Before we dive deeper into body consciousness, let’s take a few moments for a brief exercise to help you reconnect with your body exactly as it feels right now.
Starting with the top of your head, begin to notice any tension you may be holding in your muscles (jaw, neck, shoulders, lower back, legs, and so on). Breathe slowly and deeply into any areas of tightness or constriction, releasing your jaw and flattening your tongue if it is touching the roof of your mouth, lowering your shoulders and rolling them down your back if they are raised or hunched forward, and releasing any tension in any other muscles. Take another moment or two to notice any shifts or changes in your mental or emotional state after relaxing your body in this way.
Many of you may have probably discovered stress or tension you hadn’t previously noticed. Some of you may have even found it difficult to feel your body at all in this moment. Though this exercise may not seem to have anything to do with solving issues in your relationships, it’s actually a critical piece of the puzzle. As you’ll discover throughout this chapter, true physical and emotional safety and security begins in our body, and until we can feel this safety and security within ourselves, we can’t feel safe and secure with others.
When I was young, I adapted to my stressful environment by disconnecting from my physical body as a survival strategy and ignored the signals it was constantly sending me. I was unaware of when my muscles were tense or my breathing was quick and shallow—a state that continued well into adulthood, preventing me from recognizing what my body needed as well as what I was actually feeling. You see, our physical sensations play an important role in our emotional life, communicating our body’s ongoing assessment of our environment to our brain. But I was too disembodied to feel anything, living most of my life in my head, cut off from my physical self.
Being in my body felt unsafe mainly because it was unfamiliar and therefore uncomfortable. When I was a child, no one modeled for me what it was like to feel safe and secure living in a physical body. Instead, I was exposed to body shaming and insecurity in my home. My mom and sister were always on a diet or adopting other food-restrictive behaviors. They were critical of their own bodies and those of others around them, and my mom often commented on any weight gain or changes in body size of anyone in the family, including herself.
As I got older, uncomfortable in my own skin and growing more intolerant of feeling the sensations in my stressed body, I closed myself off from the physical aspects of my existence. Even though I desperately wanted to feel emotionally connected with others, I wasn’t connected to my physical self to access my emotions in a way that would allow me to bond with another person. The reality was, I had difficulty feeling anything at all.
It took me years to develop a state of body consciousness, or to become aware of my body’s physical sensations so that I could start to regulate my nervous system consciously and intentionally. Because most of us didn’t grow up in safe homes or have safe and secure relationships with others, we continue to live with nervous system dysregulation that keeps us disconnected from both our inner and outer worlds.
We are all aware that we have a physical body. We use it for almost everything we do and generally know how it feels when we walk, sit, sleep, work out, have sex, hold hands, eat food, drink wine, run in the rain, dance in the snow, or nap in the sun. Many of us are conscious of our body’s basic needs on a fundamental level: we’re usually aware when we’re hungry, thirsty, tired, sick, or injured. Some of us may even be focused on our body’s well-being and try to eat healthfully, exercise, get enough sleep, or adopt other habits that we think can improve how our body looks or feels.
Even those of us who are health minded, though, are rarely body conscious or aware of how safe or unsafe we feel in our physical self. The term body consciousness, as I use it in this book, does not mean a state of self-consciousness about or hyperawareness of how our body looks, whether to ourselves or to others. Instead, it describes our ability to sense what’s happening within our body.
We develop body consciousness when we enhance our ability to witness our physical sensations, then use this sensory input to help regulate our nervous system and our behavioral responses. Learning to identify when our nervous system is stressed creates the opportunity for us to shift ourselves out of a reactive, avoidant, or dissociated state into a more open and receptive one. As we become more attuned to our physical sensations, we can begin to discern not only obvious signs of physical stress, like the rate of our heartbeat or breathing, but more subtle signals, like if our energy is light, heavy, calm, or agitated; if our shoulders are hunched or straight; if we are speaking softly or loudly, quickly or slowly; and if we can maintain eye contact or smile easily.
These sensations may seem unremarkable, but they reflect the state of our nervous system while also communicating information to our brain that helps determine our emotions. When we’re able to consciously perceive these sensory shifts, we can begin to understand the emotional messages they send our brain. With this awareness, we can give ourselves the space to calm down when we know we’re activated and the opportunity to create safety by using the intentional mind-body techniques we’ll talk about later in this chapter.
