Want to create change? Then get comfortable being uncomfortable!

95% of who we are, are subconscious thoughts, behaviours and emotions!'

It’s a funny thing, change. People are always wanting to change things about their life. Whether it’s taking up a new hobby, learning  something new, creating an exercise regime, a different nutrition plan, new career path, the list goes on, and it’s not easy. 

Our brain is wired in a way that makes us follow the easy path, the path of least resistance, and even if it’s not the one we consciously want to follow, or the one that we feel would be best for us, it’s the one we find ourselves following nonetheless. It’s the path we have learnt and we repeat day in, day out, emotionally, physically and socially. 

Habits are hard to change we know this, we work on auto-pilot, from the moment we get up and start our daily routine. To create a new habit we are advised to attach it to an old one like doing 10 squats when you clean your teeth, or putting a reminder next to the kettle. 

It's a huge subject and really does effect every aspect of our life. 

When we arrive at the door of starting a somatic practice we are looking to create change. To improve our mobility, help with muscular tension and pain, de-stress. Yet through the learning of new movements and awareness of ourselves to help create that change we find ourselves in a state on discomfort, somewhere different and unknown, a feeling we aren’t used to, and our natural reaction? To automatically put ourselves back in the path of comfort and least resistance!

We cannot create change by doing the same things in the same way we always have. We cannot create change by not paying attention. We cannot create change without time, patience, consistency and discomfort. Awareness is key, we cannot change what we aren’t aware of, so we need to start by noticing ourselves. 

I often tell clients to think about your brain like a toddler, it needs support and reassurance. It needs training, you are literally re-wiring your brain, with new information, new options and new possibilities, which I personally think is super cool! 

So when you slip back into your habits just notice, regroup and keep going, no matter what they are.  If you were learning to play a musical instrument you wouldn't be a concert level performer straight away. Some days would be easy, some would be harder, but if you gave up on the days that you hit the wrong note, you certainly wouldn’t get better at it! 

So when things feel uncomfortable and different, take time to sit with that, get comfortable with feeling uncomfortable,  knowing that in the discomfort you are changing!

Weak or Inefficient?

Daily, people tell me that they have been told they have a weak muscle that needs strengthening.

The most recent being a weak SCM (sternocleidomastoid, or neck muscle to make it easier). The irony of this comment was the following statement; “Yes I’ve been told that it’s weak, and it’s all tight and contracted, you can feel it bulging it’s so tight, and it pulls my head to one side!”. So it’s tight and contracted but weak and needs strengthening, right??

Wrong! It’s tight and contracted and INEFFICIENT/TIRED, not weak.

When a muscle is tight and constantly contracted the last thing you want to do is start doing strengthening exercises and, if it was weak, weak in relation to what? Someone else? The other side? Your perception of how strong it should be? Anyway, I digress. If we start trying to strengthen this muscle we are going to be contracting it, working it harder and contracting it more, the outcome being a muscle that is more contracted, more than it was, possibly in complete spasm, possibly increasing in pain with further restriction in range of movement. “But it feels weak”, I hear you say, “ it must be if I cant move it as well, right? “. Wrong!

If I were to ask you to stand and hold a dumbbell of a couple of kilos, with your elbow flexed you would initially be able to do for a short period, but gradually the arm would tire, it would start to feel uncomfortable, and slowly you would lose the perceived strength to continue holding the dumbbell. The muscle isn’t weak, it got tired, it’s been working too hard for too long, it needs to relax and rest.

When someone has ‘chronically‘ contracted muscles they tire, they may become sore, painful, stiff and have less range of movement. The muscles needs to relax and rest to regain full control of that muscle again.

The problem is that weak is a misleading term, often people will think that because they have been told that something is weak it has wasted away; like a leg that has just come out of a plaster cast. Now that would be weak because it hasn’t done anything for 6 weeks and the muscle volume has reduced.

If a muscle is constantly contracted to, for example, 70% of its full range of contraction, when they need to use that muscle they wouldn’t have the full power of the muscle to do whatever it is they want to do, thus this inefficient muscles appears weak. Added to that the fact that they have not been able to consciously relax this muscle for however long, will potentially leave it feeling, sore, stiff, tired and restricted.

So let’s stop telling people they have tight contracted muscles that need strengthening and start helping them to understand that their muscle is over contracted, over tired and needs to relax and rest, allowing them to take back full control of that muscle once again.

Letting Go.....

What’ does it mean to 'let go'?

