Somatic Coaching for Stress Management
No one can avoid stress. Life is inherently filled with stressful situations, and to avoid all stressors would be to avoid opportunities for growth, connection and fulfilment. In fact, if you’re ambitious with great visions for what you want to create in your life, then you’re likely more exposed to stressors in the form of ongoing challenges to overcome. Anyone with a passion for exercise also understands that growth stands on the other side of enduring uncomfortable situations. Stress only becomes detrimental when we don’t know how to properly manage it.
My clients come to me when stress has been overwhelming their coping mechanisms, or when they’re ready to let go of the addictions and distractions that have been managing their stress levels in unhealthy ways.
What is stress?
Stress is a mind-body event; it occurs physiologically and psychologically. Learning to rewire your reactions to stress starts with this basic understanding, because recognising where the reactivity is occurring is the key to successful interventions — and, ultimately, changing the way you’re wired.
How does Somatic Coaching come in?
Somatic Coaching is all about this mind-body continuum. Through somatics we learn to become mindful of the subtle sensations arising within our bodies, and the mental and emotional patterns that are associated with these feelings. In so doing, we become sensitive to fluctuations in both our physiological and our psychological state, which opens up the possibility of shifting our state of being when we are moving towards stress.
Somatic Coaching takes you on a path of becoming a master of your nervous system. Through gaining fluency in the sensory fluctuations in your body, you can track the state of your nervous system, which opens up the possibility of consciously shifting your state when necessary. Physiological interventions include techniques involving breath patterns and releasing muscular tension (which I write about in this blog), which can have a profound effect on your state of body and mind. Having shifted gears from a state of stress, anxiety or reactive emotion, into a state of relaxed alertness, you now have the freedom to choose your response from a more grounded place.
For example, if you’re triggered into a state of stress because of a situation at work, when you bring your awareness to the embodied experience of this anxiety and work with these self-regulation practices to take the edge of the physiological response, you can create just enough spaciousness to choose what you most need in this moment. Having avoided a downward spiral into erratic behaviour or unbridled emotion, you now have the space to rationalise your thoughts and choose an appropriate action.
Is it really so simple?
Often, no. In practice, our reactions can be so strong and automatic that as soon as the trigger arises, the train has already left the station. Somatic Coaching is so valuable because it guides you through the process of unravelling these deeply ingrained patterns that prevent us from self-regulating when stress occurs.
Getting to the root
Our irrational reactive patterns — the ones that make us burst out in anger, shrivel up with embarrassment, race through anxious thoughts, or reach for our addictive compulsions — are our strategies for safety and survival. Although they may not be effective in helping us thrive, at some point in our history these patterns will have helped us in some way to feel safer.
Cognitive approaches may well help you change your mindset and behaviour patterns, but without addressing the physiological patterns then the same programmes may be playing out under the surface — ready to burst out when stress levels become overwhelming. Somatic Coaching emphasises our embodied experience so that we might track emotional and energetic patterns that have not yet found completion. Once safety has been fostered, emotional processing is often a key aspect of the coaching journey.
Emotions & Stress
Being able to access and express our emotions is crucial for somatic stress management. Interestingly, our systems are very good at numbing our emotions so that we can avoid uncomfortable feelings and ‘just get on with it’. But although we may be good at pushing these unwanted emotions aside, they do not disappear. Rather, it takes a whole lot of energy to keep them repressed beneath the surface — and this is where stress builds up.
It can take some convincing to allow yourself to feel your unprocessed emotions in order to release this build-up of stress. First, you need to consciously accept the logic of this process, but even with your mind on board, your nervous system still needs to trust that it’s safe to let go of your defences and feel what has gone unfelt.
Somatic Coaching provides you with the space and the tools to develop a mind-body state of safety and trust. This kind of safety is not just your logic telling you that there is no immediate threat; this safety must be found deep within your most primal mechanisms.
On the other side of emotional processing is the ability to see things more rationally, and the space to make new connections between stimuli and responses.
Is Somatic Coaching for you?
My clients come to me when they’re aware that they are stuck in patterns that make life feel more stressful than it needs to be. 1-to-1 coaching is special because it allows you to go through this process of mastering your nervous system and emotional at your own pace. In this safe container, you will learn where you interrupt your own process of stress management with habits and addictions that might otherwise continue to go unnoticed.
If you’re not sure if 1-to-1 coaching is right for you, a good place to start is by joining Somatic Yoga classes. Regular somatic practice like this will help you learn the foundational skills of embodied self-awareness and self-regulation, which are crucial for any deeper work in psychological and emotional processing.
If you’d like to discuss your options, email me to book a free consultation, or follow the links below.