Maintaining a consistent state of body consciousness isn’t easy. The stress and trauma stored in our body affects our ability to pay attention to our current experiences. Most of the time, our mind is reacting to the stress and tension stored in our body, causing our mind to wander and us to struggle to focus on the present moment and be fully aware of what’s happening in and around us. Because of these stress-induced thought spirals, few of us are truly present in our body during our daily life; instead, we’re in our mind, racing through thoughts about the past or trying to predict the future. While it can be helpful to reflect on the past or imagine the future at times, we need to be immersed in the present moment and connected with our body in order to be truly in our own presence. And if we’re constantly focusing on what someone else is thinking or feeling about or around us, we may never know how we really feel being in their presence.
In addition to the impact of this stored stress in our bodies, some of us have learned body-shaming habits from the cultural and societal messages we have been exposed to. The lack of diversity in skin color, ethnicity, body size, and physical ability in television, media, and movies has deeply impacted our body-based beliefs, sending the subconscious message that there is an ideal version of who is acceptable, attractive, or desirable. If our body’s skin tone, shape, or functioning is different, we may struggle to feel safe and accepted because of our natural physical appearance and our stress response may remain chronically activated.
Physical touch is universally important to all human beings, helping to comfort and soothe our emotional experiences. However, it is our individual experiences with touch (or the lack thereof) that can cause us to have conflicting feelings about physical contact that can lead to confusion, anxiety, and ultimately unmet needs. In order to feel comfortable being physically close with another, we first have to feel comfortable with our own body. To do so, we need to learn how to trust in our ability to stay connected with our own body and safe within our own boundaries as we move physically closer to one another. Knowing that we can stop or slow down whenever we want allows us to expand our ability to be physically soothed, comforted, and even stimulated by another.
If we have a dysregulated nervous system, as most of us do, spending any amount of time noticing our body won’t immediately feel safe to us. Feeling unsafe is why so many of us disconnect from our body in the first place, living inside our head instead. And many of us may notice that we continue to avoid those sensations that are connected to emotional memories that are too deeply uncomfortable to endure.
Emotions are part of our shared humanity. They color and give meaning to our life, guide us, and make us feel alive. From an evolutionary perspective, emotions help us interpret our environment so that we can identify threats and stay safe. The more quickly we’re able to register fear or signal the presence of a threat to others, the safer we’ll remain as individuals and groups.
Though the words emotions and feelings are often used interchangeably, they describe two different phenomena. Emotions are our subconscious reactions to our physical sensations, and feelings are our conscious experience of our body’s sensations.
Most people assume that our thoughts create our emotions and our emotions define who we are at any given moment: I think this emotion, and this emotion makes me me. If I tend to think sad or depressing thoughts, I might assume that this makes me a sad or depressed person. Or if I think angry, anxious, or worrying thoughts, it makes me an angry, anxious, or worried person.
Many of us also assume that what’s happening around us or in our immediate external environment causes our emotions: This situation now is causing me to feel X, Y, or Z. We often think that someone else made us feel a certain way: What you’re doing now is making me to feel this way. It’s empowering to realize that these assumptions aren’t true. Emotions aren’t facts or even accurate representations of what’s happening to us. In fact, most of the time, our emotions aren’t even reactions to what’s going on in the present moment.19
If you’re wondering How can it be that my emotions aren’t a product of the present moment?, you’re not alone. For decades, psychologists believed that our emotions were immediate responses to what we saw, heard, or experienced. In recent years, neuroscientists have overturned that idea, thanks in part to research by Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, a psychology professor at Northeastern University who introduced what’s known as the theory of constructed emotion. According to this ground-breaking theory, emotions begin in the body as physical sensations, which our subconscious then uses to predict how we should feel based on how we’ve felt in the past when we’ve experienced the same sensory state of being.
If our heart is racing, our breath is quick, and our blood is pulsing through our veins, our brain may interpret these sensations as fear or excitement, depending on what we’ve experienced in the past when we felt similarly. So, for instance, if we’re preparing for a big speech and have had unpleasant experiences with public speaking, our subconscious may interpret our sensory state as fear. But if our past experiences with public speaking have been positive, our subconscious may interpret the same sensations as excitement. Our emotions are really just mental concepts created by our body and driven by our past. Or, as Dr. Barrett put it, our emotions are “constructions of the world, not reactions to it.”20
The fact that our emotions are body-brain constructs, not hardwired reactions to our reality or relationships, means that we don’t have to be prisoners to what we feel. The theory of constructed emotion gives us the opportunity to perceive our emotions as self-creations, not reality, and empowers us to change how we feel by shifting certain physical sensations.
