Sheryl here. This post was inspired by and draws from the episode “I’m going through a
Important: If you need more help than a podcast or self-care can offer, please contact a qualified medical professional or (in the U.S.) call 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. (Photo by Shane Rounce on Unsplash)
really hard time What can I do?” of Psychedelic Therapy Frontiers, one of my favorite podcasts. Hosts, clinical
psychologist Steve Thayer and psychiatrist Reid Robison, offer support for the hardest times. I recommend listening to it for a more thorough discussion of hard times and meeting essential needs.
Life has ups and downs. Sometimes things just suck. Still, there’s always something you can do to ease suffering and, at the very least, avoid making it worse.
When physical and emotional pain are overwhelming, it can help to intentionally choose your words and activities while releasing the burden of expectation on how helpful anything can be right now. I realized that in those times, I give up expending energy and effort to escape feeling unsettled or make the situation go away. That frees up resources for doing things that nourish my body, mind, and spirit amid whatever’s going on.
The choices you make and actions you take during hard times may not change the world, but what you do matters. How you take care of yourself, the little things, they all count. And these choices affect yourself and everyone around you now and set the tone for the future. All conditions are temporary, and it can help to remember that.
So what should you do? Try asking your nervous system what it wants.
If you search your mind, you might not find a helpful answer. When the mind seems out of control with high-octane worry, it’s perhaps not the source of reliable self-care suggestions.
Ask the body instead.
Body Scan
Find a comfortable, supported position, sitting or standing. Adjust yourself so you’re both upright and relaxed, balancing steadiness and ease.
If you’re too wound up to remain still, shake it out. With energy and care (don’t injure yourself), shake out the arms and hands. Shake out the legs and feet. Shake the whole body, rocking from side to side, even jumping up and down if that feels right. Maybe put on a tune and dance! Then try sitting or standing again. (Photo by Nicolas COMTE on Unsplash)
For the next five minutes or so, longer if it feels good, let your attention travel from the soles of the feet upward.
Notice the breath. Make sure you’re not holding the breath. At the same time, don’t try to make it anything or do a “technique.” Let the breath breathe the body.
Tune in to the sensations of the feet. If you’re sitting or standing, feel your feet on the earth. Notice sensations of pressure, temperature, and weight distribution. Feel the earth beneath the feet offering total support.
Feel into the feet and let your attention travel up your ankles, lower legs, knees, and into the hips and pelvis. Notice any sensations that stand out. Tune in to quieter sensations that you might not have noticed.
Continue up the buttocks, lower belly, lower back, stomach, ribs, midback, chest, and upper back, including the shoulder blades and shoulders. If some feelings jump out, perhaps with accompanying complaints in the mind, notice that too. If comments arise, simply let them go along their way and tune back in to the body.
Become aware of the arms: upper arms, elbows, forearms, wrists, and hands. Linger in the hands,
Use the stuck-drawer method to release resistant tension. You know how it can be easier to open a stuck drawer if you first push it in and then try pulling? When you encounter a clenched muscle or area that doesn’t easily release, consciously tighten it up a bit more, then let it go. Instead of pressing tight shoulders downward, draw them up to the ears, then let them drop. Repeat once or twice more if needed. (Photo by Sardar Faizan on Unsplash)
noticing sensations of temperature, internal movement, tension, and relaxation. Is there a sense of energy there? Does one hand and arm feel different things from the other?
Ease the mind along the neck and throat and into the face and head. Note the weight of the head and whether it’s balanced at the top of the neck for the least effort possible to hold it up. Notice sensations in the head and face. Is there an expression on the face, or is it neutral? Is the lower jaw relaxed, top and bottom teeth apart even though the lips are closed? Or could it sink into the sling of muscles that support it? Are the lips soft, the cheeks, eyes, and forehead relaxed? If you feel tension there, invite it to release. Note whatever happens. Try feeling into the top of your head. What sensations are there?
Note your entire body and the condition of the mind. Notice that you remained one hundred percent supported by the earth beneath you. Notice that your breath continued to sustain you, effortlessly. Notice—and this part is important—yourself feeling the sensations you’re feeling. Savor them, creating a memory of this state.
What next?
Now it’s time to reengage the mind. What differences do you notice relative to when you started the body scan? What questions or suggestions arose? Possibilities:
- I’m hungry or thirsty.
- I need to get up and use the bathroom.
- I want distraction from funny cat videos and photos of baby bats eating bananas.
- I want to go for a walk.
- I need quiet
- I need to rest.
- I need a massage.
That last one is for real. A client said that when they finally lie down at night, they want someone to rub their feet. We’re here for you!
Bodywork Is a Conversation That Helps You Come Home
Receiving bodywork is not like driving through the car wash, where you passively give your vehicle over to a process and get the results. Bodywork is a conversation between you, your nervous system, and your practitioner.
The set and setting matter. Do the aesthetics soothe you? Finding a compatible practitioner matters. Do you feel accepted as you are and trust the practitioner enough to give yourself over to the experience? Does the work relax or pleasingly energize you?
Receiving bodywork helps you reestablish contact with the body, literally grounding you with touch to your feet and drawing your attention to your body and its sensations, experiences that might have been subsumed under the day-to-day flurry of getting things done and getting through it all.
We’re a come-as-you-are practice. Whether you show up as a tightly wound and full of high-test energy or ready to let go and melt into the table, we’re here to meet you as you are and help escort your attention and body-mind state in the direction you’d like to go.
We’ve heard clients express wondering whether they should be spending this time on themselves. Please know that pampering is good medicine. We are here, as Merriam-Webster defines it, “to treat with extreme or excessive care and attention” your every need for the time you engage us. The temperature, the supports under you, the coverings over you, the music, whether you want to talk or be silent (or mix it up), and every hands-on technique are exquisitely about you and your needs.
You tend your life that way. You do so much, all the time, and your body carries you through it as best it can. You are part of your life as much as everyone else in it, as much as every activity and responsibility. Consider the ways you want the people in their lives to treat themselves. Consider what they might want for you. If you’ve held yourself apart, remember that you’re not the puppet master in a marionette show—you’re a full, autonomous human among others, one among the earth and all its inhabitants, affecting and being affected by one another all the time.
With bodywork we bring you back into yourself, back into the family of all. Caring for yourself this way helps you do all that stuff. And your state, relaxed or otherwise, profoundly impacts everyone and everything around you.
Let us help.