As Essential Somatics Educators we often say to the client “ can you sense that tightness and just allow it to let go” ( or something similar ). But what is it we are letting go of? Why are we holding that tension in the first place and what would it mean to “let go” of it.

On the surface we are talking about a pattern of muscle contraction, a habituated contraction that is possibly causing us to have restriction in our movement and cause pain. We are helping the client to bring awareness to a part of their body and assisting them to allow it to release or gain awareness of it; helping them to achieve greater movement and reduced pain or discomfort.

BUT is there a deeper meaning to ‘letting go” ? What else are we holding onto in our life that is stopping us from moving? Are we trying to ‘hold it all together’ in a society that is so demanding emotionally and physically? And what if we stopped?
Have we got so stuck in a pattern of ‘holding it all together’ that we don’t know how to ‘let go’ anymore? An unhappy marriage, a sick parent, a history of abuse or trauma isn’t something that can just be ‘let go’ of can it?
What is it about being stuck in this pattern of tension and restriction that is preventing us from moving forward physically and emotionally? What if we need help to learn to let go of the restrictions within our body so that we can start to change the restrictions within our lives?
Can creating a calming and safe environment, to allow our clients to start to let go of the restrictions binding them together, allow them to start to explore the freedom of movement in their body and in their life?

Movement in our body, creates movement in our life.

Something we notice often as Clinical Somatic Educators is the profound affect Somatics has not only on somebody’s physical wellbeing but also on somebody’s life as whole. I know that may sound like a massive statement but it is so often true and makes a lot of sense as to why that is.

Somatic movements are mindful movements; movements that we take time to do with awareness. You need to take the time to stop, notice and sense what’s going on with your physical body, what moves, what doesn’t move, what might be uncomfortable and what feels good. Sure you can go through the movements and pay no attention to what you are doing but you really don’t get as much out of it as you could, if you paid attention to them.

So what happens during that time, the stopping, the noticing, the break from a busy day of rushing, being in demand at home or at work? When we stop paying lip service to our movements and truly embrace ourselves as a soma, the connection of our body from within, it reflects into our lives and we stop playing lip service to our life; we learn to live somatically. We learn to live with awareness.

When we slow down and create space in our lives it allows us to see more, to live with awareness. To notice the world around us, people, places, opportunities. Things that previously were there but we were rushing past, unconsciously going about our day with the same patterns and the same habits we had created. Our body is an amazing, living, breathing, growing, adapting organism capable of so much, as are we.

This new awareness of our life is like a breath of fresh air, like the feeling of being stood by the ocean or on a mountain and taking a deep inhale and exhale of air, feeling a sense of freedom.

It can also highlight patterns in our lives that have been creating tension in our body, holding on to negative pattens of behaviour, maybe for protection, maybe out of habit. Sometimes being aware of this can be challenging and uncomfortable like with learning a new movement pattern, but that’s ok, just take it slowly and notice what’s there.

Tension in our bodies creates tension in our lives, movement in our bodies creates movement in our lives.

Time for a Snack!

Who doesn’t like a snack? A little treat mid-morning or mid-afternoon. Something nice to keep you going until lunch or to enjoy with a cup of tea in the afternoon. Maybe it allows you to just take a moment out of your busy day or to nourish your body to keep you going. A snack isn’t something you have instead of your lunch or dinner. Snacks aren’t something you just continue having mindlessly all day long; they’re a special little treat that makes you smile.

So what about a movement snack? A moment in your day when you stand up and yawn, reach the arms to the sky and allow the hips to move. A deep breath in allowing the belly to fill and the chest to expand, a long sigh out, letting the tension ebb away. A walk across the room noticing as your feet make contact with the ground beneath you, allowing your waist to let go and your arms to swing. A moment to reconnect with your body, to notice how you feel.

In the morning, we yawn, we move, and we pandiculate, waking up the body after a long night in bed – and it feels good. Movement snacks aren’t about replacing your somatic movement practice – that’s your meal. Your movements snacks are there to allow you to reconnect during your day and to notice your habits: the tension you hold whilst working, driving, or doing chores. They are snippets of loveliness in your day to bring you back to yourself, and to be mindful and aware. They allow you to take your main somatic practice and apply it to your everyday day life, helping to break habituated movement patterns and tension. Somatic movement snacks do not just make you feel physically better, but emotionally better, allowing you to move with more freedom throughout your day.

So next time you get out of the car, or you’ve been sat for a while at work, try it. Allow yourself a moment to have a movement snack – just a minute or two – to move, notice, and breath.