In psychology, our ability to sense our inner sensations is known as interoception. Interoception, sometimes called inner sensing, constantly occurs on an unconscious level as our subconscious scans our body’s sensory input to interpret the safety or threat of our environment. We can intentionally enhance our ability to practice interoception by practicing body consciousness to help identify our emotional state by consciously witnessing our body’s sensations.
Accessing this active state of body awareness allows us to intentionally change how we feel in the moment by actively shifting our body’s sensations, soothing ourselves if we’re stressed. Body consciousness is a life-changing practice we can use to help make conscious choices about how we want to feel and show up in our relationships.
It took me years before I felt safe enough to spend consistent time in my physical body to begin to identify its needs and the emotions stored there. I preferred to live in the safety of the spaceship in my mind, obsessing over my thoughts without ever dropping into my physical experience. I was unaware of and unable to listen to the messages my body was sending me every day, which prevented me from being able to identify or meet my physical needs. As a result, I was often reactive and incapable of regulating my emotions, on many occasions finding myself trapped in cycles of inexplicable and inescapable agitation and discomfort.
For most of us, the process of disconnection begins in early childhood. For me, I believe it started in utero, when I was immersed in the stressed physiology of my mom’s dysregulated nervous system. If your mom didn’t feel safe inside her body, you probably didn’t feel safe inside her body when you were developing, either.
My mom discovered she was pregnant with me at age forty-two, fifteen years after giving birth to my sister. She was at a different stage of her life, not trying or expecting to have another child, and given her chronic anxiety about her health, when she began to experience morning sickness, she assumed that she had stomach cancer. When her doctor told her that she was pregnant, I imagine she was fearful of the diagnosis and could understand if she was feeling overwhelmed by the thought of having a third child whom she’d worry about.
While I was developing inside my mom, I absorbed her stress and apprehension—a normal state for her that was only amplified by her advanced maternal age. Because she was anxious and disconnected from herself, she remained unable to regulate her own emotions or her body’s cortisol levels, and as a result, when I was inside her, I couldn’t, either. My body was so stressed in utero that I was born with a sucking mark on my thumb. Looking back now, I have compassion for myself, who was, I believe, desperately trying to self-soothe before being born. Unable to calm my overwhelmed nervous system, I likely entered the world already dysregulated and feeling unsafe in my body. Research corroborates my experience, showing that elevated levels of the stress hormone cortisol in a pregnant woman can cause larger amygdala volume in a developing child, leading to a dysregulated stress response and anxious behaviors.21
Growing up, I continued to absorb the unspoken messages from my family that there was little or no space for me to express my separate or different needs, and so I gradually stopped doing so. Like many who grew up with parents from an older generation, there was a Depression-era mentality in my home that as long as there was food on the table and a roof over my head, there was nothing else, including emotional support, that I could possibly need.
As part of an Italian American family, I was modeled highly ritualized eating habits in which my mom used food as a gesture of her love and care. Every night we ate together as a family at “dinnertime,” which in my family happened to be at 5:30 p.m., right after my dad came home from work. My attendance at those nightly mealtimes was a felt obligation or unspoken expectation, regardless of whatever else I had going on. That was especially true on Sundays, when my brother’s family and my two uncles usually came over for a big pot of Italian pasta and sauce (or gravy, as I grew up calling it). Because my mom was deeply insecure in her connections to us all, she used food as a primary way to show her love. She regularly looked to us for validation during those meals, hoping we’d proclaim that her food was delicious or clean our plates as an indication of our approval and reciprocated love. Seeking to please, I would often finish my whole plate and take seconds when my mom urged me to do so, usually after advising me to “eat more now” so I “don’t end up being hungry later.”
Food was one of the main means of consistent connection within my family. During our shared meals I consistently learned that it was important to tend to the expectations and feelings of others, even when my body told me otherwise. I would eat when or what was convenient for those around me even if I wasn’t hungry or disliked the taste to avoid offending anyone. I’d take an extra helping when my mom suggested I do to avoid disappointing or denying her request. I continued those habits as an adult by scheduling my mealtimes and making food choices based on the schedules, needs, or suggestions of those around me.
As a child, I learned to overlook other physical needs, too, like having a consistent sleep schedule and regular physical activity, because neither was prioritized or modeled in my home. I didn’t have a set bedtime and would regularly stay up late watching TV with my family, who also stayed up late. Outside of playing sports (which was motivated by my desire to be seen by my family as successful), I wasn’t encouraged to exercise, and although my dad was active, my mom frequently remained on the couch or in bed in pain.
