Somatics Reveals How Practice Is Required for Change
Much has been written about the power of practice. Learning something new - whether it’s tennis or how to stay present while in conflict with a partner - always requires diligence, repetition, and being OK with making mistakes. In a sense this really can’t be emphasized enough. We all want things to happen faster and so, understandably, we look for quick fixes.
Rewiring Your Nervous System Takes Time
I haven’t found quick-fixes to have much of a lasting effect - at least not in the realm of changing old, deeply ingrained habits, ways of thinking, and ways of being. While there is promising research around the immediate efficacy of treatments such as EMDR and psychedelics, these approaches work best helping to resolve isolated traumatic events, not in helping to shift how you embody the changes you want for yourself. When working to shift how you live in your body globally to create a way of being in the world that is present, open, and connected, this takes time and it takes specific daily practices in order to rewire how you are in your nervous system as a whole.
A person with a history of anxiety (someone who has essentially been practicing being anxious for years or decades) who becomes skillful at shifting out of an anxious physiology does so by practicing how to become a bigger container for their anxiety such that the tension isn’t bound up in the body. They can do this by learning somatic practices that help them soften in their body such that they can shift out of the grip of their anxiety. By definition this requires practice because they have to practice doing something different physiologically instead of being at the mercy of their bodily stress response.
If I were a swim coach and you came to me to learn the backstroke, I would not simply have you sit down in my office and tell you how to do it. You have to get in the pool and feel it out. The same is true of somatic development; it requires specific practices (with some custom pointers along the way) to learn how to shift how you hold and release tension. If as my swim student you came back the next week and said, “well I tried it and it just doesn’t work - I still can’t do the backstroke”, I would tell you that you haven’t been practicing for long enough. Again, the same holds for somatics: if we don’t practice enough we don’t develop. It’s that’s simple.
Long Lasting Healing vs. Quick Fixes
In the field of personal growth and self-development, it’s incredibly tempting to seek out modalities and practitioners that produce relief. The trap is that we often keep relying on this source of relief even though it is temporary. The hope is that one day it will completely subside. However what somatics reveals is that unless we have take-home practices that help us reshape how we live in our bodies we will inevitably revert to old, unhelpful ways of being when we are under pressure. Catharsis, for example, can be incredibly therapeutic and healing. However, unless the softening that comes at the end of catharsis is integrated into one’s daily practices, the value of the catharsis will diminish and with the next stressor in our life we will likely be left back where we started. Somatic practices offer much more than catharsis because they provide the routine and structure necessary for deep, lasting change that has the power to reshape fundamentally how we are as human beings.
If you’re interested in making long lasting change, contact me to see if somatic coaching may be right for you.