Having maintained a practice of tracking my own menstrual cycle for many years, and learning to pay closer attention to the cyclical experiences of the women and people in my therapy room, it became apparent that the issues that bring people to therapy are often more extreme and distressing in the luteal phase, between ovulation and the bleed. This observation is supported by research which shows that women in the mid-luteal phase of the menstrual cycle experience stronger emotional memories than women in other phases.
Category: Mind body connection Page 1 of 3
What is Trauma?
Through my many years of study and practice across a broad spectrum of emotional distress and mental “disorder” in NHS and private settings, I have come to hold a very broad concept of “trauma”. You can read more about my position, and the associated complexities here: https://thebodyinmind.co.uk/2023/01/26/can-i-call-it-trauma/ but to summarise, it is my belief that in fact, we all hold the imprint of traumatic and adverse events occurring perhaps years or moments prior to, during and/or post our births into this world. These events shape us into complex and interesting individuals. Navigating adversity is part of the human experience, and whilst often difficult and sometimes devastating, traumatic experience also offers up rich opportunity for growth, resilience and hope.
Perhaps becoming more aware of “the body in therapy” is an idea you have heard lots about in recent years and with which you agree in principle? However, as a potential therapy client or even an interested professional, you still don’t necessarily feel you have a complete hold on – why and how does the body actually matter in therapy?
A simple, methodical way to check in with yourself
Most of us ask and answer the question “how are you?” several times each day, but how often do you really give yourself the space to find the deeper answer?
A core message I wish to share via my work as a body focussed psychologist is that there are many ways in which we can benefit our wellbeing and accelerate healing via connecting and listening to the innate wisdom of our bodies.
Why I think we should talk less about EXERCISE and more about MOVEMENT
“If you think of your body as a house, movement is the large front door, swinging wide open to allow your awareness, your thinking, to enter back inside where you have always belonged”
hILLARY mCbRIDE, pHD
Rhythm is regulating
Our introduction to rhythm begins in the womb, when the sound and pressure of our mothers beating heart provides a core and constant rhythmic input to our organising brain. While as teeny babes we haven’t yet developed the cognitive capacity to “remember” the consistent presence of that 60-80bpm rhythm, holding and soothing us, the ancient lower regions of our brains are absolutely online, and will associate this predictable beat with feeling warm, quenched and soothed forever more.
As new babies (outside the womb) a similar rhythm creates the same sense of safety (you’ll know this if you’ve had a newborn), and perhaps more noticeably, any unpredictable rhythm or beats far outside of this range, run a much higher risk of activating our immature threat systems – if it’s new, it might be dangerous.
Bruce Perry uses The Tree of Regulation model to describe the foundations for health in developing infants. Here, rhythm and regulation lay down the roots of good health, exactly synonymous with early networks in the brain which build and spread like roots under the right conditions, to create capacity for self- regulation in later life.
Bilateral Stimulation
Bilateral stimulation – the repeated and rhythmic stimulation of left then right side has many hypothesised mechanisms in psychotherapy. In a formal therapy setting, especially if your therapist uses EMDR (Eye Movement Densentitisation and Reprocessing), we use eye movements, tapping or the butterfly hug to create this rhythmic stimulation. At the most fundamental level, it creates a soothing reassuring pattern or rhythm (similar to a steady heart beat) which feels really regulating.
Additional outcomes might include an increase in your ability to think flexibly about an issue or problem, and a capacity to distance yourself from the intensity of experiences (thoughts, feelings, memories).
Bilateral Sounds
There’s lots of fun to be had with bilateral sounds. You can search up “bilateral beats” and listen to music using headphones. You will notice that this beat has the same left – right effect. Save a track you like and tune in when you need that extra level of soothing in your system.
I often listen to these beats while i’m walking or running outside.
As well as music I love waves, taps, running and dancing.
What’s your favourite way to experience rhythm?
I came across this meditation in Her Blood Is Gold by Dr Lara Owen. Lara apparently learned it from Stephen Levine and, like me, loved it from the moment she heard it. She spoke of prolonging the practice by gently saying to herself after “soft belly” under her breath, becoming more and more aware of the subtle ways in which she held and tensed her belly through the day. The practice is perfect for an adult woman, but I have adjusted it slightly so that you can play with it whether or not you identify as a woman, or an adult. A belly is a belly after all.
Instruction
You might start by focusing your attention on your belly – allowing it to soften and release. Find tension where it exists in your belly region and see if you can let it go – whatever that means to you. If it helps, you might invite some tension into your general belly area first – tense the muscles and hold, noticing how tight it can be there, then say softly to yourself “soft belly” and allow the tension to float away, and feel the release, the peace and easiness of having a soft, non-judgmental belly full of love and compassion and tenderness for the world and everything around you.