Other than regular commentary on or criticism of the size and health of their bodies, no one in my family directly spoke about or showed their physical body. I never saw anyone in my household naked, so I assumed it was to be avoided—one reason why I never really felt comfortable showing much skin. My mom and I never discussed anything about puberty or a woman’s menstrual cycle, so I didn’t tell her when I got my period. By that age, I already felt so ashamed about most aspects of my developing body that I couldn’t imagine sharing those kinds of vulnerable experiences with anyone anyway. That deep-rooted shame resulted in a critical, noncompassionate relationship with my body, and I regularly overlooked my basic needs, often rushing through my self-care or treating my body roughly when I did tend to it at all.
My disconnection from my body created my disconnection from my emotions. I didn’t sleep enough or move in healthy ways and ate foods that inflamed and stressed my body. These habits only made it more difficult for me to regulate my overwhelming emotions, which continued to color my perceptions of the world.
Over time, I adopted a cool, apathetic exterior—my family began to call me “Nothing Bothers Me Nicole”—to hide the painful reality of my inner world, which was full of deep-rooted feelings of abandonment, loneliness, and shame. Without the safety and security to be myself, I used my outward attitude to protect against increasing feelings of unworthiness; if I never showed my vulnerabilities, I would never be at risk of having them or myself feel rejected.
To keep myself protected, I became hyperfocused and perfectionistic about my appearance, obsessively looking at and trying to hide the various scars I had been accumulating on my body over time. I ritualistically spot cleaned dirt and other stains off my clothes and shoes in the hope of removing any evidence of wear-and-tear or other imperfections. That obsessive behavior carried over to my physical environment, where I fanatically arranged items in my childhood bedroom in attempts to soothe the increasing feelings of stress and tension I was storing in my body. All of those behaviors seemed to my family just to be part of who I was or my “quirky personality,” as they put it, when, in reality, they were coping strategies to try to regulate my nervous system and manage my overwhelming emotions.
Eventually, I became aware of how disconnected I was from my body and the stress I carried in my physical self. Though I didn’t realize it for a few decades, my body was locked in a stressed state, with my muscles tightening and constricting more with time, especially in my back, neck, and jaw. With increasing physical tension, my body never felt like a truly safe place for me to rest or relax. As I shared in my first book, How to Do the Work, I fainted twice over the course of several months, once at the home of a childhood friend and again after spending a significant amount of time with my family over the holidays.
My body was overwhelmed by nervous system dysregulation, overwhelming emotions, and childhood trauma, and it was starting to shut down. Though I thought I was taking care of my health when I decided to become a vegan in my midtwenties after I learned about industrial animal farming, I still wasn’t listening to my body and its host of unmet physical needs. Like most of us, I operated on autopilot, eating whatever was around me or whatever and whenever others ate, barely exercising, while not prioritizing my sleep or ever really allowing my body to truly rest—all habits I had learned in childhood.
Getting things done without paying active attention can, of course, help us deal with many of the complex experiences we have to navigate daily, like acquiring what we’ll eat, coordinating our daily commute, and remaining aware of the changing social etiquette. But the habitual tendency to mindlessly engage with daily life can also lead us to eat without tasting our food, overexert our muscles when they need rest, and interact with others without actually connecting with them.
Because my body was overwhelmed by decades of unmet physical needs and accumulated emotions, I didn’t feel comfortable spending much time in it to feel or understand to my physical sensations. I had no idea how fast my heart beat, how deeply or calmly I could take in the air around me, whether my energy was constricted or light, or how my muscles felt. Those sensations created my emotional landscape every minute of every day, but I wasn’t paying attention to them. And I didn’t know why I should or how I could.
During my dark night of the soul, I learned a lot about our physical body, which was when I discovered that our emotions live inside us—in the physical cells of our muscles, fascia, and organs. Your issues are literally in your tissues, or so the saying goes. Our emotions get activated when our body has a biological response (hormonal, neural, and cellular) to trauma. Shocked and inspired, I began spending more time consciously aware of my body every day, using my Future Self Journal (FSJ) to help me keep that daily intention. (You can download your own free copy with a how-to guide on my website, www.theholisticpsychologist.com.)
At first, it was difficult to feel what was happening inside my body since I’d been disconnected from it for so long. Most of my sensations felt uncomfortable. My heart rate was often erratic, my breathing was shallow and constricted, and my jaw always seemed to be clenched. At the same time, I knew those sensations were telling me something, that I was existing in a state of fear and stress. My nervous system dysregulation was causing me to shut down, which explained my fainting episodes (a progression of the freeze response) and why I couldn’t remember so many moments in my past that others could easily recall. I was basically living in a state of numbed overwhelm.
