What Does Being Centered Mean?
“Find your center”, “Get centered”, “Come back to your center”. These are all expressions we’ve heard, but what do they mean to you? In Somatics we look to elevate these sorts of expressions from simply being a concept to being an actual felt, embodied experience.
Being centered isn’t just a good idea but something we can practice our way into. Specifically, we practice by feeling our body in the dimensions of length, width, and depth — the dimensions of space we literally occupy as the biological beings that we are. Again: we aim to get out of our heads and into our bodies. That place where length, width, and depth converge is your physical center, and it’s about 2 inches below your belly button.
A Standing Centering Practice
This practice supports you in living in your body. The exact sequence is less important; the most important part is that you are practicing being in a body that is present, open, and connected. If you feel a holding or a tightness somewhere, take a deep breath and feel, sense, imagine letting it go. Remember: in through the nose filling the belly fully, then chest, then let the breath out through an open mouth in an uncontrolled way. If the tightness you notice won’t soften easily, love that part of yourself all the same.
Where To Place Your Attention
In feeling your soma (body, mind, spirit) you are practicing noticing: what stories or narratives are occupying your attention, what moods or emotions are present for you, and what do you notice in your body. Remember: unlike the mind, the body doesn’t lie — it speaks through sensations, which are things like temperature, tightness, openness, tingling, streaming, numbness, etc.
Frequency
This can be done in its entirety several times a day (~3-6 minutes each time) and you can do just part of it multiple times throughout the day (~10-30 seconds each time). Remember it takes lots of repetition to embody something new!
The Practice
Stand with head over shoulders, shoulders over hips, hips over feet. Arms relaxed by your sides. Feet hip width apart. Belly soft, jaw soft, eyes open and gaze soft.
1) Begin with length. Feel, imagine, sense lengthening through the crown of your head (creating space between the vertebrae) while also letting your muscles relax in gravity. Feel yourself get heavy and dropped in gravity but maintain your alignment and felt sense of dignity. Can you feel your body as that plumb line between heaven and earth? This is about taking a stand for your self.
2) Center in width: feel or imagine your midline, and slowly move your attention out from there to feel the edges of your body. Feel clothes at your sides, outsides of your feet on the ground. Take a deep breath. In centering in width, you are practicing connecting with self and others, seeing the bigger picture, and living with appropriate boundaries.
3) Center in depth. Feel for equal weight on the front and back of your feet, noticing is your chest pulled back from center or is your head pitched forward waiting to get to the next item on your to-do list. Feel your back. This is your history – behind you is all that made you who you are today. Notice what sensations are present at the front of your body and in the space between. Centering in depth you connect with your depth as a person - your ability to be appropriately connected to your past, present, and future.
4) Speak your commitment to yourself or out loud. Notice what is the quality with which you speak it. Remember this is something that you deeply care about and you want to practice speaking it as if you already embody it. What do you notice in your body as you speak these words?
If you don’t yet have a commitment, message me to schedule a somatic coaching session and learn how centering around a new commitment is a powerful way to transform your old self-narratives.