Soft Belly Meditation – The Script
Focus your attention into your belly area and say softly to yourself:
“soft belly”
Allowing tension to release and float away. Feel the release, the peace and easiness of being with your soft, non-judgmental belly, full of love and compassion and tenderness for the world and everything around you.
Let go into that softness and allow it to spread all over your body: feel the Lucious loveliness of your whole being and feel the juicy delicious humanness, femaleness, of having a soft and pliable, warm and comforting belly.
A place for babies to grow, a place for feelings to develop, warnings to be headed, for ideas to gestate, food to be digested and fully absorbed, a place for feelings to be worked on and out and through.
A place for cozy late-night suppers, and happy active early morning breakfasts, a place for comfort, for solitude, for lying on the earth feeling the hot sun on your warm back, soft as your tender loving belly caresses your mother, the Earth.
Relax even more deeply into your belly now. Feel the wholeness within you, love the round and full belly, the humanness of you, the pure femaleness of that full soft belly.
Let it go even more.
Softly, softly, your belly rounds out, lets go, and you are coming home, more and more at home with yourself, as you release the images of flat, masculine or teenage non-bellies – for now you are a woman who has given or can give birth to another being, and to do that, you need a belly.
So let your belly be.
Be proud of it, wear it in the world along with your big heart and your shiny eyes, wear your round soft tender loving belly out into the world and let it soften all around you with power.
When a child is crying, pull him onto your lap and let him sit on your belly.
When your inner child is crying, put your hands to your soft belly and rub it gently saying “its ok, I’m here, and here is our soft tender loving belly, the centre of being, the home of the womb, the centre of gravity, the deepest place within.
Nurture that belly space, for within it is the treasure trove of your love, creativity and your gifts for the world.
Compared to the rest of the animal kingdom, humans have a unique capacity to imagine: using the evolved “thinking” brain, we can remember, make up scenarios that haven’t happened yet, and even visualise and experience things in our minds that could never be.
In this place lives great potential for creativity with which great things can be achieved: we write songs, make art, design buildings, travel into space. But there is a darker side to this creativity; when this access to abstract thinking escapes the present moment, it also has the capacity to plunge us into regret, fear, self-consciousness, anger and hatred.
Thinking in this way is primarily based in the frontal lobes of our cerebral cortex. As such, this part of the brain has grown much larger in humans than in other mammals. In this region, most of our conscious thought, higher-order thinking and executive functions (like planning, coordination and control) occur.
When we allow this part of the brain to run the show – to tell the rest of the body what to do – we can call it TOP DOWN functioning.
Top down culture
At this point in history – most human cultures are driven by top-down behaviour. We assert control over our bodies and our lives based on our ideas about the right way to live – the right way to be. Some great outcomes from this include reflection, understanding and wisdom. But when top-down functioning is relied upon, our bodies become mere interruptions: machines to be maintained, producing symptoms to be managed.
We learn to shut down some of our basic physiology. We direct ourselves (and our children) not to move, to breathe in certain ways, and not to feel, or at least to feel less, more quietly, with rules and restriction. This might sometimes be conscious – supressing a laugh or a cry, to hold still or to focus for longer than feels comfortable. But these habits also filter into less conscious habits like over working, over-eating and prejudicing those around us who look or behave differently to us.
Our brains find various ways (strategies) of muting or over-riding sensation. We come to operate in a kind of “sleep mode” which tells the body to be quiet and not disrupt the important work of the brain.
Bottom up potential
When more ancient brain structures and the rest of our bodies initiate behaviour – we can call this BOTTOM-UP functioning. Here we rely on information from the present, we interpret sensation and communication via our highly tuned nervous-systems using our inbuilt capacities for detection. When we practice this via mindful awareness of our body, we become aware again to the full range of information via sensation, and that listening becomes the basis for re-awakening bottom-up informed awareness and behaviour.
Balance
Its not that one is better and one is worse. They are both EPIC. Its more that we need to embrace balance – a healthy creative partnership between body (including brain) and mind.
Where to begin?
When we practice mindful awareness of our body, we become aware again to the full range of information via feeling and sensation, and that listening becomes the basis for re-awakening bottom-up informed awareness and behaviour.
For lots of good reasons, some people are more able to feel their bodies than others.
A gentle route in is through your breath. I sit still, close my eyes, put a warm hand on my chest and follow my breath wherever it goes… in then out, at the pace my body dictates.
If that feels comfortable, I then broaden my attention by following the breath to different parts of my body (like riding on a train) and then I “jump off” the breath, landing in other body sensations.
Perhaps then I stay for a while with my heart beat, some shoulder tension or a sense of openness in my back.