Learning about the evolutionary function of our emotions and our nervous system responses helped me understand why I never felt able to truly relax or find peace in my body. It explained why a “perfect” appearance or environment calmed me only temporarily. It explained why the alcohol and other substances I had relied on from such an early age had never really taken away the deep-rooted pain inside.
Though that realization was alarming, it was also incredibly empowering, setting me on a path to create body consciousness. Using my FSJ, I recorded my daily intention to check in with my body every day, several times throughout the day. Then, every few hours, I would set an alarm on my phone to remind me to do a body consciousness check-in (see here).
That practice helped me recognize how often I looked to others to meet my physical needs and how I still relied on my mom for health advice, even when I knew how to take care of myself. It helped me more clearly see how sharing my health-related stress or worry was my attempt to connect with my mom and others emotionally. I saw how regularly I continued to prioritize my “obligations” or “achievements,” diving right into my to-do list instead of taking a moment in the morning to connect with and care for my body. I noticed how consistently I felt as though I had to “earn” moments of rest or relaxation by first completing a task, like sending a work email, always pushing myself to be “done” with my never-ending list of projects.
I was starting to see all of the ways I was carrying the dysregulation that had lived inside me since I was a child wherever I went as an adult. It was like the famously titled Jon Kabat-Zinn book Wherever You Go, There You Are.
I also saw that the more I turned inward and spent time with my body rather than cycling through the loop of my conscious thoughts, the more capable I became at sensing my physical sensations and recognizing when my nervous system was activated. And during the times when I knew something deeper was happening inside me, I started to become curious about what was prompting my reactions.
Over time, I became better able to discern when I was actually hungry or needed to move or rest my body, which helped me feel more grounded and less irritable in general. I started to stretch the tense muscles in my body that had been frozen or constricted from years of stress-related tension and began to eat more nourishing foods. I maintained a regular sleep schedule for the first time in my life, going to bed and waking up earlier to sync my natural circadian rhythm with the sun. I started moving my body and stretching my muscles almost daily while taking rest when my body needed it.
Becoming more connected to my body, I started creating safety for myself whenever I felt my nervous system becoming activated. When this occurred and I sensed I was shutting down or going into a freeze response, I practiced the Wim Hof Method, a breathing method that helps activate our sympathetic nervous system and pull us out of a shut-down parasympathetic state. When I noticed that I was overstimulated or going into fight-or-flight mode, I took some slow, deep belly breaths to help calm myself down. We’ll explore these different breathing techniques here.
Today, I still use intentional breathing and other mind-body practices to regulate my nervous system and help me navigate my emotions. Since I’m often activated within relationships, like most of us are, I try to practice body consciousness when I’m around others or before I react impulsively to help me make sense of and manage my emotions. If I don’t hear from my partner as quickly as I’d like and begin to worry about the security of our connection, I can drop into my body to practice the body consciousness pause. If I feel that my heart rate is elevated, my face is flushed, and my energy is agitated, I know that my nervous system is in a stress response. Although these feelings are real, I can now acknowledge the possibility that I’m reacting to old wounds rather than new slights. With this understanding, I may be able to reinterpret my situation. It’s likely that my partner still loves me and just needs space or is going through something stressful and needs time alone. In such moments, I can calm my body so that I don’t send a snarky text or do something else I might regret. I can go for a walk, practice deep belly breathing, or stand outside with my feet firmly planted in the grass, all of which can help bring my body back to safety. When my heart rate slows and my energy lightens, I can reassess the situation more calmly and objectively.
To tell the truth, I still struggle to consistently maintain body consciousness. Instead of living with and feeling my physical sensations, I sometimes ignore my body, running away from it by looping through my distracting thoughts, keeping myself busy with my endless to-do list, or numbing myself by watching mindless TV for hours on end. In such moments, I extend myself grace and compassion, understanding that these actions were my best (and only) way to regulate my big and overwhelming emotions as a child. I sometimes do still allow myself to check out for a few hours with my favorite TV programs, knowing that those moments can give my nervous system the rest it needs to rebalance and replenish itself especially when I’m feeling particularly stressed or overwhelmed.
Thankfully, I’ve paid attention to my body long enough to know that whenever I’m connected and listening to my body, I’m better able to meet my needs and calm my nervous system, no matter what’s happening around me or within my relationships. When I’m calm, grounded, and connected within myself, I’m better able to feel calm, grounded, and connected when I’m with others. And it’s only in those moments that I feel safe enough to be me, that will give me the opportunity to truly connect to you.
