- What does your posture feel like? are you slumped, rigid, or have flexibility to your stance?
- What’s your natural heart rate? Quick, slow?
- Where do you carry tension? does it present as a knot in your stomach, neck/back pain, a headache, a tingling in your fingers or twitching of your eye?
- What external or internal elements offer a sense of calm? A favorite sweater, drink, place (beach, sofa), or experience with a loved one?
- What external stimuli often trigger you? loud sounds, dark at night, social interactions?
Begin asking yourself these questions to increase your somatic, mind-body awareness.
When you’re healing from anxiety, trauma or are experiencing emotional triggers, it can be difficult to feel like your body is supporting you.
However, an important element in healing and getting stronger is inviting your body to help you, to be a resource.
As Babette Rothschild, Trauma Specialist, suggests learning to engage with your body as a DIARY. Begin taking “notes” from what your body is expressing by tuning inward.
Rothschild writes in her book, The Body Remembers,
“It is through sensory storage and messaging that the body communicates. It holds many keys that help in identifying, accessing and resolving traumatic experiences” (Rothschild, 2000). According to Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, a somatic, body-focused therapy, everything we experience and all the sensations felt on and in the body are forms of communication needing to be expressed.