the connection to what is really happening can be experienced. This is when you learn, the thoughts are the illusion. They have you spinning in circles, trying to catch your tail. In these gaps you see, hear, touch, smell and taste batter. All of a sudden, you can begin observing and taking in so much more information that is restricted by the thinking patterns you have learned. That all thinking is – learned patterns of thought. They are not real! They are your perspective based on old information and learning.
- Let’s look at what’s real.
Your skeleton is real. It’s the strongest part in your body and lasts centuries after everything else is gone. Begin to adjust through the skeleton. However, if the pain and fear are too great, begin by focusing on your out breath.
- As you breathe out, count, starting at one.
Each exhale will be different. Redirect your mental function by giving it this job. Count your breath.
- Get a straw and exhale through the straw. Get your mental function to set a time for one minute and count the number of out breaths in that one minute.
- Then continue to exhale through the straw without counting for another 2 minutes.
- Come back and exhale while counting again, and notice if the number has changed from the first time. Notice if the breath out is slower, longer and if there are spaces in between.
Come back to it many, many times to train your brain with this pattern. Integrate it. Do it in times of non-fear to have it as a tool in your kit for when you are.
When you are in fear, focus on the exhalation, not the in breath.
Recap
We have a mantra, a perspective and a pattern of breathing. This will calm your nervous system and the glitch to create a new starting point. In this new starting point, your constraints, physically, mentally, and emotionally, can begin to limber up, increasing your windows of tolerance.
We have been through these cycles together before. You have this somatic experience, yet right now you are in a moment of old thinking that there is an acute care that will resolve this outside of you. It is an old pattern seeking relief and reassurance. That’s just one focus of attention that is decreasing the window of tolerance. Start by building the window of tolerance from inside. You’ve got this. I have witnessed it.
You’ve got a few people to sit in this with you to begin to build up your levels of tolerance. Recently, you’re strategies in bringing new people on board while in the acute stages didn’t support you rather added to deconstructing it.
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