The first step in our journey to connect authentically with another person is learning how to be present in our own body by practicing body consciousness. When we consistently begin to pay more attention to being in our body, we can begin to make intentional choices to help regulate its different emotional states. This is how we cultivate emotional resilience, giving us the opportunity to have a feeling without reacting or behaving in ways that don’t serve ourselves or our relationships. When we are emotionally resilient, we are able to deal with stress and other upsetting emotions and are flexible in our responses to our changing circumstances rather than staying stuck in our habitual or conditioned reactions.
Since many of us have been disconnected from our body for so long, spending time with our full range of physical sensations can be both difficult and uncomfortable at first. We may not be able to tell if our heart is beating quickly or slowly or if our energy is open and light or constricted and heavy. Practicing the daily body consciousness pauses you learned about in chapter 2 will help you reconnect with your body’s sensations.
As we explored in chapter 3, we can all learn to identify when we’re in a stress response, as well as which particular response we’re experiencing. If we’re able to notice and identify when we’re in a freeze or shutdown response, feeling detached from what’s happening around us, we can move or shake vigorously to reawaken our body to help us reconnect to the present moment. And if we notice we’re overstimulated in a fight-or-flight response, we can move and breathe more slowly to calm ourselves down. Once our body returns to safety, we can then open ourselves back up to connecting with others.
We can even learn to witness how different emotional states feel in our body so that we can use our actual physical sensations to shift our emotional experiences. Remember, we all experience emotions a little differently, so the physical sensations that signal fear in one person may indicate excitement in another. At the same time, all humans experience the six core emotions—anger, sadness, fear, joy/happiness, disgust, and surprise—in similar ways. The chart below can help you identify your emotions based on your physical sensations, along with the messages that these sensations may be sending you.
EMOTION |
SENSATIONS |
MESSAGE |
Anger |
Muscle tension Flushed face Clenched jaw/throbbing temples Clenched fists Elevated or loud tone of voice or speech |
Boundary violation or unmet need |
Sadness |
Heaviness or low energy Drooped shoulders Difficulty smiling Lump in the throat Ache in the chest or stomach Flat or whiny tone or speech |
Loss |
Fear |
Increased heart rate Shakiness “Butterflies”or a “pit” feeling in the stomach Quickened/shortened breath Sweating (hands, armpits) Quickened speech and dry mouth |
Threat to safety |
Joy/Happiness |
Light and expansive energy Warmth throughout the body Smiling or laughing Upbeat tone/speech |
Interest, pleasure, or well-being |
Disgust |
Clenched or sickened stomach (possible gagging) Wrinkled nose or covered nose Averted eyes/body language |
Aversion to something offensive (physically, emotionally, or morally) |
Surprise |
Increased heart rate and overall energy Hyper-alert attention/visual scanning Widened eye and jaw (mouth opened slightly as in a gasp) |
Unexpected event or violation of expectation |
This practice helps us develop emotional awareness so that we can learn how to witness an emotion when it’s present. Using body consciousness to identify our physical sensations gives us an opportunity to consciously try to change those sensations so that we can change our emotional experience of the world around us.
As you become conscious of different physical sensations, many of which may have been present for some time, it is helpful to also begin to witness the way you think and talk about your emotional experiences. If you notice the urge to overidentify with certain emotions or your emotional state in general by thinking or saying things like “I’m scared, stressed, or angry,” practice saying “A part of me feels scared, stressed, or angry.” Over time, this practice can help you hold space for the many different emotions we can and often do experience at once, which more accurately reflects the multidimensionality of our shared human emotional experience.
Even if we’ve been living in a stressed state for years, as many of us have, our nervous system is still capable of regulating at any time. When we create safety for ourselves regardless of what’s happening around us, we increase our tolerance for uncomfortable emotions, perceive our environment and other people more accurately, and respond calmly, kindly, and in ways that better allow us to connect us with the people we love.
The following pages contain, in my opinion, the most effective practices to create the internal safety needed to help regulate our nervous system. Some of them, like intentional breathing and grounding in nature, are best used in the moment to create immediate safety. Others, like nutrition, sleep, energy work, and boundary setting are lifestyle shifts that can help us more consistently meet our physical needs over time. Though some of you may find that eating a nourishing meal just one day, getting one good night’s sleep, or doing a single session of energy work helps you feel calmer, most of us have ignored our physical needs for so long that we’ll need to adopt these habits consistently over time before we notice the impact.
