CW: This post offers an embodied approach to dealing with deep difficulty in our lives and in the world. If that feels like too much for you right now, skip this post. If you are struggling, please reach out for help from a trained mental health professional.
The world feels desperately dark these days. Deception, cheating, violence, chaos, and war are the water we are all swimming in. Depending on your personal history and your constitution, it can all feel upsetting and scary at best, triggering and traumatic at worst. Even a cursory scan of the headlines – local, state, national and global – can feel overwhelming. The pull toward hopelessness or the desire to run away (but to where?) can be strong.
Counter-intuitive as it may feel, staying in our tender, vulnerable human bodies is the best way I know to navigate tumultuous waters. No matter its age, shape, gender, race or ability, your body is the vessel you have to move through whatever is happening.
Instead of jumping ship, stay in your boat. Our boat/bodies have a remarkable range of ways to support us if we only choose to settle fully into them and from within them, move our way through the tsunamis of trouble.
These are just some of the things our bodies can help us do when times are tough. There is no particular order to them: do the one/s that feel most helpful and accessible to you now. Experiment with others as your capacity and needs shift as they inevitably will.
Feel
When the world is cascading out of control, it’s easy to shut down our feelings. It’s the cultural norm to pretend you’re fine when you aren’t; to stuff it down and armor up. Instead, use your amazing body to feel what you feel. Depending on your proximity to and capacity for the chaos, that might mean allowing in a little of the sadness, fear or despair or letting it all wash over you.
When you read a headline, pause and ask yourself where you feel it in your body. Does it feel like a heaviness in your stomach, a tightness in your chest, an ache in your throat? Do your hands squeeze into fists or land on your heart or head?
Identifying the emotions that come up is sometimes helpful – especially when communicating with others – but often our vocabulary for what we’re feeling falls short.* Start by feeling the sensation in your body without needing to call it anything except what it feels like: a clench in the stomach, a tightness behind the eyes, an ache in the chest.
If it’s too much, breathe and reassure yourself that you are just inquiring into what is happening. You don’t have to do anything about it, just feel it. Take breaks whenever you need.
Process
Our bodies are designed to move – muscles, connective tissue, joints, organs, thoughts, emotions, everything. The whole system is constantly moving – even if you’re lying still. Allowing ourselves to literally move through whatever is happening is a way to metabolize and embody our experience.
Pillows are great here: they are great to cry on, scream into and punch. After Roe v. Wade was struck down, I often screamed with everything I had while driving alone in my car. Or, put on a piece of music that aligns with however you’re feeling – fear, sadness, rage, uncertainty – and let your whole body move to it. It’s not about dancing but moving whatever is in you. Start small and let your body show you what needs to move.
Settle
Much of our nervous systems are autonomic – that is, we don’t have control over it. The shot of adrenaline you get when you hear frightening news or almost get in a car wreck, for example, is not something you can change.
And there are things we can do to settle ourselves down.
Breathe. Just breathing slowly in and out of your nose can be calming. A simple Square Breath – breathe in for 4 heartbeats, hold for 4 heartbeats, exhale for 4 heartbeats and hold four 4 heartbeats – is a pattern that helps settle bodies of yogis, anxious folks and Navy Seals alike. Or extend your exhalation longer than your inhalation through pursed lips, like you are blowing out a candle 3 feet in front of you. All of these breathing patterns signal your nervous system to down shift.
Hands on. Placing your palms on your heart or your neck or your face or anywhere that feels good and grounding. Reassure yourself (presuming that it’s true) that you are safe in this moment.
Nature. Put your bare feet on the earth. Lie down under a tree. Walk outside – especially near water. Look out a window and watch clouds and trees moving. Nature in all its forms is a powerful calming presence.
Water. Drink some. Wash your hands. Splash your face. Take a shower or soak in a bath. Your body is more than half water. Let the water inside you be supported by water outside you.
Connect with your Senses. Scan through your senses: feel something on your skin, breathe deep and smell something, taste something, listen to the sounds around you, look at objects near and far. Your senses bring you back into your body and into right now.
These are just a few examples, and you may have other things that are calming to your body and brain. Note that calming and numbing are two different things. Sometimes when we feel tremendously overwhelmed, the best strategy is to numb ourselves to get through it. What I’m suggesting here is not numbing but settling: an embodied choice to down regulate, get ourselves out of the swirl and reconnect to our resources. Settling and numbing both have their places: just know which one you’re doing.
Rest
Sleep is always important and particularly when navigating a chaotic, uncertain world. Everything and anything you can do to support your sleep is always worth doing, and particularly when you’re upset, stressed or triggered.
In addition to sleep, we all also need rest. This can look lots of ways including taking a break from the news (or whatever the source of your upset is), taking a moment of quiet or meditation or simply lying down or closing your eyes for a few minutes. Rest doesn’t have to be a big undertaking and can be as simple as stepping outside or to a window and breathing.
I sometimes call the practice of restorative yoga “fancy rest” in that it is a practice of supporting the body with either minimal or maximal props including pillows, blankets and cushions. The external support allows the body to let go of chronically and unconsciously held tension and is deeply beneficial to an upset body whether or not it leads to sleep. Check out a bevy of free restorative classes on my YouTube channel here and here.
Act
When the world feels like it’s burning down (and a friend of mine reminds me that it’s always burning down – and it’s always also building up), the problems can feel too big for us to have any real impact. When you feel resourced enough, choose something you and your body can physically do to make a positive change. Make and take a meal to an ailing friend or neighbor. Pick up trash along your street. Connect with people who are doing work that aligns with you and help them. Find global organizations that are on the ground in troubled areas and donate to them, for sure. AND ALSO, physically do something that, as my Dad says, leaves the campsite better than you found it.
Stay In Your Boat. You’ll make it through.
The skies are dark and the wind is picking up. The waves are big and threatening. And yet you are in your body, your boat, your vessel that can carry you through the storm. Our culture emphasizes thinking and analyzing our way out of painful circumstances. While there is a place for that, there is power, refuge and support to be found inside your amazing body-boat.
*An excellent resource for expanding our ability to communicate to ourselves and others about emotions is Brené Brown’s profound book, Atlas Of The Heart.
