Why Bodywork Can Help Anxiety More Than Therapy Or Meditation
The somatic bodywork I offer is a powerful way of working with anxiety. For many struggling with anxiety, simply learning the very practical steps of how to soften and let go in the tissues of their body can make the difference between feeling overwhelmed by stress and feeling skillful in managing it. As a way to illustrate why bodywork is so essential, let’s review some shortfalls of common approaches to working with anxiety.
Talk therapy
There are many benefits to talk therapy, but as discussed in these blog posts regularly, one of the aspects it can fail to address is the physiological component of anxiety. To really get at the this point, it can be helpful to bring to mind some things we know about the human nervous system. For instance, if you are hiking in the woods, and you come around a corner of a trail and see a bear in front of you, you will almost certainly become afraid. It is not the case, however, that you have the thought “I’m scared because I see a bear”, and subsequently your heart rate elevates and you feel the beginnings of a fight/ flight/ freeze response. Rather, what we know about how humans operate is that the sequencings is this: you see the bear, your heart rate elevates and your sympathetic nervous system kicks into gear, and then your brain interprets those sensations as fear. In other words, it’s the body sensations that drive our emotional reality.
This point really can’t be overstated; it’s the foundational premise of somatics. Our internal bodily sensations - tension, heart rate, respiratory rate, tightness, muscular relaxation, temperature, etc. - are what produce our sense of our mood, emotions, and even our thinking and psychology. As such, if you want to shift your mood or emotions, it is essential that you work on shifting the sensations in your body. Trying to become more relaxed by simply talking about your issues fails to address the underlying nervous system activation that is driving your stress or anxiety. It’s common that we think that if we properly address the psychological components of our anxiety, our body will then just feel more at ease. What the neurobiology reveals (and what is revealed in somatics) is that it is actually the other way around: when we manage our bodily sensations, we manage our mood and emotions. This is not to say that the work of therapy isn’t important in helping us understand ourselves and challenge our limiting beliefs, but in terms of anxiety, it only addresses half of the battle.
Meditation
Recently I was working with a client who shared how she had been struggling with anxiety for decades. She described some behaviors she notices herself engaging in as a response to her anxiety that she is hoping to curtail through our work together. She told me of working with a previous practitioner who had encouraged her to practice sitting with her anxiety rather than simply reacting to it. When I asked her if this was helpful, the answer was, “not really”.
There are a lot of benefits to a sitting practice or meditation practice, and I often offer them to clients. They can help us develop the capacity to hold our attention, for example. However, the concern with just sitting with our anxiety (which is often prescribed by mindfulness teachers) is that it doesn’t necessarily teach us how to soften our contractions and the way we hold tension in our bodies. If we are practicing sitting with our anxiety but not shifting it, we run the risk of actually practicing embodying our anxiety more and more. The somatic work I offer is about learning to shift the sensations in our body to help create a body that is more relaxed and alive in the world. Sitting and being with ourselves is a wonderful practice if coupled with practicing being in a body that can support you. Simply sitting and being with our stress and anxiety without having any knowledge about how to shift it can be less supportive.
Read more blog posts about somatic bodywork or schedule with me today to explore how practices to live in your body can support the life you want. Sessions are available in person and on Zoom.