It’s helpful to notice where your attention is as you practice the different exercises below. If your attention is lost in worrying or upsetting thoughts, including replaying whatever experience may have activated your nervous system, your body will remain stressed and will not be able to fully calm down. Continue to be patient with yourself and your body as you commit to the following practices; you didn’t become dysregulated overnight, and it’ll likely take longer than a single day of practice to regulate your nervous system. You also don’t have to commit to all the practices listed here at the same time. Pick one that stands out to you, and begin there. Using your FSJ, you can set a daily intention to practice this one technique for a few days, weeks, or months.
One of the most effective ways to regulate our nervous system is with our breath. Some breathing techniques, like the Wim Hof Method, are better suited to thaw or energize a freeze or shutdown response, while others work best for calming a fight-or-flight state. Because we’re all unique, I suggest trying different techniques to see what is most helpful to you.
Deep belly breathing. This type of breathing can calm a fight-or-flight response by relaxing our nervous system when our sympathetic branch is in control. Try to practice deep belly breathing anytime you feel stressed and/or incorporate it into your regular routine by practicing it every morning just after you wake up or every night before bed.
Wim Hof Method. This type of breathing can energize our nervous system when we’re stuck in a freeze or shutdown response and our parasympathetic nervous system is dominant. It’s helpful to practice Wim Hof breathing anytime you feel frozen, dissociated, or numb, and also begin to incorporate it into your regular routine if you often find yourself in this state.
Having direct physical contact with nature, known as earthing or grounding, has been shown to stabilize our body at the deepest levels, balancing and improving nearly every aspect of our physical function.22 Grounding allows us to coregulate with Mother Earth, or simply use her natural energy to bring our own body back to safety. This isn’t woo-woo thinking but science, as the earth’s natural electrical charge has been shown to activate our parasympathetic system, improve heart rate variability, or HRV (we’ll talk more about HRV in chapter 8), reduce inflammation, improve sleep, increase energy, ease pain, lower stress, boost overall well-being, and normalize the body’s biological rhythms, including our HRV.23 Even moving ours eyes back and forth like we’re viewing or gazing at the earth’s horizon line can help activate our parasympathetic nervous system, sending calming signals to our body and mind. Whenever possible, it’s beneficial to spend at least thirty minutes outside each day, physically connected to the natural world.
Here are a few ideas to help you co-regulate with Mother Earth.
If you’re consuming a diet that inflames your nervous system, as many of us do, you’ll have a difficult time feeling safe and regulating your emotions. The health of our microbiome, the multitude of microorganisms that inhabit our intestinal tract, directly affects the health of our central nervous system, thanks to a pathway known as the gut-brain axis. Most of us have more unhealthy gut flora than we should, which can cause a condition known as dysbiosis, increasing our risk of disease and nervous system dysregulation.
When the bad bacteria in our gut outnumber the good bacteria, we can suffer from leaky gut syndrome. This condition occurs when the cells lining our intestines weaken, allowing toxins and food particles to enter our bloodstream, causing inflammation and nervous system dysregulation. Many factors can cause leaky gut, including too much stress, gluten, processed sugar, or alcohol; a nutritionally imbalanced diet; and the overuse of some prescription and over-the-counter drugs.24
Prioritizing nutrient-dense, organic, whole foods that nourish the body rather than inflame it can help heal dysbiosis, leaky gut, and nervous system dysregulation. When I started eating more whole foods and less processed ones, I noticed that I felt calmer and more regulated after a few months. Since changing our nutritional lifestyle habits is not a quick fix, it’s important to make dietary shifts that you can sustain not just for days or weeks but for a longer period of time. Instead of adopting a an all-or-nothing mentality of what you can and cannot eat, think about prioritizing certain foods and minimizing your intake of others.
Note: Limiting or restricting food of any kind may not be appropriate for anyone with current or past disordered eating issues. If this is you, you may want to skip this section.
In addition to prioritizing the foods you eat, changing how or where you eat can also benefit your nervous system. Far too many of us eat on the go or while rushing through work, watching or reading stressful or upsetting news, talking to a partner or child, or cruising social media. In these moments, our choices may be activating our body’s stress response, taking us out of the “rest and digest” state we need for proper nourishment. By changing how we eat and creating as calm an environment as possible, we can increase the likelihood that our body will absorb the nutrients it needs.
