Should You Always “Just Be” With What You Feel In Your Body?

Common wisdom among many mindful awareness modalities is that we want to develop our capacity to be with our experiences, however uncomfortable they may be. There is a lot of good ground for this theory, however I believe it can be a limiting framework for conceptualizing somatic development. With somatics, we want to build our capacity for being with our experiences while simultaneously building our capacity to shift our experiences. Specifically, we want to practice shifting how we hold contractions in the body to allow for more relaxation and aliveness.

The rise of experiential work in therapy

In the context of traditional therapy, what we are talking about is often called “experiential” work because it supports the client in getting closer to their felt (embodied) experience rather than just thinking or just talking about what they are experiencing. Overall, I see it as a good thing that this type of work is being practiced in the broader mental health field. However, once we have learned how we hold tension in our body and how we contract under stress, we want to start introducing practices of softening. Too often this second step of learning to let go of our contractions is minimized or all together absent in mindful awareness practices.

A case example

Recently, I was watching a recorded demonstration between a therapist and a “mock” client. (The session was recorded for training purposes). In the video, the client was discussing some stress she was experiencing in her marriage, and all of the unhelpful strategies she has used to try to avoid feeling her stress. The therapist asked her to locate what she was noticing in her body as she spoke. As she became aware of the tightness in her shoulders and her chest, she identified an old self-narrative and spoke, “I feel like if I don’t help him, then I’m a failure.” Sensing that the client had touched into a deep place of contact within herself, he then suggested to her that she practice continuing to feel those contractions and be with that self-narrative around failure. In his assessment, asking her to continue to feel the tightness and the “I’m a failure” story was a way of supporting her in accessing her more experiential, embodied self.

In my assesment, it’s not usually helpful to ask our clients to “just be” with this experience. Indeed, the more we sit with our contracted body and listen to our “I’m a failure” story, the more we are practicing it, and the more it can become cemented into our nervous system. Furthermore, in some cases, this practice can be contraindicated for clients with trauma.

Somatics is about shifting our body and shifting our story

The purpose of guiding a client to feel their contraction (tightness, holding, etc.) in the tissues of their body is so they can learn what they are doing to create that shame-based story. Remember that the stories about ourselves are generated from what’s happening in the body. The more we can feel how we hold tightness in our body on a granular level, the more choice we have to let it go and choose to live in a story about ourselves that is life-affirming. There is a time and a place to ask a client just to sit and feel their pain, but as a coach and bodyworker, I’m always very intentional when I ask a client to do this. There’s a specific reason we are engaged in that practice, and it usually has something to do with supporting them in understanding how they keep themselves stuck (and what they can do about it). 

When a client identifies a place of contraction in their body, this is a wonderful opportunity to support them by guiding them to soften around the contraction. And when a client identifies a painful, self-limiting narrative (such as “I’m a failure”), this is also an opportunity to support them in creating a new self-narrative that they want to live in. 

Always check with your therapist or coach before doing experiential work

If you do decide to work with a somatic therapist, coach, or mindful awareness practitioner, make sure they are not simply asking you to “sit with it” without first providing a very clear explanation for their intention. If you are unclear on why you are being asked to become aware of how you hold tightness in your body, ask them, “what is the purpose of this practice?” or “what are we hoping to get from doing experiential work?” If they are unable to articulate how the ultimate goal is to help you lean how to shift away from contractions in your body and shift away from negative self-narratives, be cautious and ask for more clarification.

Message me to explore if somatic coaching or bodywork is the right fit for you, given your goals for change and transformation.