We need at least seven hours of nightly sleep on a consistent basis to be able to maintain a healthy parasympathetic state and connect with others. Prioritizing our sleep can significantly benefit our relationships, especially if we’re chronically sleep deprived, which many of us are. If we don’t have enough energetic resources, we’re more likely to be agitated, irritated, impatient, and easily reactive around others. And yet, most of us don’t prioritize sleep, instead putting our work, social outings, digital habits, and favorite TV shows before our bedtime. For those who experienced abuse or other trauma especially during nighttime, sleep itself may feel unsafe, resulting in difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep due to nightmares. As I did, its helpful to establish a regular nightly routine to help calm your body and activate your parasympathetic “rest and digest” system before bed. Here are some helpful tips to create a soothing bedtime ritual:
As you see, many of the things that will benefit our sleep are actions we can take throughout our day to set our body up for rest at night.
Physical activity allows us to harness our energy and move it through our body, reducing our feelings of anxiety, stress, and even depression while regulating our nervous system. Regular movement can help release painful emotions and stored trauma, rebuild muscles, and rewire neural circuits in new ways.
Gentle exercise like yin yoga, stretching, and walking can help calm our nervous system when we’re in fight-or-flight mode. Vigorous exercise, on the other hand, can stimulate our sympathetic nervous system when we’re in a freeze or shutdown state. As anyone who’s experienced a good, sweaty workout may already know, physical activity releases endorphins, chemicals that help our nervous system cope with pain and stress.
The way you move your body doesn’t have to resemble any type of traditional “exercise.” Even the gentlest forms of movement and stretching provide benefits. And doing something you enjoy, whether it’s dancing in your living room, playing a fitness-based video game, or running around the yard with your dog or children, will make you more likely to move.
Personally, I like to stretch for fifteen to thirty minutes daily, sometimes by taking a YouTube yoga class (Yoga with Adriene and Travis Eliot’s yin practices are my go-tos). I try to get in a long walk and a more vigorous workout every few days and make a point to carve out small moments for more playful activity like dancing to a favorite song or hitting a tennis ball against my garage door.
You can even start to use exercise in an intentional way to calm your nervous system, specifically choosing your movement based on the stress response you’re experiencing.
All the cells in our body produce energy. When we’re stuck in a stress response, our cellular energy can become frenetic, frazzled, or deficient. Energy practices such as acupuncture, acupressure, and Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) tapping can help rebalance unhealthy energy by realigning our body’s meridians, or energy pathways.
Other techniques shown to relieve stress responses and regulate the nervous system include:
Following are some additional self-soothing and self-regulating options to help activate your parasympathetic nervous system and calm your body’s emotional reactions.
Boundaries are protective limits that we set with others to help us meet our body’s physical and emotional needs, which helps create safety for our nervous system. We can set physical boundaries by eating what and when we want, going to bed when we choose, and prioritizing how and when we exercise. We can set emotional boundaries by saying no to people, events, situations, or tasks when we don’t have the energetic, attentional, or emotional resources for them, even if the people we love are asking for our support. We can set these boundaries when we begin to feel on edge, are irritable with others, feel overwhelmed or on the verge of tears without explicit reason or cause, or are unable to think or express ourselves clearly.
Boundaries are choices we make for ourselves, not ultimatums we give to others. When we ask ourselves what we can change to help feel physically or emotionally different, we empower ourselves to ensure our own safety and security, regardless of what’s happening (or not happening) around us. Setting limits in these instances can also help us replenish our energy so that we can be there for our loved ones in the future. Recognize, too, that our boundaries can change depending on our emotional state, how connected we feel to the person we’re interacting with, and our body’s energetic resources, including the amount of stored stress or tension we face.
As I hope this chapter has illustrated, a consistent practice of body consciousness can help us become aware of the patterns of nervous system reactivity that may be keeping us stuck in cycles of conflict, disconnection, or dissatisfaction within our relationships. Consistently meeting the needs of our physical body by eating nutrient-dense foods, spending time both moving and resting, and breathing deeply and calmly is foundational to creating a safe environment for our nervous system to regulate itself in.
As we continue to practice the empowerment pause (see here), we can start to notice the sensations inside us that drive us to say hurtful things we don’t mean, keep ourselves endlessly “busy” or always on the go, say yes when we really mean no, or check out from difficult conversations or our relationships altogether. When we are able to consciously witness the sensations associated with our different nervous system responses, we can make conscious choices to bring our body back to safety. Only when we are in this grounded state can we intentionally choose our responses to our relationships and the world around us, ultimately allowing us all to be the love we seek.
As you learned in chapter 2, our body isn’t the only participant in these reactive cycles. Next we’ll talk more about the conditioning that lives in our subconscious mind and can drive these seemingly instinctual cycles with ourselves and others.